### person | scientist:

Economist
* Learn about current and past economists.
* Many economists argue that one of the main causes of inflation is excessive money supply growth
  - believe high taxes have a negative impact on a state's economic performance
* Many economists believe that e-commerce is driving the U.S. economy
  - indebtedness keeps our country financially on the move
  - that's a natural evolution among wealthy industrialized nations
  - blame the technological age for the huge differences in American incomes
  - cite the jobless rate as one of several indicators that the economy is slowing
  - claim that the economy is at full-employment
  - define a recession as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth
  - focus on the secondary or tertiary effects of government deficits and surpluses
  - hold that environmental quality improves with economic growth
  - like to work with things and values
  - link economic expansion and contraction to the level of interest rates
  - point to technological change and globalization as major contributing factors
* Many economists see a carbon tax as the most economically efficient way to reduce emissions
  - indexed annuities as an appropriate form of retirement income
  - the rampant dollar as the main inflationary factor
  - teach and do research at colleges and universities
  - think that countries can boost national saving by privatizing public pension plans
  - work for government agencies
* Many economists work in federal, state, and local government
  - the public sector in all types of contexts
* Most Economists work in education, consulting firms, manufacturing, banks, and government agencies.
* Most economists agree that inflation result of too much money
  - products are under-priced as a result of externalities
* Most economists analyze habits
  - lifestyle habits
* Most economists are concerned with practical applications of economic policy in a particular area
  - argue that savings lead to more investment
  - associate the sources of a credit crunch with a sudden disappearance of liquidity
* Most economists believe that it started in the United States
  - profits and cash flow are the primary determinants of capital spending
  - collect and analyze data, monitor current trends and forecast new trends
  - define a recession as two consecutive quarters of economic decline
  - develop economic theories
  - favor free trade because it tends to make everyone better off
  - have math or computer science as undergraduate degrees
  - predict growth
  - recognize that the global economy is what has changed in the last decades
  - rely on computer printouts of numerical data for their financial planning
  - specialize in one or more subfields within economics
  - understand the monetary value of investing in a good reputation
  - work full time
* Provides biographies of living and deceased economists.
* Some economists argue that because of our tax system, inflation discourages savings
  - monetary and fiscal policy destabilizes the economy
  - the economy can sustain higher growth without the perils of inflation
  - assert that economies have basic flaws which, for some reason, lead to cycles
  - believe budget cuts create economic distress if they go too far, too fast
* Some economists believe that large government deficits led to large current account deficits
  - the economy can never grow too fast
  - the United States is already teetering on the brink of recession
  - blame unrestrained capitalism
  - claim that a healthy housing market can prevent an overall economic downturn
  - contend that natural resources can be a curse for developing countries
  - envision a single global currency
  - even fear that derivatives threaten the stability of the financial system
  - have unemployment
  - predict the cycle is about to start again
  - see a negative correlation between restaurants and supermarkets
  - seem to believe that all behaviour is controlled by economic priciples
* Some economists study disasters
  - natural disasters
  - the cost of products, healthcare, or energy
  - think a consumption tax leaves incentives in place
* agree that business taxes are always passed on to consumers, workers, or investors.
* also figure out economic strategies that can sway economic decisions
  - look at the 'rate of growth', which is how fast a country gets richer
  - modify and improve contracts when necessary
  - produce abstruse research, in highly scientific terms
  - study how entire economies work and how they work together
  - try to determine why economies are different and how they work together
  - work for industry and trade associations, labor unions, and government agencies
  - results of millions of decisions made by individuals and firms
  - the role of government in the economy
* apply academic rigor to understand and quantify the behavior of human beings
  - rational decision-making procedures to complex questions
* are also concerned with the allocation of resources
  - always interested in the use of resources
  - awful people - they think they can reduce everything to dollars and cents
  - best know for their extensive use of supply and demand models
  - concerned with the conservation of scarce resources
  - inquisitive people, usually with social concerns
  - newspapers
  - social scientists
  - specialists trained to look only at one particular thing
  - still concerned about the relationship of government and markets
  - strong advocates of the virtues of allocation through the price system
  - unable to predict, with certainty, rates of return over long periods
  - usually interested in computing the output vector x given the demand vector d
  - well aware of the problems with government statistics
  - wrong to assume people are rational
* arrive at conclusions
  - same conclusions
* ascribe an order to the circulation of material goods, resources, and wealth.
* assess unit pricing of garbage.
* assume people behave rationally, which means that people never make mistakes.
* assume that firms maximize profit, while consumers maximize consumer surplus
  - producers attempt to maximize profits
  - the goal of firms is to a. maximize profit
* attribute economic growth so far to heavy government spending that is somewhat deficit.
* avoid crises.
* believe research is also essential to growth and keeping our competitive edge
  - self-interest is the dominant motive in all human behaviour
* believe that capitalism is powered by money
  - high profits are due to increasing the productivity of workers
  - individuals are paid according to how productive they are
  - markets are efficient aggregators of information
  - most taxes have some distortionary effect that reduces economic output
  - our discipline explains a major portion of how the world works
  - prices of goods represent that anchor
  - the most important factor in creating a good economy is education
* borrow from all the social sciences in order to theorize about human behavior.
* call it capital accumulation
  - economies of scale, and businesses take advantage of it all the time
  - that working with real values, instead of nominal ones
* can offer insights into the problems associated with escalating health care costs
  - produce sophisticated statistics to demonstrate the rate of growth in our economy
  - supply on demand
  - use economic growth data to predict trends in other economic factors
* care because productivity growth accelerates economic expansion.
* classify recreational spending as a luxury good.
* closely watch capacity utilization for signs of inflation pressures.
* concentrate on resources rather than money.
* conduct research on grain markets and transportation.
* consider two consecutive quarters of contraction to mean that an economy is in recession.
* contend that people are more likely taking cash out of stocks and buying houses.
* continue to debate whether financial markets are 'generally' efficient.
* create facts from principles or theory
  - principles or theories to form facts or move from particular to general
* criticize unions for misallocating labor.
* define a recession as an economy that declines for two consecutive quarters
  - an efficient tax as one that changes behavior little
  - four types of utility that are involved in marketing
  - growth as an increase in a country's real GDP from year to year
  - income as A. The market value of all assets owned at a point in time
  - sectors in terms of their output
  - technology as knowledge concerning the production process
* describe economic activity as having three levels of knowledge intensity
  - environmental impacts as negative externalities
  - the efforts by business firms to earn the greatest profits as the profit motive
  - theories to explain how aspects of the economy operate
* differ in their views of the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy
  - on how to resolve the international financial crisis
* differentiate between countries with good and poor environments for development.
* disagree as to the output effect of inflation.
* disagree on most economic issues facing an economy
  - the extent to which living-wage laws displace workers
* divide resources into four basic categories of land, labor, capital, and management.
* do it with inflation.
* do use data collected from the observation of human behavior
  - theories that are gross simplifications
  - worry about the increasing impact of volatile stock prices on the nation's economy
* dominate local, national, and international decision-making bodies.
* engage the world of current affairs.
* examine east asian success
  - how goods and services are produced and distributed
* examine the effects of economic reform policies on child growth
  - entrepreneurial habits of immigrants
* explain that the decline of business failures is an indicator of a strong U.S. economy.
* find concepts
  - employment in all areas of the public and private sectors
  - many career opportunities in business and government
* forecast lean times well into the new millennium
  - sales, project trends, and analyze production
* frequently do original research
  - estimate hedonic pricing models using data from the housing or labor markets
* gather data, analyze trends, and develop forecasts.
* generally agree that trade is beneficial for the economy as a whole
  - cite four sources or types of unemployment
  - concern themselves with exchanges in which one of the items traded is money
  - focus on protectionism against international competition
  - tend to believe that tax cuts can make an economy more competitive
  - uphold the theoretical lawfulness of interest on loans
  - view productivity growth as the primary measure of an economy's dynamism
* have a tendency to analyze only what is available in neat, historical tables
  - variety of indices they use to measure inflation
  - estimates of the contribution of the factors to growth
  - ethical values that help shape the way they do economics
  - high starting salaries compared to most professional groups
  - laws, which are observations and can be tested through research
* have no interest in the value of a company after fifty years
  - real standards for measuring fairness, except through a social welfare function
  - their own approach to problems that differs from that of the other social sciences
  - well developed equations for the optimum allocation of scarce resources
* hold important positions at many banks and financial firms.
* includes arms
  - body substances
  - cell membranes
  - corpi
  - cytoplasm
  - heads
  - human bodies
  - legs
  - material bodies
  - necks
  - nuclei
  - personality
  - plasma membranes
  - sections
  - vacuoles
* interpret and analyze trends in terms of savings, investment, and growth
  - forecast market trends
* invariably measure the tax burden as a share of income.
* investigate efficiency as one dimension in the fulfillment of the human experience.
* know how to calculate optimal prices for electricity transmission
  - surprisingly little about the causes of economic growth
* know that fierce competition prevents businesses from raising prices
  - trade is the engine of prosperity
* like to argue, about climate change as much as anything else
  - claim a rational or scientific basis for their theories
  - measure economic performance over a complete business cycle
  - refer to their discipline as the science of choice
  - see rises in productivity, because it suggests non-inflationary growth
  - take out food and energy and look under the hood
  - think that stock market prices reflect some underlying fundamentals
* look at India as model of growing economy
  - microeconomic issues and problems by developing theories of behavior
  - to construction spending for clues about the overall economy
* love charts and graphs
  - to use numbers to prove their points of view
* measure growth by such standards as the gross domestic product
  - inflation regularly to know an economy's state
  - the strength of a state's economy in several different ways
  - value A using the concept of trade-offs
* now believe that global warming is good for the economy and the people.
* nowadays tend to overlook the fact that labour markets are unlike product markets.
* object, saying that the gases behave differently in the atmosphere.
* occupy positions of leadership in every sector of American industry.
* offer advice.
* often argue that inflation is caused by too much money in circulation
  - investment is current consumption that has been given up
  - focus on the additional or extra costs or benefits of a choice
  - use the goal of profit maximization to simplify their analysis
  - work closely with policy makers in both the executive and legislative branches
* perform a variety of functions for the firms
  - cost effectiveness studies to find the least cost method of achieving the goal
* preach that scarcity prerequisite for a product to be marketable.
* propose several ways
* question values.
* recognize the power of market mechanisms to efficiently allocate resources
  - two major types of inflation
* refer to commons as a shortened form of common property resource
  - prices from a given year as nominal or current prices
  - such a world as neoclassical
* refer to the former as general human capital and the latter as specific human capital
  - production outputs as products or commodities
  - sum of reserves and cash as base money, or high potential money
* regard free trade as just about as controversial as motherhood
  - modeling as a form of scientific method
* say four-fifths of Indonesian business groups are run by Chinese tycoons
  - housing often follows the stock market with significant lag time
* say that the equivalent price in a different year is in real or constant dollars
  - last economic factor to recover after a downturn is the unemployment rate
  - whole sectors of the economy are at risk of collapse
* see a basic pattern in investing when they review the history of the financial markets
  - nature as humanity's handmaiden, while environmentalists see nature as autonomous
  - the relationship between shareholders and managers as one of principal and agent
* specialize in international trade, development, policy and economics.
* study a. how people make decisions and factors which affect the overall economy
  - business within the context of the market setting and overall economic conditions
  - decision-making in the context of scarcity
* study how individuals and organizations manage source resources
  - people make choices in life when scarcity limits what is available
  - products are made, how they are distributed, and how they are used
  - human behavior during economic exchanges
  - people's use of scarce resources to satisfy competing desires
  - the behavior of consumers, business firms and financial institutions
* study the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities and services
  - of goods and services
  - sources of environmental disruption and fashion mechanisms for control
  - way people produce, distribute, and consume goods and services
* take the position that there net gain in jobs for all nations through trade.
* talk about a principle called price elasticity
  - economies of scale i.e., bigger is better
  - people voting with their feet
  - the 'real' interest rate on an investment
* tend to believe bull markets are created by a growing economy
  - focus on wage costs as the main determinant of employment
  - see potential growth defined by technological limits
  - start biting their nails when they see the price of oil start to rise
* theorize that marriages are less alluring because men and women have similar roles.
* think the world works by magic
  - they can raise economic growth by increasing saving
* traditionally rely on working papers to communicate current research.
* treat the unemployment rate as an indicator of aggregate pressure on the economy.
* try to measure the value people put on things
  - understand how and why the economy works
* typically assume that the production function exhibits constant returns to scale
  - consider six months of supply to be a balanced market
  - work independently in an office
* use a demand schedule to determine price and quantity demanded
  - framework called game theory to think about auction behavior
  - relatively simple formula to determine the degree of elasticity
  - variety of techniques to forecast interest rates
  - adjustment
  - both theoretical and empirical lenses to look at the economy
  - computer programs to make predictions
  - it to study the stock market
  - other indicators of the health of the economy
* use statistical adjustment
  - methods and standardized economic models in their work
  - such variables in constructing models of a given economy
* use the term capital to refer to physical resources
  - ceteris paribus to indicate that supply and demand are in balance
  - consumption to mean use of goods in satisfying human wants
  - their knowledge to help businesses
  - two criteria to help determine the relative fairness of a particular tax
* usually call firms small or large relative to their markets
  - obtain empirical production functions from statistical analysis of industry data
  - view productivity growth as the best measure of an economy's dynamism
* warn that oil markets, like all commodity markets, are inherently unstable.
* work in almost every area of government
  - business firms, government agencies, and private nonprofit organizations
  - virtually every federal agency
+ Economic development, Measuring Economic Development: Economics
+ Financial crisis of 2007–2008, Background and causes: 2007 :: 2008 :: Financial crises :: Stock market
  * There are many reasons economists think this had happened. Most economists believe that it started in the United States. From 1997 until 2006, people bought expensive houses, even though they did not have enough money for it. Since the money had come from other countries, it was easy to have good credit. People used this credit for expensive home loans. This created a housing bubble which caused the houses' prices to raise. Because they had a lot of money, the loaning companies made it easier to get a loan, even if the borrower didn't have a good credit history.
+ History of India, Republic of India
  * Some economists think it was a mixed economy. In a mixed economy, socialism and capitalism continue together. During this period, lasting for several years up to end-1980s, India could rapidly develop its infrastructure, science and technology.
+ Inflation
  * Inflation' means that the general level of prices is going up, the opposite of deflation. Economists measure inflation regularly to know an economy's state. Economists defined certain customer baskets to be able to measure inflation.
+ Moral hazard: Market failure :: Insurance
  * Economists agree on the positive role that 'good' incentives play to increase production. They also agree that 'perverse' incentives have an opposite impact.