Defining Economics

Learning Objectives

1. Define economics.
2. Explain the concepts of scarcity and opportunity cost and how they relate to the definition of economics.
3. Understand the three fundamental economic questions: What should be produced? How should goods and services be produced? For whom should goods and services be produced?

Economics is a social science that examines how people choose among the alternatives available to them. It is social because it involves people and their behavior. It is a science because it uses, as much as possible, a scientific approach in its investigation of choices.

 This text was adapted by Saylor Academy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work's original creator or licensor.