This course seeks to turn learners into informed consumers of social science research. It introduces concepts, standards, and principles of social science research to the interested non-expert. Learners who complete the course will be able to assess evidence and critically evaluate claims about important social phenomena. It reviews the origins and development of social science, describes the process of discovery in contemporary social science research, and explains how contemporary social science differs from apparently related fields. It describes the goals, basic paradigms, and methodologies of the major social science disciplines. It offers an overview of the major questions that are the focus of much contemporary social science research, overall and for China. Special emphasis is given to explaining the challenges that social scientists face in drawing conclusions about cause and effect from their studies, and offers an overview of the approaches that are used to overcome these challenges. Explanation is non-technical and does not involve mathematics. Statistics and quantitative methods are not covered. Explore the big questions in social science and learn how you can be a critical, informed consumer of social science research. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/QuMOAlwhpvU After you complete Part 1, enroll in Part 2 to learn how to be a PRODUCER of Social science research. Part 2: https://www.coursera.org/learn/social-science-research-chinese-society
4.4 Economics
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Del curso dictado por The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 1
9 calificaciones
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
9 calificaciones
De la lección
The Social Science Disciplines
In Week 4, we will focus on The Social Science Disciplines. By the end of this week, you should have a better understanding of the emphases of each of the major social science disciplines, and the differences between the disciplines.
Conoce a los instructores
Cameron CampbellProfessor of Social Science
Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science
[MUSIC]
Hi, in this module, I'm going to introduce the discipline of economics.
Economics is the systematic study of the processes
that underlie production, distribution and
the consumption of goods and services in the economy.
Economics as we now understand it got started roughly two centuries ago and
there were certain key figures I'd like to introduce.
One of the most important was Adam Smith,
was Scottish who lived during the 18th century.
He wrote among other things, a famous book called The Wealth of Nations
that introduced the idea of the division of labor.
And in particular, he also emphasized the idea that competition in the market
could lead to economic growth.
This marked a real departure from the way that people used to think of the economy
before his time and it really paved away for
the development of what we now think of as the field of economics.
Another important economist, although he may not of thought of him such, but
he was never the less incredibly influential was Thomas Robert Malthus
who lived at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century.
He wrote an important book that theorized that population and
the economy were intertwined.
It was essentially Malthus's information that
led us to the modern conception of the idea of overpopulation.
So he suggested that, essentially as population grew that
put pressure on resources which drove up the price of food, and it reduced wages.
In turn, as food prices increase,
as wages decrease, people found it more difficult to marry and to have children.
They also may have experienced higher death rates.
In turn, this lowered the rate at which population grew.
Eventually, population and resources were brought back into balance.
Again, this idea that different parts of the economy.
In this case, population and resources could be intertwined or
linked together in a loop without any deliberate intervention
by a government or anyone else was a really novel idea and
a real inspiration about the way that we think about the population even now.
And indeed, it was Malthus's concern that population
outstripping resources could lead to misery that lead again
to the contemporary conception of the idea of over population.
During the 19th century,
there were a number of other important economists whose influence remains today.
One was David Ricardo.
He wrote very systematically on trade, on rents, profits and wages.
Obviously, he didn't invent these.
Well before Ricardo lived and even well before Adam Smith lived,
people paid rents.
They were paid wages.
They earned profits, but what Ricardo did was try to
systematize the way that we thought about all of these and
understand how they interacted together in the economy.
Similarly, John Stuart Mill.
A very influential economist of the 19th century wrote about labor and
capital, distribution and exchange.
Of course, in the past, there was labor and capital and
there were inequities in distribution.
There were people that were wealthy and people that were poor, and people traded.
But again, what was distinctive about John Stuart Mill was his way that he
began to think systematically about how all of these things fit together.
And he in particular focused on the distinction between labor and capital,
and the way in which capital could also promote growth.
Now, I'd like to talk about the rational actor paradigm.
One of the most distinctive features of economics, something that sets it apart
from most of the other social science disciplines is their use or
application of what is referred to as the rational actor paradigm.
The basic assumption in economics is that individuals, families, firms and
other actors that interact and make up the economy have preferences.
And that these actors, they make systematic and
predictable choices among different possible courses of
action in order to maximize the satisfaction of these preferences.
So when simple example, economist who have
studied decision-making regarded to child bearing,
they look at couples as having on the one hand, perhaps a desire to have children.
But on the other hand, the desire to spend their time on leisure activities or
engaging in labor that makes money for the household.
So among these three possible choices of ways to spend time,
they each have different costs and different benefits and economists
have tried to model child bearing in the decision about how many children to have
as the outcome of these costs and benefits and
then changes in child bearing, either over time or differences across societies
as differences in the relative cost of this different possible behaviors.
So one of the important features of economics is that in the rational actor
paradigm, it has a set of very strong assumptions about the way that people make
choices whether it's individual's families or firms and this allows them to develop,
probably mathematical models in order to predict behavior.
Again, this is very different from social science and to some extent,
political science which tend to be more inductive and have a somewhat broader view
of what sorts of things might influence individual or family or other behavior.
Another big distinction in economics which you'll be aware of,
if you look at the website of an economics department
is the one between studies of macroeconomics and microeconomics.
Macroeconomics is the study of the economy in its entirety.
So this is the area of economics that is concerned with trying to
explain things like recessions or depressions, increases or
decreases in the rate of unemployment or perhaps,
economic growth over time or lack of growth.
Microeconomics, on the other hand, focuses on the families,
the individuals, the firms that interact in which constitute the economy.
So microeconomics of which I just gave an example in terms
of the families making decisions about child bearing tries to model or
understand how these micro-level units could be people, could be families
make choices in response to various constraints around them that affect cost,
affect benefits and then what the outcomes of those choices are.
Another big distinction within economics is between theory and
applied with theoretical, and applied economics.
So theoretical economics is heavily deductive, focused on developing
mathematical models of either the way that the economy as a whole works.
For example, what factors might in a theoretical way influence or
influence growth or reduce a chances of a recession and
they typically work from very strong assumptions.
There's also a lot of theoretical work at the micro-level, as well.
Applied economics on the other hand, tends to be much more empirical,
much more inductive which relies on the collection and
the analysis of data about behavior.
It might be the behavior of entire economies if it's macro or
the behavior of individuals and families, and firms if it's micro.
And then of course, sometimes the results of the analysis again,
which is very inductive informs the development of theory.
Economics like the other disciplines I've been talking about
is divided into sub-fields or sub-disciplines.
I'll mention a few of them now, although of course, the field is always changing
and you'll be exposed to other ones if you pursue graduate study.
So, one of the traditionally big areas within economics has been labor economics.
Broadly speaking, this is the attempt to study systematically the factors
that shape the composition of the labor force.
So, we think that working age adults constitute the labor force.
So understanding the things that shape the number and
the composition of working age adults, including things like education and
health are all important questions for labor economics.
The study of population aging and retirement is also part of the study of
labor economics, because again, it's all related to labor force.
Another very important area within economic Is econometrics.
That is the development of statistical tools or
other quantitative tools for analyzing economic data.
Again, whether at the macro-level for the entire economy as a whole or
at the micro-level for families and individuals in firms.
One of the big concerns in econometrics is trying to figure out or
understand when a relationship is really proof of a causal
relationship and when it is simply an association.
Another big area in economics is industrial organization,
essentially understanding the dynamics of firms, industries,
companies that makeup the economy.
Why do they grow?
Why do they shrink or fail?
And how do they make decisions about different things to produce,
different people to hire and so forth.
Another big area is economic history.
This takes a lot of the other questions that are covered in other
parts of economics and then looks at them in a historical perspective.
One of the biggest areas within economic history is trying to understand
the sources of differences in the economic growth of different parts of the world and
a particular subject that receives great attention.
So in understanding why, especially the West, especially England, Northwest Europe
experienced moderate economic growth earlier than the rest of the world.
Dozens of books have been written on trying to explain from an economic
perspective why the industrial revolution took place in England and
Northwest Europe, and not until later elsewhere.
Another big area in economics is international economics.
This is the study of trade between countries.
Of course, this is increasingly important because world trade has grown so
much in recent decades.
Finally, there is finance.
This is closely connected to business and
almost every business school will have a department of finance,
which people study the underpinnings of the financial system.
Banks, loan making activities, stocks, bonds,
a lot of these are typically the subject of people doing research in finance.
Obviously, economics is a more diverse field than I can summarize here and
there are all sorts of changes going on.
Some economists now are looking at alternatives to the rational actor
paradigm.
So if you continue and you go on to graduate study in economics,
you'll learn about not only these disciplines, sub-disciplines that I just
mentioned, you'll learn about other opportunities as well in other areas.
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