8. Economics and other subjects

Economics has a number of near neighbors' among other social sciences and beyond, including:

1. Political science, because economists are concerned with the organization of society, and with government policies;

2. Psychology, because economists are concerned with the behavior and decisions of individuals in a variety of situations;

3. Accounting, because economists are concerned with the activities of firms, and with the effects of the information that firms provide about their profits and other financial matters;

4. Law, because people's decisions and the government's actions are affected by legal restrictions ограничения on various различный activities, and by the legal protection available to various groups of individuals;

5. History, because current текущие events are affected by past decisions and, equally important, because current decisions are likely to be influenced by decisions taken in the past and by attitudes inherited наследовать from the past;

6. Engineering, because the allocation размещение of resources between alternative uses requires technical information on the ways in which resources can be used;

7. Mathematics, because mathematical reasoning is often used to examine complex economic problems;

8. Statistics, because economists want to answer questions that begin “how large . . .”, and these answers involve the measurement измерение and analysis of numerical information.

Lecture 2. Economic systems: capitalism, socialism and mixed economy

1. Evolving economic systems.

2. Socialism.

3. Capitalism.

4. Differences between soviet-style socialism and capitalism.

5. Mixed economy.

6. Transition economy.

7. Other classifications of economic systems.

1. Evolving развитие Economic Systems

An economic system – the set of economic institutions that coordinate individual wants in a society – works via через the interaction взаимодействие of three visible forces:

the invisible hand (economic forces);

invisible foot (political and legal forces);

and invisible handshake (social and historical forces).

Main types of economic system are:

capitalism (market economy);

socialism (planned economy);плановая

mixed economy.

Feudalism – an economic system in which traditions (the invisible handshake) rule. In feudalism if your parents were serfs (small farmers who lived on a manor поместье) you would be a self. Feudalism dominated from about the 8^th century to the 15^th .

Mercantilism – an economic system in which government (the invisible foot) determines the what, how, and for whom decisions by doling out the rights to undertake certain economic decisions. определяет какой, как, и для кого решения, скупо выдавая права предпринять определенные экономические решения Mercantilism remained the dominant economic system until the 1700s when the Industrial Revolution took place.

Industrial Revolution – a time when technology and machines rapidly стремительно modernized industrial production and mass produced goods replaced handmade goods – led to a decrease уменьшать in power of small producers, an increase in power of capitalists, and eventually to a revolution instituting capitalism as the dominant economic system.