The StudySec Atlas · Economics
How economics fits together.
Economics can look like a pile of separate theories and rival camps. This atlas shows how it connects: the questions the field asks, the schools that answer them, and how each answer is tested against evidence.
How it fits
Six questions. Every economist is answering one.
Open a question to see which schools argue about it, where it is studied and what to investigate.
- Micro
How do people and firms make choices?
4 schools argue about it - Micro
How do markets coordinate millions of choices, and when do they fail?
5 schools argue about it · 1 open debate - Macro (long run)
Why do some economies grow rich while others stay poor?
4 schools argue about it · 2 open debates - Macro (short run)
Why do economies boom and bust, and can policy smooth the ride?
9 schools argue about it · 2 open debates - Cuts across
Who gets what, and is it fair?
4 schools argue about it · 2 open debates - Cuts across
What rules and limits shape the economy?
4 schools argue about it · 3 open debates
The story · Chapter i
1776
Why are some nations rich?
Thinkers had circled the subject for centuries: Aristotle judged the endless pursuit of money unnatural, and in 1758 François Quesnay drew income flowing between farmers, landowners and artisans in his Tableau économique.
Why study economics
Big questions, tested against evidence.
Economics studies how people use limited resources and respond to incentives, from a household budget to a central bank's interest rate. It teaches a method as much as a set of facts: build a simple model, test it against data, and say how sure you can be. Those habits carry over to reading the news, managing your own money and arguing about public policy.
Read the news with a model
Inflation, interest rates, tariffs and housing costs are economic questions, and each of them sits under one of this atlas's big questions.
Learn to weigh evidence
Since the 1990s economic research has become much more empirical, so the subject trains you to judge what a study can and cannot show.
Take it into many careers
Economics graduates work in business, government, law, medicine, non-profits and international relations, as well as in research.