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The Definition

By Bernard

In order to get a good definition, let's first look at the dictionaries.

  1. "Activities related to the production and distribution of goods and services in a particular geographic region. The correct and effective use of available resources." In<
  2. "Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." In<
  3. "Careful, thrifty management of resources, such as money, materials, or labor: learned to practice economy in making out the household budget.  An example or result of such management; a saving.  The system or range of economic activity in a country, region, or community: Effects of inflation were felt at every level of the economy.  A specific type of economic system: an industrial economy; a planned economy.  An orderly, functional arrangement of parts; an organized system: "the sense that there is a moral economy in the world, that good is rewarded and evil is punished" (George F. Will).  Efficient, sparing, or conservative use: wrote with an economy of language.  The least expensive class of accommodations, especially on an airplane." In<
  4. "The management of domestic affairs; the regulation and government of household matters; especially as they concern expense or disbursement; as, a careful economy.  Orderly arrangement and management of the internal affairs of a state or of any establishment kept up by production and consumption; esp., such management as directly concerns wealth; as, political economy.  The system of rules and regulations by which anything is managed; orderly system of regulating the distribution and uses of parts, conceived as the result of wise and economical adaptation in the author, whether human or divine; as, the animal or vegetable economy; the economy of a poem; the Jewish economy.  Thrifty and frugal housekeeping; management without loss or waste; frugality in expenditure; prudence and disposition to save; as, a housekeeper accustomed to economy but not to parsimony."  In<
  5. "An entire network of producers, distributors, and consumers of goods and services in a local, regional, or national community."  In<
  6. "The social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and with the theory and management of economies or economic systems."  In<
  7. "A social science that studies how individuals, governments, firms and nations make choices on allocating scarce resources to satisfy their unlimited wants. Economics can generally be broken down into: macroeconomics, which concentrates on the behavior of the aggregate economy; and microeconomics, which focuses on individual consumers." In<
  8. "The science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth, and with the various related problems of labor, finance, taxation, etc." In<

Some of these edictionairies define the word "Economics", others "Economy". For me, I will use the word "Economy" and my definition is:

The economy is the science that studies the production, the distribution and the consumption of the goods and services.