The subject of economic theory

Economic theory developed as a result of historical science in the evolution of mankind. Human desire to unravel the mysteries of economic processes is not simply his eternal thirst for self-knowledge, to penetrate into the depths of the universe. This commitment is also dictated by the practical needs to regulate economic life, exposing it to people in the right direction.

Economic science took its place in public life, answering the one hand, to the private sector and state regulation of the economy, on the other - to the demands of philosophical understanding the processes occurring in it.

Economic theory is the science of the efficient use of scarce resources in order to meet the material needs of the limitless.

Most economists agree that it is a universal science of the selection problems of limited resources and the economic behavior of the person.

Economic theory examines the economic behavior of people involved in the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of economic goods. Limited economic resources and the impossibility of simultaneous and complete satisfaction of needs leads to the fact that economic theory becomes a positive and normative.

The positive nature of economic theory is that it reflects an objective reality, trying to formulate scientific understanding of economic behavior. For example, the inflation rate this year was 6%.

Normative nature of economic theory expresses her desire to find the best form of organization of production, ideal models of human activity in the economy. For example, next year we need to ensure GDP growth of 8%. That is a positive economic theory is learning what is, and expresses a normative view of what is or should be.

Economic theory is classified according to the object of study:

• The national economy as a whole (macroeconomics);

• firms and households (microeconomics).

Microeconomics examines the behavior of individual economic agents. In the center of the analysis - the prices of individual goods, the costs (expenses) of firms on the production, the mechanism of the firm, pricing, labor motivation, interests of consumers, utility goods and services.

Macroeconomics studies the national economic system based on the emerging makroproportsy. The object of her study - the national product, the overall level of prices, inflation, and employment.

Economic theory developed as a result of historical science in the evolution of mankind. Basic economic processes are considered in the writings of Xenophon, Platon, Aristotle, and other scholars of the ancient world, in the works of thinkers of ancient Egypt, China and India. But they formed only a few elements of economic knowledge in a single, yet disjointed science.

In an era of primitive accumulation of capital, there is the first economic school - mercantilism, the founders who believed that the source of the wealth of society stands trade (O.Kromvel - 1599-1658, Thomas Maine - 1571-1641, Antoine de Montchrestien - 1575-1621).

Physiocrats (Francois Quesnay - 1694-1774, Jacques Turgot - 1727-1781, Dupont de Nemours - 1739-1781, V.-R. Mirabeau - 1715-1789) - a school of political economy, which originated in France in the middle of the eighteenth century and was distribution in Italy, UK, Germany and other countries. The founder of the classical theory is Francois Quesnay, who explained the fundamental role of agriculture in the increase of national wealth. Agriculture, in his opinion, was the only productive sector that creates wealth.

British classical political economy emerged and developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (ХVII- ХVIII cc). Progenitors of this theoretical school were William Petti, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Unlike the physiocrats British classics have shown that the general form of wealth is the value inherent in the goods and money.

W.Petti (1623-1687) was famous for his book «A Treatise on Taxes and Fees", which was first, expressed the idea that the production is the basis of the economy and labor - the most important source of wealth. W.Petti laid the foundations of the labor theory of value, determine the laws that determine the salaries, rents, taxation.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) is the author of the famous book "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth" (1776). He first studied for categories such as division of labor, exchange value and exchange value, wealth creation factors (labor, land, capital), the shape of its distribution among the participants of production (wages, profits, rents). A. Smith found that the nation's wealth is created by labor in the production and the productive power of labor is determined, work - the only source of value of goods.

"Capital," Karl Marx (1818-1883), to some extent complete scientific system of the classical school, and at the same time considering a new classical theory of value and the theory of surplus value.

Marx developed the idea of ​​assigning Ricardo capitalists unpaid labor of workers - the surplus-value analyzes the methods of production, emphasizing the relation to labor productivity growth, explores the nature of wages (both the cost and the cost of labor), examines the process of capital accumulation - the transformation of surplus cost of the new functioning capital, reveals the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation.

So, the classical economists put forward and prove the concept of economic liberalism, freedom from state care, business and trade, were convinced that only in the absence of government intervention can occur in full force the laws of the market economy, when incentives personal interest of each person ensures the effectiveness of the entire system.

The history of the twentieth century economic theory starts from the book "Principles of Economics" (1890) Englishman Alfred Marshall (1842-1924). Marshall's system became the basis of Western neo-classical economics of the twentieth century. Neoclassical theory (marginalism) - is, above all, the micro-economic analysis. Foundations of neo-classical design were three schools of economic science at the end of XIX century: Austrian (utility theory), Cambridge (the theory of partial equilibrium A. Marshall and U.Dzhevons) and Lausanne (the theory of general equilibrium and W.Pareto L.Valras). In the 20 years of the twentieth century, this trend in the Anglo-American economic literature has been called "economics", replacing the term "political economy".

The focus of the neoclassical school - firm, industry, consumer, profit maximization and cost minimization, free private enterprise, the market as a system of free prices, profits and losses.

Keynes, John
Maynard (1883-1946) was one of the most talented students of A. Marshall. The main scientific work of the English economist was the book "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money." It is given a deep interpretation of the market system, significantly updated methodological arsenal of economic science and the crisis developed principles of state policy.

Special merit was his introduction to the economic analysis of the "total national economic variables," which became known as macroeconomic approaches.

One of the popular trends in the twentieth century economic theory is institutionalism. The founders of this trend - T.Veblen, J.Kommons, W.Mitchell, J.M.Klark, J.K.Gelbreyt, G.Myurdal etc. Research scientists in this direction is inherent in an evolutionary approach to society and the economy, the economy as part of the consideration social life, and "economics" as a social science.