ECONOMICA

An often overlooked precursor to classical economics and one of the oldest treatises ever written on the subject is The Arthashastra, which was written by Kautilya and was meant as a primer for a monarch on how to rule. To increase the wealth of a kingdom, one requires an understanding of money and how it can grow; and thus Kautilya set in place one of the oldest economic treatises in the world-almost two thousand years before the classical economists we read about today. Kautilya writes about some important economic concepts such as trade, taxation, and wages; he does not differentiate between the wealth of the monarch and that of the people, and as such, has been likened to the German cameralist school of thought. He held a comparative cost advantage view when it came to international trade and understood that it is more efficient to import goods when other nations can make them cheaply when compared to domestically produced goods. He recognised that exports are not sacrosan...

A standard definition of Economics could describe it as a Social Science directed at the satisfaction of needs and wants through the allocation of scarce resources which have alternative uses. In simpler terms, it is a social science which is the scientific study of human society and social relationships. Studying human society essentially means studying human behaviour and here is where Behavioural Economics comes into picture. Behavioural Economics can be explained as a method of Economic Analysis that applies psychological insights into human behaviour to explain economic decision making. Economic psychology emerged in the twentieth century in the works of Gabriel Trade, George Kateona and Laszlo Garaie. In fact the concept of expected utility and discounted utility models began to gain importance during this period. Richard Thaler, the Father of Behavioural Economics won the 2017 Nobel Economics prize for his contributions in the field of Behavioural Econo...