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The Economist
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The Economist is an English-language weekly magazine-format newspaper owned by the Economist Group and edited at offices in London. Continuous publication began under its founder, James Wilson, in September 1843, in 2015 its average weekly circulation was a little over 1.5 million, about half of which were sold in the United States. The publication belongs to the Economist Group and it is 50% owned by the English branch of the Rothschild family and by the Agnelli family through its holding company Exor. The remaining 50% is held by investors including the editors. The Rothschilds and the Agnellis are represented on the board of directors, a board of trustees formally appoints the editor, who cannot be removed without its permission. Although The Economist has an emphasis and scope, about two-thirds of the 75 staff journalists are based in the London borough of Westminster. For the year to March 2016 the Economist Group declared operating profit of £61m, previous major shareholders include Pearson PLC. The Economist takes a stance of classical and economic liberalism which is supportive of free trade, globalisation, free immigration. The publication has described itself as a product of the Caledonian liberalism of Adam Smith and it targets highly educated readers and claims an audience containing many influential executives and policy-makers. The publications CEO described this recent global change, which was first noticed in the 1990s and accelerated in the beginning of the 21st century, on the contents page of each issue, The Economists mission statement is written in italics. The Economist was founded by the British businessman and banker James Wilson in 1843, to advance the repeal of the Corn Laws, articles relating to some practical, commercial, agricultural, or foreign topic of passing interest, such as foreign treaties. An article on the principles of political economy, applied to practical experience, covering the laws related to prices, wages, rent, exchange, revenue. Parliamentary reports, with focus on commerce, agriculture and free trade. Reports and accounts of popular movements advocating free trade, general news from the Court of St. Jamess, the Metropolis, the Provinces, Scotland, and Ireland. Law reports, confined chiefly to areas important to commerce, manufacturing, books, confined chiefly, but not so exclusively, to commerce, manufacturing, and agriculture, and including all treatises on political economy, finance, or taxation. A commercial gazette, with prices and statistics of the week, correspondence and inquiries from the news magazines readers. It has long respected as one of the most competent. Its logo was designed in 1959 by Reynolds Stone, in January 2012 The Economist launched a new weekly section devoted exclusively to China, the first new country section since the introduction of a section about the United States in 1942
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John Maynard Keynes
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John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes CB FBA, was a British economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics and he instead argued that aggregate demand determined the overall level of economic activity and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment. According to Keynesian economics, state intervention was necessary to moderate boom, Keynes advocated the use of fiscal and monetary policies to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. He and other economists had disputed the ability of government to regulate the business cycle favorably with fiscal policy. When Time magazine included Keynes among its Most Important People of the Century in 1999, the Economist has described Keynes as Britains most famous 20th-century economist. In addition to being an economist, Keynes was also a servant, a director of the Bank of England. John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England and his father, John Neville Keynes, was an economist and a lecturer in moral sciences at the University of Cambridge and his mother Florence Ada Keynes a local social reformer. Keynes was the first born, and was followed by two more children – Margaret Neville Keynes in 1885 and Geoffrey Keynes in 1887, Geoffrey became a surgeon and Margaret married the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Archibald Hill. According to the economist and biographer Robert Skidelsky, Keyness parents were loving and they remained in the same house throughout their lives, where the children were always welcome to return. Keyness mother made her childrens interests her own, and according to Skidelsky, because she could grow up with her children, they never outgrew home. In January 1889, at the age of five and a half and he quickly showed a talent for arithmetic, but his health was poor leading to several long absences. He was tutored at home by a governess, Beatrice Mackintosh, in January 1892, at eight and a half, he started as a day pupil at St Faiths preparatory school. By 1894, Keynes was top of his class and excelling at mathematics, in 1896, St Faiths headmaster, Ralph Goodchild, wrote that Keynes was head and shoulders above all the other boys in the school and was confident that Keynes could get a scholarship to Eton. In 1897, Keynes won a scholarship to Eton College, where he displayed talent in a range of subjects, particularly mathematics, classics. At Eton, Keynes experienced the first love of his life in Dan Macmillan, despite his middle-class background, Keynes mixed easily with upper-class pupils. In 1902 Keynes left Eton for Kings College, Cambridge, after receiving a scholarship for this also to read mathematics, Alfred Marshall begged Keynes to become an economist, although Keyness own inclinations drew him towards philosophy – especially the ethical system of G. E. Moore. Keynes joined the Pitt Club and was an member of the semi-secretive Cambridge Apostles society. Like many members, Keynes retained a bond to the club after graduating, before leaving Cambridge, Keynes became the President of the Cambridge Union Society and Cambridge University Liberal Club
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Economics
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Economics is a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work, consistent with this focus, textbooks often distinguish between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics examines the behaviour of elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, macroeconomics analyzes the entire economy and issues affecting it, including unemployment of resources, inflation, economic growth, and the public policies that address these issues. Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, as in business, finance, health care, Economic analyses may also be applied to such diverse subjects as crime, education, the family, law, politics, religion, social institutions, war, science, and the environment. At the turn of the 21st century, the domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism. The ultimate goal of economics is to improve the conditions of people in their everyday life. There are a variety of definitions of economics. Some of the differences may reflect evolving views of the subject or different views among economists, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services. Say, distinguishing the subject from its uses, defines it as the science of production, distribution. On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle coined the dismal science as an epithet for classical economics, in this context and it enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man. He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on the analysis of wealth, how wealth is created, distributed, and consumed, but he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus. This is because war has as the goal winning it, generates both cost and benefits, and, resources are used to attain the goal. If the war is not winnable or if the costs outweigh the benefits. Some subsequent comments criticized the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets, there are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for the macroeconomics of high unemployment. The same source reviews a range of included in principles of economics textbooks. Among economists more generally, it argues that a particular definition presented may reflect the direction toward which the author believes economics is evolving, microeconomics examines how entities, forming a market structure, interact within a market to create a market system
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Supply and demand
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In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. By contrast, responses to changes in the price of the good are represented as movements along unchanged supply, a supply schedule is a table that shows the relationship between the price of a good and the quantity supplied. Under the assumption of perfect competition, supply is determined by marginal cost and that is, firms will produce additional output while the cost of producing an extra unit of output is less than the price they would receive. A hike in the cost of raw goods would decrease supply, shifting costs up, while a discount would increase supply, shifting costs down, by its very nature, conceptualizing a supply curve requires the firm to be a perfect competitor. This is true because each point on the curve is the answer to the question If this firm is faced with this potential price, how much output will it be able to. Economists distinguish between the curve of an individual firm and between the market supply curve. The market supply curve is obtained by summing the quantities supplied by all suppliers at each potential price, thus, in the graph of the supply curve, individual firms supply curves are added horizontally to obtain the market supply curve. Economists also distinguish the market supply curve from the long-run market supply curve. In this context, two things are assumed constant by definition of the run, the availability of one or more fixed inputs. In the long run, firms have a chance to adjust their holdings of physical capital, furthermore, in the long run potential competitors can enter or exit the industry in response to market conditions. For both of these reasons, long-run market supply curves are generally flatter than their short-run counterparts, the determinants of supply are, Production costs, how much a goods costs to be produced. Production costs are the cost of the inputs, primarily labor, capital, energy and they depend on the technology used in production, and/or technological advances. Following the law of demand, the curve is almost always represented as downward-sloping, meaning that as price decreases. Just like the supply curves reflect marginal cost curves, demand curves are determined by marginal utility curves, the demand schedule is defined as the willingness and ability of a consumer to purchase a given product in a given frame of time. It is aforementioned, that the curve is generally downward-sloping. Two different hypothetical types of goods with upward-sloping demand curves are Giffen goods, by its very nature, conceptualizing a demand curve requires that the purchaser be a perfect competitor—that is, that the purchaser has no influence over the market price. This is true because each point on the curve is the answer to the question If this buyer is faced with this potential price. If a buyer has market power, so its decision of how much to buy influences the price, then the buyer is not faced with any price
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Outline of economics
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The following hierarchical outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to economics, Economics – analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It aims to explain how economies work and how economic agents interact, field of science – widely recognized category of specialized expertise within science, and typically embodies its own terminology and nomenclature. Such a field will usually be represented by one or more scientific journals, there are many economics-related scientific journals. Social science – field of scholarship that explores aspects of human society. Macroeconomics – branch of economics dealing with the performance, structure, behavior, microeconomics – branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of limited resources. These two channels influence growth and employment, and are determined by the central bank and the government respectively. Monopolistic competition, also called competitive market, where there are a number of independent firms which have a very small proportion of the market share. Monopoly, where there is only one provider of a product or service, monopsony, when there is only one buyer in a market. Natural monopoly, a monopoly in which economies of scale cause efficiency to increase continuously with the size of the firm, oligopoly, in which a market is dominated by a small number of firms which own more than 40% of the market share. Oligopsony, a market dominated by many sellers and a few buyers. S, merton Miller, who started his academic career teaching economic history at the LSE, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1990 with Harry Markowitz and William F. Sharpe
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History of economic thought
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The history of economic thought deals with different thinkers and theories in the subject that became political economy and economics, from the ancient world to the present day. It encompasses many disparate schools of economic thought, ancient Greek writers such as the philosopher Aristotle examined ideas about the art of wealth acquisition, and questioned whether property is best left in private or public hands. In the Middle Ages, scholasticists such as Thomas Aquinas argued that it was an obligation of businesses to sell goods at a just price. Fan Li, an adviser to King Goujian of Yue, wrote on economic issues, chanakya wrote the Arthashastra, a treatise on statecraft, economic policy and military strategy. Ancient Athens, a society, developed an embryonic model of democracy. Xenophons Oeconomicus is a dialogue principally about household management and agriculture, Platos dialogue The Republic describing an ideal city-state run by philosopher-kings contained references to specialization of labor and to production. Plato was the first to advocate the theory of money. Aristotles Politics analyzed different forms of the state as a critique of Platos model of a philosopher-kings, of particular interest for economists, Plato provided a blueprint of a society based on common ownership of resources. Aristotle viewed this model as an oligarchical anathema, though Aristotle did certainly advocate holding many things in common, he argued that not everything could be, simply because of the wickedness of human nature. It is clearly better that property should be private, wrote Aristotle, but the use of it common, in Politics Book I, Aristotle discusses the general nature of households and market exchanges. Aristotle himself highly disapproved of usury and cast scorn on making money through a monopoly, not useful as a means to any of the necessities of life. Thomas Aquinas was an Italian theologian and economic writer and he taught in both Cologne and Paris, and was part of a group of Catholic scholars known as the Schoolmen, who moved their enquiries beyond theology to philosophical and scientific debates. In the treatise Summa Theologica Aquinas dealt with the concept of a just price, similar in many ways to the modern concept of long run equilibrium, a just price was just sufficient to cover the costs of production, including the maintenance of a worker and his family. Aquinas argued it was immoral for sellers to raise their prices simply because buyers had a pressing need for a product, Aquinas discusses a number of topics in the format of questions and replies, substantial tracts dealing with Aristotles theory. Questions 77 and 78 concern economic issues, primarily what a just price might be, Aquinas argued against any form of cheating and recommended always paying compensation in lieu of good service. Whilst human laws might not impose sanctions for unfair dealing, divine law did, one of Aquinas main critics was Duns Scotus, originally from Duns Scotland, who taught in Oxford, Cologne, and Paris. If people did not benefit from a transaction, in Scotus view, Scotus said merchants perform a necessary and useful social role by transporting goods and making them available to the public. Jean Buridan was a French priest, buridanus looked at money from two angles, its metal value and its purchasing power, which he acknowledged can vary
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Schools of economic thought
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In the history of economic thought, a school of economic thought is a group of economic thinkers who share or shared a common perspective on the way economies work. While economists do not always fit into particular schools, particularly in modern times, Economic thought may be roughly divided into three phases, premodern, early modern and modern. Systematic economic theory has developed mainly since the beginning of what is termed the modern era. Currently, the majority of economists follow an approach referred to as mainstream economics. Within the mainstream in the United States, distinctions can be made between the Saltwater school, and the more ideas of the Freshwater school. Both of these schools of thought are associated with the neoclassical synthesis, other longstanding heterodox schools of economic thought include Austrian economics and Marxian economics. Islamic economics is the practice of economics in accordance with Islamic law, Islamic economics seeks to enforce Islamic regulations not only on personal issues, but to implement broader economic goals and policies of an Islamic society, based on uplifting the deprived masses. It was founded on free and unhindered circulation of wealth so as to reach even the lowest echelons of society. One distinguishing feature is the tax on wealth, and bans levying taxes on all kinds of trade, another distinguishing feature is prohibition of interest in the form of excess charged while trading in money. Its pronouncement on use of paper currency also stands out, though promissory notes are recognized, they must be fully backed by reserves. Fractional-reserve banking is disallowed as a form of breach of trust and this school has seen a revived interest in development and understanding since the later part of the 20th century. Economic policy in Europe during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance treated economic activity as a good which was to be taxed to raise revenues for the nobility and the church. Economic exchanges were regulated by feudal rights, such as the right to collect a toll or hold a faire, as well as guild restrictions, Economic policy, such as it was, was designed to encourage trade through a particular area. Because of the importance of class, sumptuary laws were enacted, regulating dress and housing, including allowable styles, materials. Niccolò Machiavelli in his book The Prince was one of the first authors to theorize economic policy in the form of advice and he did so by stating that princes and republics should limit their expenditures and prevent either the wealthy or the populace from despoiling the other. In this way a state would be seen as generous because it was not a burden on its citizens. The Physiocrats were 18th century French economists who emphasized the importance of productive work and their early support of free trade and deregulation influenced Adam Smith and the classical economists. Classical economics, also called classical political economy, was the form of mainstream economics of the 18th and 19th centuries
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Mainstream economics
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Mainstream economics is widely accepted economics as taught across prominent universities, in contrast to heterodox economics. It has been associated with economics and with the neoclassical synthesis, which combines neoclassical methods. In the United States, mainstream economists are not generally separated into schools, in the early 1970s, so-called fresh-water economists challenged the prevailing consensus in macroeconomics research. Key elements of their approach were that macroeconomics had to be dynamic, quantitative and they were referred to as the freshwater school since Pittsburgh, Chicago, Rochester, and Minneapolis are located nearer to the Great Lakes. They were therefore referred to as the saltwater schools. Today, mainstream economists do not, in general, identify themselves as members of a particular school, prior to the development of modern academic economics, the dominant school in Europe was mercantilism, which was rather a loose set of related ideas than an institutionalized school. From The Wealth of Nations until the Great Depression, the dominant school within the English-speaking world was classical economics, within developing economies, which formed the majority of the worlds population, various schools of development economics have been influential. The term mainstream economics came into use in the late 20th century. M. The term neoclassical synthesis itself also first appears in the 1955 edition of Samuelsons textbook, mainstream economics can be defined, as distinct from other schools of economics, by various criteria, notably by its assumptions, its methods, and its topics. A number of assumptions may underpin many mainstream models, while being rejected by some heterodox schools. These include the neoclassical assumptions of rational choice theory, a representative agent, the starting point of orthodox economic analysis is the individual. People are generally defined as units with a goal, maximisation through rational behaviour. The only differences consist of, the objective of the maximisation. From this theoretical framework, orthodox economists derive that political action should not be used to solve the problems of the economic system, instead, the solution ought to derive from an intervention on the above-mentioned maximisation objectives and constraints. It is in context that economic capitalism finds its justification. Capitalism and its arguments seem logical because orthodox economics theories think of the economy as the sum of the agents trying to maximise their utility or profit through exchange. Geoffrey Hodgson has considered the possibility that evolutionary economics and institutional economics may eventually become a new mainstream and they may use neoclassical economics as a point of departure. At least one institutionalist has argued that neoclassical economics no longer dominates a mainstream economics, a countervailing trend is the expansion of mainstream methods to such seemingly distant fields as crime, the family, law, politics, and religion
The dictionary definition of economist at Wiktionary
