It was not possible to immediately determine the subject of economic science during its formation and development. It is impossible to describe this concept in a few words. No brief definition will reveal the essence of phenomena comprehended by economic science.
The subject of economics is defined differently by various researchers. You can specify such definitions as “types of activities related to exchange and money transactions”, “everyday business life, during which livelihoods and their use are extracted”, “people's behavior in the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods” and etc.
The complexity of determining the subject of this science is explained by the fact that economic relations are extremely complex and intertwined a huge number of times, while each time spilling over into qualitatively new types of relations. They include millions of people, enterprises, industries, goods, services and their prices.
The subject of economic science in the understanding of Western researchers is reduced to the study of phenomena and the description of facts of an economic nature: money, markets, credit relations, unemployment, inflation, demand, supply, profit, etc. In this context, we study the relationships between these phenomena, their mutual influence and interdependence.
Currently, more and more attention is drawn to the study of universal values that stem from the process of the so-called natural self-regulation of life, the laws of the interaction of people with nature and the material environment. This leads to the fact that the subject of economic science begins to be interpreted with some changes.
Since a person for his life has not yet found a source of inexhaustible resources that can be used to ensure his own life, he greatly depends on what nature provides. The limited nature of natural resources poses a challenge for society to choose directions, as well as ways to use those resources that it has available for a certain period. Methods for solving these problems are the subject of economic science.
The methodology of economic science is the science of its methods. At the present stage, economic science has a large set of methods used to understand economic realities. These methods have been formed since antiquity, beginning with Aristotle and Heraclitus, who laid the foundation for the dialectical view of the world. This principle is still widely used by economic science in its research.
In addition, she uses methods such as the study of economic processes in the relationship of phenomena and their development, such as synthesis and analysis, deduction and induction, causes and effects, the distinction between essence and phenomena themselves, the movement of thought from abstract to concrete, and many others.
At the same time, economic science also has specific research methods, which are determined by specific goals about objects of scientific development. The main principle of economic science is the study of facts, not a priori dogmas. For this, she uses methods of specific study, classification of representative and reliable facts, their synthesis and analysis, purification of facts from random and non-essential. Based on this, economic laws and models are derived.
Stages of development of economic science in general, it can be reduced to four periods:
- Pre-scientific development (until the 18th century)
- The origin of economic science (1750-1870 gg.)
- Discoveries and development of the main fundamental principles of economic theory (1870-1930)
- Modern theoretical research and development (after the 1930s).
The main stages in the development of economic thought itself are mercantilism, classical political economy (physiocrats, a market school), Marxist political economy and the line of economics (neoclassicists and neo-Keynesians).