The traditional concern of economics is to gain an understanding of the processes that govern the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services in an exchange economy.[3] An agent may have purposes or ends, such as reducing or protecting individuals from crime, on which he or she wants to spend resources. Economics may study how the agent determines the amount of resources to allocate for this purpose, aside from the traditional concern of economics.
An approach to understanding the processes of production, distribution, and consumption, through the study of agent behavior under scarcity, may go as follows: The continuous interplay (exchange or trade) done by economic actors in all markets sets the prices for all goods and services which, in turn, make the rational managing of scarce resources possible. At the same time, the decisions (choices) made by the same actors, while they are pursuing their
References: Definitions A map of world economies by size of GDP (nominal) in $US, CIA World Factbook, 2011.[17] Alfred Marshall provides a still widely cited definition in his textbook Principles of Economics (1890) that extends analysis beyond wealth and from the societal to the microeconomic level: Economics is a study of man in the ordinary business of life