Concept, Object of study and Types of economy

We explain to you what the economy is and what its object of study is, besides, its importance and the different branches or types of economy.

Among others, the economy studies the behavior of financial markets.

What is the economy?

The Economy (or Economic Sciences ) is a social science whose scope of interest is the ways in which a society organizes itself to meet their material and intangible consumption needs, through a cycle of production, distribution and exchange of goods that ideally perpetuates over time.

The Economy, in other words, is the study of modes of organization and distribution of scarce goods that each society requires and therefore produces or acquires through different strategies, in order to satisfy the greatest amount of demand from a finite number of tangible or intangible assets.

That said, we could deduce that the Economy tries to understand the production and consumption processes of any human group, to aspire to an ideal distribution and management of resources.allowed to apply to various areas of study and work with other specific disciplines, such as Law, Administration, business, politics, war, science and a long period of time.

At the same time, the Economy uses tools and processes from different areas of knowledge, such as psychology, philosophy, history, etc.to help them understand their economic dynamics in societies.multidisciplinary knowledge that dates back to the days of Classical Antiquity (especially Aristotle).

Economic systems:

See also: Foreign Trade.

Object of study of the economy

The specific study object of the Economy can be defined around three main axes:

• The processes of extraction, production, distribution, exchange and consumption of goods and services that a society requires.


• The possible models of satisfying the infinite human needs from the finite set of available resources.


• The way people and societies survive, trade, prosper and operate financially.

In this way, the Economy is interested in a very wide range of objects of study, ranging from the pricing mechanisms of the goods and services available in a community, the behavior of financial markets and its impact on society, international trade, the intervention of the State in internal markets, the distribution of income and the methods of fighting poverty, to the theories of growth and economic cycles and its impact on societies that star in them.

Types of economy

The Economy is a wide and complex discipline, in which numerous types or classifications can be distinguished, such as:

• Theoretical economy and empirical economy .The first one pursues rational models of functioning and economic equilibrium for the different societies, while the second confirms or refutes these models through its application or the economic history of nations.


• Microeconomics and Macroeconomics .The first refers to the choices of economic agents (individuals, companies and governments) in order to meet their needs and scarcity.The second, however, It contemplates the economy as a national system, when not global and international, that analyzes the totals of the trade balance, general trends and data at a panoramic level.


• Regulatory economics and positive economics .This distinction is based on the fact that the first one considers the duty of the economy, while the second one studies the economic behavior as something alive and present, changing.


• Orthodox and heterodox economics .A differentiation of an academic type, in which the first is established in the triad rationality-individualism-balance and is the most commonly taught in universities, the traditional one; while the second encompasses a different and heterogeneous set of streams of economic analysis and prefers the approach from institutions-history-social structure.