What is Economics?
What do you think Economics is? The study of money? Wealth? According to the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, Economics is the ‘study of the factors that influence income, wealth and well-being’. It is a social science which incorporates maths and statistics as well as having connections with the physical sciences (biology, medicine and physics) and many other disciplines (politics, law, geography, psychology etc).What makes Economics different from other social sciences?
An economist’s approach follows these 5 steps:- Abstract and simplify to find the problem
- Analyse and reason
- Organise, absorb, build, analyse and evaluate both qualitative and quantitative data
- Criticise the data by looking at its real-life context
- And finally create a policy for the problem, realising the limits as well as its productivity
How much maths is there?
Economics does deal with statistical and mathematical problems. The role they take within a degree depends on the institution and your choices. It is worth noting that economists do use information which is of varying numerical types (tables, graphs) and skills to handle this information are required not only through maths and statistics but also computer software.Economics is not only about maths. It is a social science so its application into real life is visible and constant through many streams; politics, education, the environment, health care or simply your living costs.
So what skills will I have after graduating?
After graduating you should:- Understand economic concepts and principles
- Understand economic theory and modelling approaches
- Apply quantitative methods and computing techniques across a range of problems
- Understand data, its source and content as well as methods that could be used to analyse it
- Be able to critically apply economic reasoning to policy issues
- Be knowledgeable in a number of specialised areas of economics and be well read within these areas
- Understand that a range of approaches can be used for one economic problem resulting in more than one solution.
