Economics

Economics is a social science seeking to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics studies how individuals and societies seek to satisfy needs and wants. Alfred Marshall in the late 19th century informally described economics as "the study of man in the ordinary business of life"; the vast number of topics to which the methods of economic theory have been applied suggests to some that economics is simply "that which economists do."

Economics has two broad branches: microeconomics, where the unit of analysis is the individual agent, such as a household or firm, and macroeconomics, where the focus is on aggregates, the sum of the supply and demand in an economy, or the total net result of buying and selling. Another division of the subject distinguishes positive economics, which seeks to predict and explain economic phenomena, from normative economics, which orders choices and actions by some criterion; such orderings necessarily involve subjective value judgments.