Is economics all about individuals and their self-interests? Is it structured only on these variables as its core? Or are their other areas of greater importance?
With best regards.
Dear Mohammad,
there are also such fields as public economics, institutional economics, environmental economics.
Yes, neoclassical economics is about self-interest. Utility maximization, profit maximization, interaction via market, rationality... Participants are agents, they could be individuals or firms - both like particles.
In one of may papers I tried to expand this set up to structures. Structures are not elements; like molecules they are composed from atoms and are stable within certain range of external parameters (field, pressure, temperature). Structures in social life also exist - look at families, firms, nations... You can find more about this here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271499741_Elements_of_Structural_Economics
Article Elements of Structural Economics
Dear Mohammad,
there are also such fields as public economics, institutional economics, environmental economics.
Yes, neoclassical economics is about self-interest. Utility maximization, profit maximization, interaction via market, rationality... Participants are agents, they could be individuals or firms - both like particles.
In one of may papers I tried to expand this set up to structures. Structures are not elements; like molecules they are composed from atoms and are stable within certain range of external parameters (field, pressure, temperature). Structures in social life also exist - look at families, firms, nations... You can find more about this here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271499741_Elements_of_Structural_Economics
Article Elements of Structural Economics
Mohammad -
This is where good government regulations can help. It is my belief that blind ambition may sometimes cause a company to hurt its own 'bottom line' years in advance, if they think it will get them ahead of their competition this quarter, and that many may lose as a result.
Look at Enron as an extreme case.
Regulations were put in place at the end of the Great Depression to prevent it from happening again. Then the financial sector found ways to get around those regulations, and then came the resulting problems in 2008.
Looking at the Nobel Prize website regarding Paul Krugman, I see this:
"Prize motivation: "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity"
I think that there are many economists who work for the betterment of the people. When you asked "... are their other areas of greater importance?" I think that Yuri has the right idea. He noted "public economics." I doubt that environmental economics would be very successful without public economics, but I think that Yuri was correct in pointing it out as well.
Cheers - Jim
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