Economics/Catalogs

Economics subdisciplines

Economic Theory

Microeconomics

Microeconomics examines the economic behaviour of individual of units called "economic agents" such as (generally) businesses, households, and individuals, with a view to understand decision making in the face of scarcity and the allocation consequences of these decisions.

Managerial economics

Managerial economics (also called business economics), is the branch of economics that applies microeconomic analysis to specific business decisions. As such, it bridges economic theory and economics in practice. It draws heavily from quantitative techniques such as regression and correlation, Lagrangian calculus, linear programming, decision theory, and game theory. It is similar to operations research in this regard, and indeed uses operations research techniques.

Urban Economics

Urban Economics is a branch of Microeconomics that studies the location of households and firms. While other forms of economics do not account for spatial relationships between individuals and organizations, urban economics focuses on these spatial relationships to understand the economic motivations underlying the formation, functioning, and development of cities.

It develops economic theoretical models for cities that account for factors such as utility gains from lower average land rents and increasing (or constant returns) due to economies of agglomeration.

Macroeconomics

Macroeconomics examines an economy as a whole with a view to understanding the interaction between economic aggregates such as national income, employment and inflation, as well as economic performance measures, economic growth, and international economics. Note that general equilibrium theory combines concepts of a macro-economic view of the economy, but does so from a strictly constructed microeconomic viewpoint.

Development economics

Development economics is a branch of macroeconomics that deals with the study of the causes of long term economic growth, especially in developing countries. This may involve using mathematical methods from dynamical systems like differential equations and inter-temporal optimization, or it may involve a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Development economics also includes topics such as Third World debt, and the functions of such organisations as the IMF and World Bank. Many economists in this field are interested in ways of promoting stable and sustainable growth in poor countries and areas, by promoting self reliance and education in some of the lowest income countries in the world. Where economic issues merge with social and political ones, it is referred to as Development Studies.

Comprehensive subdisciplines

The follwing subdisciplines do not fit neatly under the major division of micro or macroeconomics, abranging both fields.

Binary economics

Claims to be a "new paradigm" within which economic realities are examined. Lack of genuine free market/free competition being one of the hallmarks of the neoclassical economic paradigm.

Econometrics

Studies the application of statistical and mathematical methods in the field of economics to describe the numerical relationships between key economic forces such as capital, interest rates, and labor.

Econophysics

Econophysics and the closely-related field of sociophysics are areas of interdisciplinary research using methods and techniques from physics to model economic and other social phenomena respectively.

International economics

International economics is the branch of economics relating to ideas such as International trade, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and the exchange rate and how they influence one another.

Labour economics

Labour economics analyses the functioning of the market for labour analysing its supply (workers) and demand (employers) and attempts to understand the resulting pattern of wages, employment, and income.

Land economics

Land economics seems to be a neglected subdiscipline. In neoclassical economics land does not even figure as a factor of production, having been demoted to being an aspect of capital.

Welfare economics

Welfare economics is the branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to simultaneously determine the allocational efficiency of a macroeconomy and the income distribution consequences associated with it. It attempts to "maximize the level of social welfare" by examining the economic activities of the individuals that comprise society.

Neuroeconomics

Neuroeconomics is a branch of economics which studies the neural mechanisms of decision-making and their economic significance.

Information economics

Information economics studies how "Information" affects economic decisions exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and such concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard. Joseph E. Stiglitz is one who greatly contibuted to the creation of this new branch in Economics.

Resource economics

Resource economics is a branch of Economics which includes the study of environmental economics, agricultural production and marketing, bioeconomics, community economic development, Resource utilization, and environmental policy.

Environmental economics

Environmental Economics undertakes theoretical or empirical studies of the economic effects of national or local environmental policies around the world. Particular issues include the costs and benefits of alternative environmental policies to deal with air pollution, water quality, toxic substances, solid waste, and global warming.

Financial economics

Financial economics is the branch of economics concerned with the workings of financial markets, such as the stock market, and the financing of companies. The questions addressed are typically framed in terms of "time, uncertainty, options and information"

Economic geography

Economic geography is the study of the widely varying Economic conditions across the earth which analyses the economic impact of factors such as climate, geology, and socio-political factors.

Behavioural economics

Behavioural economics is the study of how the nature and causes of human Social behavior affects Economic decisions. In early-modern Social science theory, John Stuart Mill, Comte, and others, laid the foundation for Social psychology by asserting that human Social cognition and behavior could and should be studied scientifically like any other natural science.

Experimental economics

Experimental Economics is the use of experimental methods to evaluate theoretical predictions of economic behaviour. Historically most economics experiments were conducted in the laboratory, but recently interest in economics field experiments has grown. Economics experiments can be loosely classified into the following topics: Market Games, Bargaining, Auctions, Social Preferences, Learning, Matching, and Field Experiments. C