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Economist

Professional in the discipline of economics

  • 16 min read
  • 4 chapters

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Through Social science, Economics and Economic policy

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The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are many sub-fields, ranging from the broad philosophical theories to the focused study of minutiae within specific markets, macroeconomic analysis, microeconomic analysis or financial statement analysis, involving analytical methods and tools such as econometrics, statistics, economics computational models, financial economics, regulatory impact analysis and mathematical economics.

History of the profession

Although economists are now recognized as specialists in a distinct profession, the earliest contributors to economic thought were polymath philosophers. Some of the earliest economic writings date to antiquity, notably Aristotle’s Oeconomica and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus. These works addressed, in rudimentary form, themes such as the division of labour.

In the seventeenth century, as early modern economic thought began to take shape, its leading writers were typically broad-ranging scholars who wrote on economics alongside philosophy and law. This was true of Richard Cantillon, who described what later came to be known as the Cantillon effect, and of David Hume, who anticipated the quantity theory of money. In 1690, Nicholas Barbon, the inventor of mortgages, wrote A Discourse of Trade, one of the first works promoting free trade, and analyzing the nature of capital markets.

Adam Smith, in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, wrote one of the first major works devoted entirely to economics, helping to establish economics as a distinct field within the social sciences. His seminal work gave rise to several intellectual traditions, including the classical school (notably David Ricardo and Jean-Baptiste Say) and, in reaction, Marxism, following the writings of Karl Marx.

Economics became increasingly professionalized over the course of the nineteenth century. Jean-Baptiste Say held France’s first chair in economics at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers in the early part of the century. By the end of the century, most economists associated with the neoclassical school were academics, often trained in mathematics. The figure of the economist thus shifted from that of the polymath scholar to that of a specialized intellectual.

Over the course of the twentieth century, advances in economic theory associated with John Maynard Keynes, Paul Samuelson, and Milton Friedman contributed to the emergence of several major schools of thought: Keynesian economics, soon integrated through Samuelson’s neoclassical synthesis, and then Friedman’s monetarism, which in turn influenced the development of new classical economics.

The 2008 financial crisis led to the Great Recession. This prompted some macroeconomists and Financial Economists to question the current orthodoxy. One response was the Keynesian resurgence. This emerged as a consensus among some policy makers and economists for Keynesian solutions.

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