What is economy?

Answer 1

In a short definition, an economy is a generalised word for the way a country manages resources, production of goods and services and the consumption of goods and service. Economics addresses the ' economic problem' that we have the problem of satisfying unlimited wants with our scarce resources.

We also must answer the questions of what we produce, how much to produce, how to produce and how to distribute it.

Answer 2

OK, here's a little better definition:
Economics is often described as a social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.[1] That is, economics studies how individuals, coalitions and societies seek to satisfy needs and wants. However, the vast number of topics to which the methods of economic theory have been applied has caused some to refer to economics as simply "that which economists do."

The word "economics" is from the Greek words οἶκος [oikos], meaning "family, household, estate," and νόμος [nomos], or "custom, law," and hence means "household management" or "management of the state." An economist is a person using economic concepts and data in the course of employment, or someone who has earned a university degree in the subject.

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 unit of analysis is an economy as a whole. 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.

Economic reasoning has in recent decades been increasingly applied to social situations where there is no monetary consideration, such as politics, law, psychology, history, religion, marriage and family life, and other social interactions.

The approach to economics that is dominant today is usually referred to as mainstream economics. The more specific definition this approach implies was accurately captured by Lionel Robbins in 1932: "the science which studies human behavior as a relation between scarce means having alternative uses." Scarcity means that available resources are insufficient to satisfy all wants and needs; absent scarcity and alternative uses of available resources, there is no economic problem. Heterodox economics, including institutional economics, Marxist economics, socialism, and green economics, sometimes make other grounding assumptions, such as that economics primarily deals with the exchange of value, and that labor (human effort) is the source of all value.

Answer 3

The social study of how human beings interact to exchange goods or services.