Economist Overview

Maths was your favourite subject in school and logic your middle name. You have that uncanny knack of interpreting numbers. Interested in the way our world operates?  Then, welcome to career as an Economist.

 

If the word Economist fills your mind with frames of Manmohan Singh, Jaswant Sinha, P. Chidambaram and their sleep-inducing speech on budget day, you need a crash course in the basics of economics. 

 

First, let's get this right. If you wish to become an Economist, you should know that economics is all about making choices. As we all know, resources on planet earth are limited. For instance, basic resources like land, labour, capital and others like crude oil, iron ore, water, food materials and money - are all scarce. Hence, we have to utilise these resources in the most judicial and optimal ways.

 

Economists do this - they make sure that the scarce resources are utilised in an optimal way. There are two branches of Economics. They are Micro Economics and Macro Economics. A micro Economist focuses his or her  attention on individuals and firms. A micro Economist studies how much of goods or services consumers will demand at a certain price and how supply affects demand. A macro Economist studies the whole economy and forecasts future trends in employment, inflation, productivity, economic growth and investment.

 

As an Economist, your main job would be to:

• Find ways to distribute these scare resources 

• Study demand and supply 

• Study production 

• Study the cost so as to maximize production at the lowest cost 

• Study the prices of commodities 

• Look into population increase and its effects on food resources 

• Look for newer ways to minimise cost of labour for production of goods 

• Study consumer demand to maximise the production, and so on. 

 

Are you still with me? Good.

The study of Economics finds its application in business, industries, demography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, economic planning, developmental theory, transport, labour relations, engineering and technology, bioscience, etc. Now that may seem like anything and everything revolves around Economics. No technology, concept or discovery is feasible unless it is economically sound. So as an Economist, you'll have the opportunity to choose from various fields to work in. 

 

Some of the specialised areas within the field of Economics are: 

 

Agricultural Economics: Here as an Agricultural Economist, you will assist those involved in the agrarian community to make best use of rural resources, production, land productivity, labour, farm products and increase efficiency of farm management and maximise farm income. As an Agricultural Economist, you will also have to use your reasoning skills to forecast production and consumption pattern of agricultural products, plan out production at the lowest cost, identify markets and recommend courses for agricultural financing. 

 

Business Economics: As a Business Economis,t you’ll study business cycles, income distribution, disposable income, trends in spending pattern, effects of various changes on spending habits, effects of political and economic changes, trends in assets generation and investment, development of markets, and various other business related issues.

 

As a Business Economist, you’ll work with the corporate planning department and study the organisational structures of various corporate houses in relation to operation, marketing of goods and services. Another area of work will be helping corporate houses to generate even more money by studying their financial operations. 

 

Financial Economics: As a Financial Economist,you'll study credit and monetary polices to predict financial activity in the country. Your areas of concern will be cost of capital, capital budgeting, financial control, credit policies, cash flow and all related money matters. Devising credit policies, monetary policies, rate of interest, deflationary measures, foreign exchange policies, trade policies, etc. are all part and parcel of your job as a Financial Economist.  

 

Labour Economics: As an advisor to government or industry you'll work on developing and implementing labour policies. Issues such as labour legislation, minimum wages, social development, medical insurance; regulatory mechanisms, etc. will be you mantra. Basically, it's all about optimising the use of labour force of a country at the most feasible economic cost. As a Labour Economist, you will need to be well versed in the operations of labour unions, industrial and labour laws and management policies. 

 

International Economics: Your main job as an International Economist, would be to strike a balance between the exports and imports of a country. Studying foreign trade policies and establishing cordial international relations will also be your area of work. Terms of international trade like tariff structure, quality control, import and export taxes, foreign exchange control and trade agreement will hold a lot of meaning for you. 

 

Transport Economics: This is the most 'moving' aspect of the job - studying economies of transportation, analysing costs and benefits of different transport routes; optimising the cost of transportation; studying the transport policies and taxes of various countries to minimize the costs and maximise benefits. 

 

Political Economics: As a Political  Economist, you won't be wearing khadi and making eloquent speeches. Instead, you'll study different political systems of the world, the emergence of trade polices in various countries, relation between political systems and labour economy, market economy, consumers behaviour, spending patterns of consumers, monetary policies and financial system, trade barriers, investment trends, etc. 

 

Econometrics: You'll deal with economic models and calculations, study relations between two or more variables and develop models for economic forecasting and analysis. Econometrics is also a subject in any curriculum course in Economics. 

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