CZ:Economics Workgroup

Workgroups are no longer used for group communications, but they still are used to group articles into fields of interest. Each article is assigned to 1-3 Workgroups via the article's Metadata.

Economics Workgroup
Economics article	All articles (416)	To Approve (0)	Editors: active (0) / inactive (13) and Authors: active (171) / inactive (0)	Workgroup Discussion
	Recent changes	Citable Articles (12)
		Subgroups (5)

Checklist-generated categories: Underlinked (138) Cat Check (161) Cleanup (1) Subpage categories: Definitions (404) Related Articles (351 to check 117) Bibliography (131) External Links (99) Gallery (2) Video (1)

Missing subpage categories: Definitions (11) Related Articles (6) Bibliography (9) External Links (10) Article statuses: 51 Developed (status=1) 203 Developing (status=2) 142 Stub (status=3) 9 External (status=4) 63 Advanced (status 0-1) 265 Nonstub (status 0-2) 406 Internal (status 0-3)

(The previous contents of the CZ:Economics Workgroup page, covering the years 2007 thru 2011, is archived with the talk page contents [1]).

If you are an economist - or a budding economist - who is considering making a contribution to Citizendium, this is a good place to start. It is also the place where economists and others can make comments and suggestions about the style and content of the economics articles.

The problem

J M Keynes touched on the problem of writing economics articles for an encyclopedia when he wrote "economics is a difficult and technical subject, but nobody will believe it". Unlike say, archeology, economics has an impact upon people's lives. They have to take some interest in economics because it affects so many of their choices. So there is a popular demand for simple explanations of this difficult and technical subject. The problem is how to meet that demand while, at the same time, meeting the demand of economics students and practitoners for a professional treatment of the subject.

The articles

Citizendium's "subpages" setup provides a ready-made solution to that problem by facilitating the adoption of a "parallel processing" format. The thinking behind the economics article format embodies the observation that there are a lot of well-educated people who are no longer comfortable with the use of charts equations and statistics (if they ever were), because do not have to deal with them in their day-to-day lives. The main pages are for them, and as well as avoiding charts and equations, those pages avoid closely-reasoned arguments and the use of economics jargon other than words and expressions that are in colloqual use. The "tutorials" subpages are for students and practioners of economics, and contain the sort of material that is to be found in economics textbooks, and the "addendum" subpages are both for them, and for people other than economists, who are familiar with the use of graphs, and statistics.

In addition to articles on individual topics, such as macroeconomics and taxation, there are articles on connected sequences of events, such as Great Depression and Sovereign default. The use of the "Timelines" subpages enables the additional dimension in such articles to be dealt with without disrupting the main page. The main page is then free to deal with the topic under a set of subject headings such as "monetary policy", "fiscal policy" etc, without interruptions to avoid temporal overlaps. Disruption of subject paragraphs by the intrusion of a geographical dimension can be avoided by dealing with it in country-by-country paragraphs on the Addendum subpage. Wikilinks can be used to make connections between paragraphs on the main page and those on the subpages.

Your contribution

The existing coverage of economics is less comprehensive than might appear, and there is room for improvement in many of the existing articles. Here are some suggestions for your consideration:

• health economics.
• transport economics.
• energy economics.
• development economics.
• economics of (you name it)
• economic history of (country).
• economic history of (industry, product, sport, etc).
• profile of an eminent economist.
• more on neuroeconomics and behavioural economics
• evidence from experimental psychology that bears on the limitations of the assumption of rationality in economics.
• the addition of wikipedia-style graphics to selected articles.
• something on Islamic finance.
• econometrics.
• theory of the firm.
• forecasting models
• state capitalism[2]

Making a start

CZ:How to edit an article tells you how to get started on an article.

Core articles

Click here to edit this transcluded list (remove once started)

High priority Business economics: Add brief definition or description Theory of the firm: Add brief definition or description Lower priority Austrian School: Add brief definition or description Budget deficit: the excess of a government's expenditures over its receipts. See also cyclically-adjusted budget deficit [e] Economies of scale: The factors that cause the cost of production of a product to fall as output of the product is increased. [e] Endogenous growth: Add brief definition or description Externalities: Add brief definition or description General equilibrium: A hypothetical state of a set of inter-related markets such that there is no excess supply nor excess demand in any market (see Equilibrium and disequilibrium). [e] Monetary economics: Add brief definition or description Neolassical economics: Add brief definition or description Rational expectations: Add brief definition or description Surplus: Add brief definition or description Monopoly (economics): Add brief definition or description Externality: A cost of production that is not borne by the producer, or a benefit that the producer does not receive. [e] Econometrics: The use of mathematical techniques to derive economic relationships from economic statistics. [e]

Lowest priority Economic history: Add brief definition or description Economic models: Add brief definition or description Precautionary principle: A policy of avoiding actions that have unknown consequences (variously interpreted). [e] Sustainability: An environmental concept about balancing the economic needs of current and future generations, given finite resources. [e] Public choice: Add brief definition or description Nash equilibrium: A situation in game theory in which no player can improve his position, given the responses of the other players. [e] Cardinal utility: Add brief definition or description Ordinal utility: Add brief definition or description Coase theorem: Add brief definition or description Informal economy: Add brief definition or description