Aims
The Department aims to give its students a critical understanding of a set of principles that will enable them to explain and discuss real world economic events.
What is Economics?
Many of the problems which dominate our newspaper headlines are economic problems.
- Why are some countries poor with very low growth rates while a small number of countries enjoy high living standards and high growth rates?
- What is the role of international trade, and the movement of capital from one country to another, in explaining these global inequalities?
- Why are some countries so much more successful at creating employment or reducing unemployment than other countries?
- Within countries, why do some people earn so much more than others, and what are the best ways to tackle and reduce poverty?
- Is it possible to pursue economic growth and still protect our natural and physical environments?
- How should governments try to raise the finance needed to pay for health and education services and income support programmes?
- What is the proper role for government in the economy?
- Would we be better off with much lower taxes but also poorer social services than we presently enjoy?
Economics is a social science. This reflects the way economists analyse problems, in that economists aim to develop theories of human behaviour and test them against the facts. These theories are summarised in economic models which define the relationships between variables which we believe best explain the events we observe. An important part of the work of an economist is collecting and analysing observations about economic phenomena - prices, employment, costs, Gross Domestic Product - what we call data.
The art of the economist is to blend together theory, data and statistical techniques to arrive at a new understanding of economic problems or to make policy recommendations which hopefully will improve the welfare and living standards of our society.
