Economists study how people make choices in life when scarcity limits what is available.
They look at a society's financial, industrial, and labor organizations, its distribution of income and ownership rights, its governmental activities, and its political and economic philosophies, and analyze how these and other factors influence the goods an economy produces, the resources it uses in production, and the distribution of its output. They also look at how incentives affect decisions relating to human behavior, such as whether to obey the law, get married, or have children. Economic analysis leads to explanations, predictions, and policy suggestions. In examining these sorts of questions, economics helps us to understand more clearly the choices available to us and the consequences of our decisions. Three hours of mathematics at or above the level of College Algebra.