Decades of controversy about the nature and appropriate boundaries of his discipline led the economist Jacob Viner to observe that "economics is what economists do." Somewhat more precisely, economists engage in systematic inquiry into the effects of those human activities which are grouped under t...

Economics is a vastly complicated subject; it can be complicated as life itself. It deals with the exploitation for profit of the material world - in particular how to do it efficiently. As defined by economists, it is the efficient allocation of scarce resources. Neo-Liberal or neo-classical econom...