文档介绍：CHAPTER
WHAT IS ECONOMICS? 1
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Economics, Scarcity, and Choice
Scarcity and Individual Choice
Scarcity and Social Choice
Scarcity and Economics
The World of Economics
Microeconomics and
Macroeconomics
conomics. The word conjures up all sorts of images: manic stock traders on Positive and Normative
Wall Street, an economic summit meeting in a European capital, a somber Economics
television news anchor announcing good or bad news about the econ-
E Why Study Economics?
omy....You probably hear about economics several times each day. What exactly To Understand the World Better
is economics? To Gain Self-Confidence
First, economics is a social science, so it seeks to explain something about society. To Achieve Social Change
In this sense, it has something mon with psychology, sociology, and political To Help Prepare for Other
Careers
science. But economics is different from these other social sciences, because of what To e an Economist
economists study and how they study it. Economists ask fundamentally different ques-
tions, and they answer them using tools that other social scientists find rather exotic. The Methods of Economics
The Art of Building Economic
Models
Assumptions and Conclusions
ECONOMICS, SCARCITY, AND CHOICE The Four-Step Process
Math, Jargon, and Other
A good definition of economics, which stresses the difference between economics Concerns . . .
and other social sciences, is the following:
How to Study Economics
Economics is the study of choice under conditions of scarcity. Economics The study of
choice under conditions
This definition may appear strange to you. Where are the familiar words we ordinar- of scarcity.
ily associate with economics: “money,”“stocks and bonds,”“prices,”“budgets,”...?
As you will soon see, economics deals with all of these things and more. But first, let’s
take a closer look at two important ideas in this definition: scarcity and choice.
SCARCITY AND IN