On the pages of this textbook we will have a conversation about economic problems. Therefore, the first thing we need to do is to find out what this word - “economy” - means. This task is all the more significant because in Russian the term “economy” has two meanings.

Firstly, this is the name for the way of organizing people’s activities aimed at creating the goods they need for consumption, i.e., to satisfy their needs. A synonym for this meaning of the word “economy” is the concept of “economy”.

Need- this is an inherent need or lack of something necessary for a person to maintain the vital functions of his body, ensure safety or obtain pleasure.

Secondly, “economics” refers to the science that studies how people use the limited resources available to satisfy their unlimited needs for the goods of life. The very name of this science came to us from Ancient Greece and literally translated from ancient Greek means “laws of economy” (“eikos” - “economy” and “nomos” - “law”). Since economics studies human behavior, it falls into the category of social sciences, just like history or philosophy.

As we see in Fig. 1-1, there are three main participants in economic life: citizens (families), firms and the state. They interact with each other, coordinating their activities both directly and through markets for factors of production (i.e., resources with which the production of goods can be organized) and consumer goods (goods that are directly consumed by people and which people exchange through market procedures ).

Rice. 1-1. Economic structure

Benefits- everything that is valued by people as a means of satisfying their needs.

Economy- a science that studies the behavior of participants in the process of economic activity.

Factors of production- resources used by people to create life's goods.

It is difficult to overestimate the role that firms and the state play in the economic life of society. And yet, the main character in the economy is the individual, the family, or, as economists prefer to say, the household. The fact is that it is precisely to satisfy the needs of households, their specific needs for goods, that economic activity should be carried out in any country.

Household- this is one or more people living together and independently making decisions about ways to generate income through the use of factors of production that belong to them and spending this income on the purchase of goods and services for personal consumption.

The simplest version of a household is a family consisting of parents and children, living in the same apartment or house and running a common household. Adult members of this family own at least such a factor of production as labor, and provide firms with the opportunity to use it for a fee, receiving income in the form of wages. And then they decide how to spend this income: on buying food, clothing, paying for housing and utilities, organizing a summer vacation, etc.

But in addition to labor, members of households (if they are co-owners of commercial organizations - firms) may also own other factors of production, such as factories, land, etc. Households also receive income from the use of these factors of production. Finally, all households in a country are co-owners of the country's natural resources and other property, which the government manages on their behalf. Therefore, ultimately, everything that a country uses in economic activity, and everything that it creates as a result of it, belongs to households, i.e., citizens of the country, whose behavior in the sphere of economic activity determines everything that happens in the country and how it develops.

So, economics studies how people can behave in certain economic situations and what can ultimately happen. The results of such research help people, firms and the state to better anticipate the consequences of their decisions in the economic sphere and make smarter, more rational decisions.

As you know, all living inhabitants of the Earth receive food from nature, but only people have learned to obtain the goods necessary to satisfy their needs in a volume and range greater than wild nature can provide.

Not all benefits, however, have to be actually obtained. Air, for example, we do not produce, it is given to us by nature, and we can receive this kind of benefit freely. And therefore economic science divides all benefits into two groups:

1. free (given by nature, free) benefits;
2. economic benefits.

Free goods are those necessary goods (mostly natural) that are available to people in a volume much greater than the amount of need for them. Therefore, they do not need to be produced, and people can consume them not only freely, but also for free. It is this group of benefits that includes air, sunlight, rain, and oceans.

And yet, the main range of people’s needs is satisfied not by free goods, but by economic goods, that is, goods and services created by man. Their volume:

insufficient to meet people's needs fully;

can be increased only by spending factors of production, i.e. those elements of the production process without which it is impossible;

have to be distributed in one way or another.

And if people live better now than in ancient times, then this has been achieved thanks to an increase in the volume and improvement of the properties of precisely these economic goods (food, clothing, housing, etc.).

Man invented the wheel, tamed wild animals, created agriculture and learned to handle fire. And yet, the true source of the current well-being and power of the peoples of the Earth is an extremely developed mechanism for combining efforts to solve common problems. Moreover, the most important of these tasks is the production of an ever-increasing volume of life's goods, that is, the creation of conditions for improving people's lives.

To produce the goods of life, people use natural resources, their labor and special devices (tools, equipment, production facilities, etc.). All these are called factors of production.

It is customary to distinguish three main types of factors of production:

1. work;
2. land;

When we talk about labor as a factor of production, we mean the activity of people in the production of goods and services. Moreover, by “purchase of labor” we actually mean the acquisition of the right to receive specific labor services from a person over a certain period.

Work- the mental and physical abilities of people, their skills and experience, which are used in the form of services necessary for the production of economic goods.

When we talk about land as a factor of production, we mean all types of natural resources suitable for the production of economic goods.

When we talk about capital, we mean buildings and structures for production purposes, machines and equipment, etc., that is, everything necessary for the production of goods or services (for more information about capital and its types, see § 8).

For the convenience of analyzing economic processes, another type of production factor is often distinguished from labor - entrepreneurial abilities. We will use this word to denote the abilities inherent in some people:

1. correctly assess what new products can be successfully offered to customers or what production technologies for existing products should be introduced to obtain the greatest benefit;
2. take risks, which means a willingness to take on the risk of losing your savings invested in a new commercial project, and the risk of futility in spending time and effort on its implementation;
3. successfully coordinate the use of other factors of production to create goods needed by society.

At first glance, it may seem unclear how entrepreneurial abilities differ from labor, because often the creator of a business - an entrepreneur - works in it side by side with his employees and the difference between their activities is difficult to distinguish. But there is this difference, and it is very significant: the hired worker does what the owner-entrepreneur tells him, and is responsible for what he was told to do now.

And the entrepreneur, relying on his abilities, makes a decision about what exactly should be produced in the company, in what quantity and how. Moreover, his decisions are focused on the future, which requires the ability to anticipate how much he can sell and at what price. It is this special skill that makes economists talk about entrepreneurial ability as a special factor of production.

Let us note that a hired leader (manager) cannot be called an entrepreneur: he does not run the business with his own money and if the company fails, he can only lose his position and salary. The owner of the company may lose all the money he invested in its creation.

In the 20th century Another very specific type of production factors has acquired immeasurably greater importance for economic activity than before: information, i.e., all the knowledge and information that people need for conscious activity in the world of economics. The volume of this resource cannot be accurately measured, although its value is enormous and constantly growing.

By improving the ways of using economic resources (factors of production), humanity has based its economic activity on two important elements: specialization and the exchange of the fruits of its specialized labor.

The specialization of labor is based on principles developed by people over many centuries of development of their economy. The most important of them are:

1. Conscious division of labor between people.
2. Training people in new professions and skills.
3. The possibility of cooperation, i.e. collaboration to achieve a common goal (for example, creating a complex product or building a factory).

Specialization- concentration of a certain type of activity in the hands of the person or business organization that copes with it better than others.

Archaeologists and historians believe that labor specialization first appeared about 12 thousand years ago. It was then that people first discovered: cultivating crops allows one not to die of hunger and live a sedentary life. This means you can no longer roam in search of food and build YOUR OWN HOME.

It was then that the social division of labor occurred: some people became hunters, others became cattle breeders, and others became farmers. Nowadays, the list of professions includes many thousands of names. The vast majority of professions require training (sometimes many years) in special skills and techniques.

What is the value of labor specialization, why has it become the most important stone in the foundation of the economic life of society? There are several main reasons for this.

Firstly, all people are different by nature, or, more simply put, endowed with different abilities. Therefore, they are unequally adapted to perform certain types of work. Specialization allows each person to find that field of activity, that type of work, that profession, where his abilities will manifest themselves most fully, and the work will be the least burdensome.

Secondly, specialization allows people to achieve greater skill in carrying out their chosen activities. And this makes it possible to produce goods or provide services with an increasingly higher level of quality.

Thirdly, an increase in skill allows people to spend less and less time on producing goods and avoid wasting time when switching from one type of work to another.

In other words, specialization turned out to be the main way to increase the productivity of all the resources (factors of production) that people use to produce the economic goods they need, and above all that resource that we call labor.

When we talk about productivity, we mean by this the useful result that can be obtained from a unit of economic resource over a certain period. For example, labor productivity represents the number of products that one worker produced per unit of time (for example, per day, per month, per year). And the productivity of the land will be measured by the mass of the harvest obtained from 1 hectare of arable land per year.

How productivity actually increases due to deepening specialization can be seen using the example of the assembly line, which was widely used by the famous American engineer and entrepreneur Henry Ford when establishing mass production.

It was thanks to the specialization of labor and the growth of its productivity on this basis that people had the opportunity to produce more goods of a certain type than they needed for their own consumption. This means that they had the opportunity to exchange surpluses of such goods, and exchange regularly, and not from time to time. It must be said that the ability to exchange goods is a unique feature of people, distinguishing them from other inhabitants of the Earth no less than walking upright or the ability to think. As the great Scottish economist Adam Smith (1723-1790) wittily noted: “No one ever saw a dog deliberately exchange a bone with another dog...”

Regular exchange of goods and services underlies the most important sphere of human activity - trade, i.e. the exchange of goods in the form of buying and selling goods and services for money. Trade connects people and firms specializing in the production of certain goods or the provision of various services into a single whole - the economy of the country or the planet as a whole. Without trade, specialization would be impossible, which would make it more difficult for people to increase the amount of economic goods available to them.

Product- a material item produced for exchange.

Service- an intangible benefit that has the form of useful activity that people are willing to carry out in exchange for other services or goods.

Trade- voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange of benefits in the form of purchase and sale of goods and services for money.

Moreover, only a combination of specialization and trade made it possible to resolve the contradiction between:

• the desire of people to obtain for their use a huge variety of different goods and
• the ability of each person to produce a limited range of goods.

Indeed, even in your room you will find goods created by producers engaged in different types of specialized labor: builder, furniture maker, glass blower, carpenter, electrician, mechanical engineer, etc. No one person is able to master all the many professions necessary to create all the diversity benefits that we enjoy today. In addition, the creation of each good requires a certain time, and if a person created all the goods for himself on his own, then he could, at best, satisfy many of his needs only in his declining days.

Therefore, over time, people realized: the combination of specialization and regular exchange of the fruits of specialized labor makes it possible to receive benefits in larger volumes, in a larger assortment, and faster.

If a country skillfully links together the “gears” of specialization and trade, then:

• specialization leads to increased productivity;
• growth in labor productivity increases the amount of goods available to people;
• an increased volume of goods is offered for sale and ensures an increase in the consumption of these goods by people and, accordingly, an increase in the income of sellers (producers);
• income received as a result of trade is used to develop production and improve the specialization of labor.

Symbolically, this connection can be represented in the form of a clock that measures the progress of humankind’s economic progress (Fig. 1-2). As long as the dial of this clock is intact and the hands are moving in the right direction, the country is getting richer, and the people in it are living better and better. But if the process of development of specialization in a country is disrupted or productivity falls, if trade is too poorly developed or people do not invest part of their income in developing the production of goods, then economic difficulties arise in this country. And interruptions or stopping the clock of economic progress always lead to Fig. 1-2. same result: people's lives become worse.

Rice. 1-2. Economic clock

This rule applies to all countries, even to those whose citizens are seemingly guaranteed a prosperous existence thanks to the natural resources at their disposal. Of course, the presence of such wealth makes the path to high prosperity easier, but the wealth of subsoil, arable land or forests in themselves does not guarantee prosperity.

ECONOMICS 11th grade. test work

A1. The concept of “economy” originally meant:

1) rural estate management

2) the art of housekeeping

3) natural exchange

4) money circulation

A2. Are the following statements about the economy true?

A. Economics is the science of economics, the way people conduct it, relationships between people in the process of production and exchange of goods. B. Economy is an economy used by people to ensure life, satisfy needs by creating the necessary goods, conditions and means of subsistence.

1) only A is correct

2) only B is true

3) A and B are correct

4) both judgments are incorrect

A3. The total value of all final goods and services produced in the country during the year reflects the following economic indicator:

1) national income

2) gross national product

3) labor productivity

4) gross turnover

A4. The behavior of a producer in a market economy, in contrast to a command-administrative economy, is characterized by:

1) economical attitude towards resources

2) economic independence

3) respect for work ethics

4) desire to improve skills

A5. The main functions of the state in a market economy include:

1) establishing the required production volumes

2) ensuring the protection of the rights of owners

3) regulation of pricing

4) distribution of resources between producers

A6. Economic relations between producers and consumers based on mutually beneficial exchange are:

1) division of labor

2) competition

3) market

4) specialization

A7. Are the following statements about supply and demand correct?

A. Demand is directly related to the price of the product.

B. Supply is inversely related to the price of the product.

1) only A is correct

2) only B is correct

3) A and B are correct

4) both judgments are incorrect

A8. The increase in consumer spending is influenced by:

1) increase in income tax

2) reduction in social benefits

3) increase in consumer income

4) decrease in labor productivity

A9. Economics is mainly designed to:

1) make the rich even richer

2) provide income to entrepreneurs

3) satisfy social needs

4) increase the number of owners

A10. If demand is higher than supply, then the price of the product:

1) will not change

2) will grow

3) will fall

4) will fluctuate

A11. The market means:

1) place of sale of goods

2) place of production of goods

3) a system of economic relations regarding the purchase and sale of goods

4) competition between manufacturers

A12. The economic development of a country is determined by:

1) her budget

2) GDP

3) expenses for education

4) number of enterprises

A13. Economics as a science studies:

1) the action of objective laws of history

2) methods of production and distribution of material goods

3) a system of characteristics that determines the social structure

4) principles and norms for the exercise of state power

A14. Producers want to sell products at high prices and consumers want to buy them at low prices. In a market economy, this conflict is resolved with the help of:

1) governments

2) associations of entrepreneurs

3) financial authorities

4) competition

A15. By regulating production volumes, the state adopts plans that are mandatory for the manufacturer under the economic system:

1) market

2) traditional

3) team

4) mixed

A16. Are the following judgments about the goals of macroeconomic development in market conditions correct?

A. The goal of macroeconomic development is to maintain full employment of the working population.

B. The goal of macroeconomic development is to change the form of ownership of an individual enterprise.

1) only A is correct

2) only B is correct

3) both judgments are correct

4) both judgments are incorrect

IN 1. Enter the concept that matches the definition:

“Organization of people’s activities aimed at creating goods that can satisfy their needs.”

Answer:

AT 2. Insert the missing word: “The science of economics belongs to the category of... sciences.”

Answer:

VZ. In the list below, check the types of economic systems:

1) Advanced

2) Team

3) Traditional

4) Industrial

5) Industrial

6) Market

7) Technotronic

8) Mixed

Answer:

AT 4. Complete the sentence: “The desire and ability of a consumer to buy a specific product at a specific time and in a specific place is called

Answer:

AT 5. Economy is a set of complex and simple actions performed by people in the sphere of:

1)Production

2) Distributions

3) State administration

4) Maintaining order in society

5) Consumption of labor products

C1. Note the real, rather than declarative, advantages of a market economy:

Constantly stimulating production efficiency.

Identity of personal and public interests.

Efficient (through customized, decentralized solutions)

functioning and adaptation to change.

Meeting needs in order of importance (items first

first necessity, and then - luxury).

Individual economic freedom.

C2. "Competition is the life of trade and the death of traders." (E. Hubbard)

1) How do you understand the words of E. Hubbard?

2) Isn’t the “death of traders” a manifestation of the inhumanity of competition?

3) What are the functions of competition in a market economy?

4) Give two examples of the influence of the market on production.

ANSWERS

1

Answer

Economy

Public

2.3,6,8

Demand

1,2,5

C1.

point 1: as a result of the law of “supply and demand”, there is a constant stimulation of production efficiency, i.e. the manufacturer’s desire to improve product quality and reduce costs to obtain greater profits;

point 2: as a result, the identity of personal and public interests arises, i.e. both the producer and the consumer of the product benefit equally;

point 3: the consequence is effective (through individual, decentralized decisions) functioning and adaptation to changes;

point 5: which ensures economic freedom of the producer and consumer. The answer allows for other justifications that do not contradict the meaning of the judgments.

C2.

1) In the course of competition, inefficient production is displaced.

2) The market performs a “sanitizing” function, displacing not only inefficient production, but also those that do not meet the needs of consumers.

3) Functions:

price - carried out by “bringing down” prices;

non-price - improvement of technology and production organization, cost reduction, improvement of production quality.

4) Variants of examples must correspond to the disclosure of the essence of the problem.

Understanding the laws of the production process is based on the characteristics of categories such as needs and resources.

Needs can be defined as the objective need to provide conditions for people's livelihoods. The classification of needs is extremely diverse. In modern educational economic literature, the division of needs into primary (for clothing, food, drink, etc.) and secondary, associated with spiritual, intellectual activity of a person (needs for education, art, etc.) is most often used. The division of these needs is to a certain extent arbitrary. We are interested economic needs. This is that part of human needs, the satisfaction of which requires the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods.

The interaction between production and needs is twofold. Firstly, production directly affects needs, creating specific goods for consumption, changing the structure of needs and the way of life of people, and methods of consumption. Secondly, economic needs have a strong influence backfire for production, being an internal incentive for production activity. At the same time, human demands often overtake production and move it forward.

The deep internal relationship between production and needs is reflected in the law of increasing needs . This law expresses the objective (independent of the will and consciousness of people) the need for growth and improvement of human needs with the development of production and culture. The effect of the law of increasing needs is manifested in the fact that in the course of historical development, the needs of society grow quantitatively and change qualitatively: some of them disappear, others (new) appear.

To organize production, it is necessary to have resources, among which are: natural, those. natural goods used in the production of goods and services (land, its subsoil, raw materials, forests, etc.); capital , or production , - factories, plants, machines, tools and money spent on their acquisition; human – physical and mental abilities of workers used by them in the production process; entrepreneurial – management knowledge of businessmen necessary for the organization profitable production.

But the resources listed above are potential production power of society. In reality, only a portion of the resources are involved in production.

The part of resources involved in the production process is called factors of production.

Factors of production are used in the labor process. Labor process - This is a purposeful human activity aimed at producing material goods. The labor process constitutes the material basis of social production, but is not identical to it: the production process includes not only labor process , but also economic relations workers to each other in the process of work.

The main elements of the labor process are labor itself, objects of labor and means of labor. Objects of labor – everything that human activity is aimed at (raw materials, materials, fuel, minerals, etc.); means of labor - a thing or a set of things with the help of which material goods are created (technological equipment, tools, buildings, structures). The means of labor are the most important indicator of the level of development of production. They are divided into natural (soil, organic fertilizers, pets, etc.) and technical (created by man). The technical means of labor include various machines, mechanisms, engines, and transmission devices. In the conditions of machine production, mechanical means of labor developed into a system of machines with three main parts: a working machine, an engine, and a transmission device. NTR added a fourth element - a control device, which performs the function of mental labor in controlling machines. Recently, information technology has been increasingly used, which, unlike other machines, processes not energy, not matter, but information. Means of labor and objects of labor together constitute means of production . But the main element in the labor process is work force. This is the totality of a person’s spiritual and physical abilities to work. Why is labor the main factor of production? Because labor power not only carries out the labor process, but also produces the means of production. The consumption of labor power is the labor process itself.

The interaction of production factors can be represented in the form of a diagram.

Material and personal factors of production (means of production, land, people with their skills, production experience and skills) are usually called in economic literature productive forces . The transition from one stage of society to another does not interrupt their development, but presupposes their transformation at a new one.

on a qualitative basis. The level of development of productive forces is the most important criterion and indicator of social progress. In order to set all factors in motion, it is necessary to find the correct quantitative relationship between them. This problem is solved primarily by technology. It should be borne in mind that the factors of production at each moment limited in relation to needs.

Rice. 3

A quantitative approach to economics allows us to determine how capable production is of satisfying current and future needs. To do this, production capabilities are calculated (in relation to the enterprise, the national economy as a whole).

Production capabilities mean the largest volume of output that can be achieved with full use of production factors. But usually production capabilities are not enough to fully satisfy all types of needs. In such a situation, an alternative choice of the needs themselves to be satisfied is used. At any enterprise, situations constantly arise when there is a need to expand the production of one of the manufactured goods. If an enterprise has a limited set of resources (finance, raw materials, energy, equipment, people), then an increase in the output of one product will inevitably lead to a reduction in the production of another product. In this regard, an increase in the production of one of the goods will require switching to this part of the resources employed in the production of the other. This is the essence of the law of scarcity: if a limited resource is fully used to produce one good, it must be sacrificed to produce a certain amount of another good.

The law of scarcity operates at all levels of the economy - from the household to the state level. Our example considers the shop level of a large precast concrete manufacturing company. The workshop produces two types of reinforced concrete structures - columns and beams.

In the graph in Figure 4, we provided data on the capabilities of producing columns and beams in this workshop with full use of all available resources.

There can be two extremes - either produce only columns, or produce only beams. Moreover, there may be different options for their production. A combination of options for the simultaneous production of columns and beams is shown in Figure 4.

Any point (A,B,C,D,E,F) on the workshop production possibilities curve shows possible options for the simultaneous production of columns and beams. For example, dot D shows that if 9 columns are produced daily, then the remaining resources will only be enough for 3 beams. At the same time, if we want to increase the production of beams, we will need to sacrifice the production of a certain number of columns (for example, 4 beams and 5 columns).

If resources are not used at 100%, then we will not be on the production possibilities curve, but inside it, for example at the point Q. This means that we produce 5 columns and 3 beams every day, while saving some resources. In this case, we could increase the production of columns and beams at the same time. The boundary of such an increase will still remain the production possibilities curve of the workshop.

This limitation of production capabilities extends to the scale of the entire state. So, to solve a national problem, for example, “Housing 2000,” you need to keep in mind that equipment, people and building materials in the country are limited and at the same time you will have to sacrifice the construction of food factories or roads in rural areas.

What will happen to the production possibilities curve if the shop managers push for an increase in the resource limit? What if they are given additional workers, money, raw materials? Obviously, by involving new resources, the production possibilities curve can be shifted to the right, and point M will become accessible (12 columns and 4 beams). There will be economic growth. But at what cost? Due to the involvement of additional resources. When they exist, it is acceptable. This path of economic growth is called extensive .

What will happen to this curve if engineers develop more economical technologies for producing beams and columns? Then it will be possible to produce more columns and beams from the same resources, period M will be within reach again. In the first case, the production possibilities curve will shift to the right.

This path of economic growth, when resources are saved due to new technologies and other achievements of scientific and technological progress (NTP), is called intensive .

Studying the law of scarcity and analyzing the graph (Fig. 4) gives us the opportunity to get acquainted with such a concept of economics as - opportunity cost .

Opportunity cost is the cost of one good expressed in terms of another good. Opportunity costs must be taken into account by citizens, businesses and governments. When adopting any government program, you need to consider how it will be implemented.

When studying the law of rarity, it is necessary to pay attention to such a phenomenon as rising costs .Each additional beam becomes more and more expensive in terms of opportunity cost. In fact: the first beam released forced us to sacrifice one column, the second – two, and the opportunity cost of the fifth beam was already equal to five columns. Thus, the cost of beams, expressed through the cost of unfinished columns, tends to increase. Each additional beam produced becomes more and more expensive in terms of additional failure to produce columns.

To answer such a question as what is economics, we have to understand many problems of economics. And the very first thing we need to do is find out what “economics” is. This task is all the more significant because in Russian the term “economy” has two meanings.

First of all, that's what they call it a way of organizing people's activities aimed at creating the goods they need for consumption. A synonym for this meaning is the concept of “economy”.

Secondly, “economy” (or “economy” - as it is usually written in English-speaking countries) means the science that studies how people use the limited resources available to satisfy their unlimited needs for the goods of life. The very name of this science was given by the great scientist of Ancient Greece, Aristotle, by combining two words: “eikos” - “economy” and “nomos” - “law”, so that “economics” literally translated from ancient Greek means “laws of economy”. Since economics studies human behavior, it falls into the category of social sciences, just like history or philosophy, although the research methods used in it involve a wider use of mathematics and a variety of graphs. You will find some of them on the pages of this textbook - with their help it will be easier for you to understand the essence of various economic processes and the logic of behavior of participants in economic activities.

Economy- a science that studies the behavior of participants in the process of economic activity.

There are three main participants in economic life: families, firms and the state. They interact with each other, coordinating their activities both directly and through markets for factors of production (i.e., resources with which the production of goods can be organized) and consumer goods (goods that are directly consumed by people).

It is difficult to overestimate the role that firms and the state play in the economic life of society.

And yet the main characters of the economy are the person, the family.

The fact is that it is precisely for the sake of satisfying the needs of people, their specific needs for goods, that economic activity should be carried out in any country.

Benefits- everything that is valued by people as a means of satisfying their needs.

In addition, the activities of both firms and government organizations, as well as events in certain markets, are determined by the decisions that people make.

That is why economic science studies not objective processes like natural phenomena, but the behavior of people in certain economic situations. This behavior is determined by the subjective desires and interests of people, the formation of which has common rational grounds. By studying them, economics helps people, firms and the state better anticipate the consequences of their decisions in the economic sphere.

It is customary to distinguish:

1. family economics (i.e. economic processes associated with a household run by a single person or a group of close people living together);
2. the economy of the company (i.e., economic processes associated with the activities of organizations producing goods for sale);
3. the economy of the region (i.e., economic processes associated with the activities of firms located in a certain region of the country and the people who live there);
4. economics of markets for factors of production, goods and services (i.e. economic processes associated with the purchase and sale of goods directly consumed by people or used to organize the activities of firms); Factors of production- resources used by people to create life's goods.
5. general economic processes (i.e. processes that affect not only the economy of a family, firm, region or a particular market, but also the entire economic life of the country as a whole).

The first four branches of economics are usually called by the general term " microeconomics", while the study of general economic processes is the concern of macroeconomics.