The study of world economics (also called international economics) is the study of all of the factors that influence the movement of goods and money around the world, and because it is so intricately tied, the related politics. This includes trade and trade policies, justifications for protection, currency systems and exchange rates, the monetary and fiscal policies of world governments and economic development.

Trade and trade policies

Trade policies can be most simply divided into two schools of thought: free trade and protected trade. Free trade proponents advocate a system of trade whereby all goods would cross all country borders freely, without restrictive taxes or import duties.  In this theory, the efficiency gained by each country producing what it produces best and cheapest overrides any losses by individuals who produce those same goods and will lose their advantage when imported goods are introduced. There are two types of efficiencies addressed in this theory: production efficiency and consumption efficiency. Production efficiency recognizes that some countries that can produce more of a good or service (with the same amount of resources) than others.  Consumption efficiency recognizes that consumers in a free trade environment will have a greater collection of goods and services from which to choose.  The proponents of protected trade seek to protect individual industries and even companies within a country from what they perceive as unfair competition.

Justifications for protection  

The justifications for protection include the potential for unemployment, development of new industries, national security and the threat of foreign monopolies. Some concerns envelope more than one of these aspects. For instance, protection of the American steel industry is deemed important not only for the jobs that are lost when the steel mills close down, but also the concern that a nation such as the United States should not become totally reliant upon foreign steel. In addition, it is charged that foreign steel industry is only successful because of protectionism and the monopolistic policies of foreign governments.

Currency systems and exchange rates

A currency system is the medium of exchange that a country uses to settle its debts with other countries. Most countries have their own exchange rate. (Although, since 2002, most of the member countries of the European Community have agreed to use the same currency, the Euro, and drop the mark, franc, florin, lira, etc.) But many countries that have a currency of their own which they use for domestic settlements may use a benchmark currency to settle international trade or debt. This so-called “settlement currency” is usually the United States dollar.

The exchange rate is a quotation given by stating the number of units of a country’s currency that can be bought in terms of 1 unit of another country’s currency. For example, if we say that the Euro-U.S. Dollar exchange rate is 1.2 USD per Euro, that tells us that it will take 1.2 U.S. Dollars to get 1 Euro.

Monetary and fiscal policies of world governments

Most governments view their role in economics as a balance in which they have to protect their citizens from adverse movements in the economy such as unemployment, inflation and economic hardship with the needs of the security of the nation. Governments use two main tools for achieving these objectives: fiscal policy, which is the level of spending by the government and the imposition of taxes and issuance of debt to fund that spending, and monetary policy, through which governments attempt to manage inflation by managing the supply of money.  The fiscal policy of a government  determines what the government should be spending money on, the protection of the nation or social programs or which combination of both and, once decided upon, whether taxes will be raised to pay for the programs or whether government bonds will be issued to raise these funds voluntarily. The monetary policy of a government attempts to achieve certain economic goals such as lowering inflation, raising employment levels or spurring economic growth. This is done through managing the money supply by changing interest rates (through buying or selling their own currency) or by changing reserve requirements of banks,  (open market operations), and setting the reserve requirements, the amounts banks have to leave on deposit with the central bank, thus loosening or tightening the amount of money in circulation.

Economic development

Each unit of government, from the national level all the way down to towns and municipalities are interested in fostering the economic development of their constituent area.  Even on an international scale, organizations such as the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, set goals and design programs to spur controlled economic growth.  On national and local government levels, governments establish many organizations with the purpose of generating new jobs or retain existing jobs, and stimulating industrial and commercial growth.

A nation’s economic development policy, coupled with its trade policies, economic protection systems, manipulations of currency, monetary and fiscal policies will strongly influence its politics and its relations with other nations.

Economics has been known as the dismal science ever since Thomas Carlyle coined the phrase to summarize T. R. Malthus’ sad predictions in the 19^th century: that the fate of humanity’s economic life would be poverty, hardship and even starvation.  In most of the developed world today, this prediction has not been borne out, but in many third world nations, there are large pockets of poverty, hardship and starvation, and the contrast between these worlds illustrates some of the fundamentals of economics at work and how they are all interrelated.

The most basic principle of economics is the “law of supply and demand”, which is based on the concept of scarcity of goods.  Since there are no “goods”, including the means to pay for those goods, that are unlimited in supply, human beings have to make choices between the options open to them.  Even air and water, the basics of life, can be limited so that water in the desert and air on a mountain command a premium.  Each person makes a decision as to how he wants to allocate his limited resources. In a subsistence society, man allocates his only resources, time and labor, to raising food, building shelter and weaving cloth. If the soil and weather conditions are optimum in a certain locale, it would be easy for each member of the society to raise enough crops for himself and have some left to give to his neighbor in exchange for something the neighbor may have. However, if crops were that easy to grow, everyone would have more than they needed, which would force the value (prices) of these crops down.  Imagine, however, that trees were very rare and so it was difficult to build a strong shelter. The enterprising members of this society could travel to a region where there was wood and spend their time and labor resources obtaining this good.  This is called the “production possibility frontier”, which, in turn will affect the law of supply and demand. The wood to build shelters would become very valuable since there would not be much of it, since it requires so much in resources to produce.  Now each member of this society has to decide on how much of his relatively cheap food he is going to give up in order to obtain the expensive wood.

We have the same choices in modern, industrialized societies. Each member has to choose how he is going to spend his limited resources. Some of the members may have very few resources and have to spend most of them on basic necessities.  Others who have few resources many nevertheless make different choices, to cut back on a basic such as shelter in order to afford a luxury such as cigarettes. Many members of developed societies have more than enough resources to obtain food, clothing and shelter and need to make their economic decisions about whether they want to live in big house or live in a smaller house and afford a nice vacation every year. These choices (cigarettes for a nicer apartment, a vacation instead of a bigger house) are called “opportunity costs”, since each member is giving up one thing (the cost) to obtain something else (opportunity).

In some societies some items may be cheaper than others. Homes in Switzerland are very expensive because building materials and land are scarce and therefore expensive. Relatively speaking, homes in the United States are cheap because the United States has a lot of natural resources and land. This is the principal of “comparative advantage”.  Members of society in Switzerland have to make different choices regarding shelter than members of society in the United States.

As societies develop, these shifts constantly and naturally occur, so that if the price of housing comes down, our smoker may still be able to afford a better apartment, and our homeowner might be able to keep his big house and still go on vacation. Housing prices (cost of shelter) may come down because the supply of housing in the area goes up or interest rates go up and make it less desirable for people to have a mortgage.

At a certain point, however, in each society and for each good, choice becomes more limited. Once the price of cigarettes becomes so expensive that a smoker could no longer afford them and an apartment, he would have to give up cigarettes in order to have a place to live.  No matter how expensive food became, members of both subsistence and advanced societies would have to have food. This is the principal of “elasticity of demand”.  The demand for food is very inelastic because it is essential to life. The demand for other goods, such as cigarettes and vacations is elastic. We will give them up in order to have food and shelter.

Woven into all of these economic principles, however is another principle. There are some consumers who, no matter how high the price of cigarettes becomes, or not matter what they had to give up to take vacations, would still pursue that good. This is the principle of “utility”, which measures the perceived benefit each consumer receives from the goods he chooses. On an individual basis, this sometimes contradicts the laws of supply and demand. Since, under the law of supply and demand, as prices rise for an elastic good such as cigarettes go up, demand should go down and all smokers should no longer buy cigarettes.  An addicted smoker, however, will sacrifice many things in order to afford cigarettes now matter how high the price.  Someone who can’t live without vacations may end up with no home and just “follow the sun”.

These fundamentals of economics, therefore, can be summed up by these interrelations: the law of supply and demand, as determined by the comparative advantage of different societies and the production possibility frontier, dictates prices, which dictate demand, except as affected by the elasticity of a good and its utility to the consumer.