Buddhist economics

Course code - 101 405

Introduction to Economics
and
Economy
Learning outcomes
At the end of the lecture you will be able to
Define the economics
Explain its main branches
How it came into existence as a social science
Why and when Buddhism bridged with the
economics
Derivation of the term
The term economics comes from the Greek
for oikosnomos which mainly can be
discussed under two heads.
Oikos home
Nomos management
means custom or law, hence the term
economics means rules or laws of household.

Definition
A social science concerned chiefly with
description and analysis of the production,
distribution, and consumption of goods and
services
Merriam Webster

Definition
Definitions of economics can be discussed
under four main heads
1. Wealth definitions,
2. Material welfare definitions,
3. Scarcity definitions, and
4. Growth-centered definitions

Definition
Economics is the social science that studies
the production, distribution and consumption
of goods and services.
Adams Smith
Economics is the studies of ways in which
people use resources to satisfy their wants.
John Sickle

Definition
The science which studies human behavior as
a relationship between ends and scare means
which have alternative uses.
Lionel Robbins
Economics is a study of man in the ordinary
business of life. It enquires how he gets his income
and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the
study of wealth and on the other and more
important side, a part of the study of man
Alfred Marshall
Definition
Economics is the study of how people and society
end up choosing, with or without the use of money,
to employ scarce productive resources that could
have alternative uses to produce various
commodities over time and distributing them for
consumption, now or in the future, among various
persons or groups in society. It analyses costs and
benefits of improving patterns of resource
allocation
Samuelson
Origins of the subject
Adam smith is the one who introduce
economics as a subject. In late 18
th
century
1723-1790 he wrote a book on economics
which is entitled as wealth of nation. With the
compilation of this book Adam smith was
respected as father of modern economics. This
text is considered as the magnum opus of
Economics
Subject filed of economics

Our wants are almost unlimited. Even the people are
rich or poor there is never enough of everything to
satisfy our wants. How to narrow the gap between
what people want and what they are able to get is the
basic problem studied in economics.

Economics means the study of the way in which
mankind organizes itself to tackle the basic problems
of scarcity

Two ways
There are two way of narrowing this gap.
Want less
Get more
Poets, religious proponents and
philosophers advice us to take the first one. But
the history evident that always we have taken
the second one.


Branches of Economics
There are two branches of Economics,
Micro economics
Macro Economics
Micro economics

Micro means small just as the rendered sense
micro economics deals with the single unit of
an economic system.
How does an individual (or a family) decide
on how much of various commodities and
services to consume? How does a business
firm decide how much of its product (or
products) to produce?
These are the typical questions discussed in
microeconomics.
Macro Economics
Macro means large so that macro economics
deals with the branches of economic system. I
While the micro economics deals with the
individual income macro economics deals with
the national income.
Economy
The system of trade and industry by which the
wealth of a country is made and used

Differences between Economy and
Economics
Economy indicates the system ( activities or
the structure that the governments use to
make money)
Economic indicates the study or the scientific
discipline
Economy can be translated into Sinhala as
Arthakramaya
Economic can be translated into Sinhala as
ArthaSastraya
Buddhist Economics
Even though the Buddhism is being endowed
with a rich philosophy of economics westerns
did not touch it till late 1900
.
Complete credit
of acquainting Buddhist economics as a
subject goes to the Ernst Friedrich Schumacher
who worked as a civil servant in Burma. In
1973 he published his book which was entitled
as small is beautiful. His slogan Small is
beautiful attracted worldwide attention as the
crux of Buddhist Economics