Summary Economics – Gregory Mankiw and Mark P. Taylor
Chapter 1 till 16 excluding Chapter 12
C1: Ten principles of economics
What is economics?
The word economy comes from the Greek word oikonomos, which means ‘one who
manages a household’. At first, this origin might seem peculiar. But, in fact, households
and economies have much in common. Just like a household, a society faces many
decisions. For example a society must decide what jobs will be done and who will do
them. Just as a society needs people to grow food, other people to make clothing and still
others to design computer software.
The Economic Problem
All the decisions for society can be summarized as representing the economic probleem.
There are three questions that any society has to face:
What goods and services should be produced?
How should these goods and services be produced?
Who should get the goods and services that have been produced?
Society will never have enough resources to produce the goods and services which will
satisfy the wants and needs of its citizens. these resources can be broadly classified into
three categories:
Land – all the natural resources of earth. (Mineral deposits, fish in the sea)
Labour – the human effort both mental and physical that goes into production. (a
worker in a factory producing precision tools, an investment banker)
Capital – The equipment and structures used to produce goods and services.
(machinery in factories, buildings, computers – everything where the good is not
used for its own sake but for the contribution it makes to production)
Scarcity and Choice
What resources society does have need to be managed. The management is important
because resources are scarce. Scarcity means that society has limited resources and
therefore cannot produce all the goods and services people wish to have. Economics is
the study of how society manages its scarce resources and attempts to answer the three
key questions noted above. Economists:
Study how people make decisions;
Study how people interact with one another;
Analyse forces and trends that affect the economy as a whole.
Chapter 1 till 16 excluding Chapter 12
C1: Ten principles of economics
What is economics?
The word economy comes from the Greek word oikonomos, which means ‘one who
manages a household’. At first, this origin might seem peculiar. But, in fact, households
and economies have much in common. Just like a household, a society faces many
decisions. For example a society must decide what jobs will be done and who will do
them. Just as a society needs people to grow food, other people to make clothing and still
others to design computer software.
The Economic Problem
All the decisions for society can be summarized as representing the economic probleem.
There are three questions that any society has to face:
What goods and services should be produced?
How should these goods and services be produced?
Who should get the goods and services that have been produced?
Society will never have enough resources to produce the goods and services which will
satisfy the wants and needs of its citizens. these resources can be broadly classified into
three categories:
Land – all the natural resources of earth. (Mineral deposits, fish in the sea)
Labour – the human effort both mental and physical that goes into production. (a
worker in a factory producing precision tools, an investment banker)
Capital – The equipment and structures used to produce goods and services.
(machinery in factories, buildings, computers – everything where the good is not
used for its own sake but for the contribution it makes to production)
Scarcity and Choice
What resources society does have need to be managed. The management is important
because resources are scarce. Scarcity means that society has limited resources and
therefore cannot produce all the goods and services people wish to have. Economics is
the study of how society manages its scarce resources and attempts to answer the three
key questions noted above. Economists:
Study how people make decisions;
Study how people interact with one another;
Analyse forces and trends that affect the economy as a whole.
