Sunday, November 22, 2015

Economics : Art Or Science

A controversial topic .

An economist David Rosenberg, former chief economist at Merrill Lynch once said , “Why did God invent economists?”
“To make weathermen feel good about themselves.”

There are some reasons for this statement.

Economics cant be considered as science as Science is a systematized body of knowledge ascertainable by observation 
and experiment. It is a body of generalizations, principles, theories or laws which traces out a casual relationship 
between causes and results.


Economics can define the causes and result but cannot do so with presicion.Just cause price of sugar increase by 1 dollar does not mean price of tea will increase by 1 dollar.

Again markets are frequently ahead of, and often out of sync with, the economy.economics follows
 the market but the market does not always follow economics .

Models are of limited utility.

correlation does not always mean causation.


There are two kinds of science:
Positive Science
Normative Science or Prescriptive Science

Some claim,

Economics is a positive science because:

Firstly, economists collect the facts.
Secondly, they analyze them and derive result.
Thirdly, they determine the relationship between facts and results.
Finally, they give a title to the relationship.

Economics is normative science because:

Firstly, economists points out different economic problems.
Secondly, they analyse them in the light of statistics or facts and figures.
Finally, they advise policies, laws, theories to solve the problems.
Economics is an art because:

Economists suggest policies along with their implementation procedures to solve the economic problem.

Thus, economics is a science as well as an art.


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