Тексты для чтения по специальности

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Economics is a social science studying economy. Why study economics? In fact, people do it for countless reasons. For many people concern for the economy goes no further than the price of tuition or the fear of losing a job. Many others, however, are becoming aware that their job prospects and the prices they pay are somehow related to national trends in prices, unemployment, and economic growth. Although few people think in terms of price indexes and graphs, most of us now recognize the importance of major economic events. And that's why so many people worry about such abstractions as unemployment rates, inflation, economic growth, etc.

Economics has deep routs in, and close ties to, social philosophy. An issue of great importance to philosophers, for example, is distributional justice. Why are some people rich and others are poor? And, whatsoever the answer, is it fair? A number of nineteenth century social philosophers wrestled with these questions and out of their musings economics as a separate discipline was born.

As a scholarly discipline, economics is two centuries old. The first scientist who made extraordinary contributions in economics was Adam Smith.

Almost a century later, as capitalist enterprises began to spread, there appeared the massive critique of capitalism: Karl Marx's "Capital".

In 1936 John Maynard Keynes published 'The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money". Economics was supposed to help governmentmonetary and fiscal policies to tame the worstravages of business cycles.

What exactly is the subject that the economists from Smith to Marx to the present generation have analyzed?

Economics is the study of how societies usescarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people.

As you begin your study of economics, keep in mind that economics will teach you a new way of looking at the world. In some cases, you will find that the topics we discuss are completely unfamiliar to you. But most of the time you will be looking at things that you already know about from a different perspective. You will discover, for example, that the complex decisions of huge multinational corporations are based on some of the same principals that guide everyday choices like whether to take a day off or to stay up late studying.