Fill in the gaps choosing from the box

UNIT III. FROM THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT

VOCABULARY LIST

1. political economy

2. contemporary economic thought

3. economics

4. home economics

5. to have the roots in

6. to emerge

7. the classical school of economics

8. laissez fair

9. government direction and regulation

10. price mechanism

11. an “invisible hand”

12. a self-regulating and self-adjusting mechanism

13. to tend to a state of equilibrium

14. aggregate demand

15. to allocate resources

16. to determine the level of economic activity

17. government intervention into economy

18. fiscal and monetary policies

19. economic demand, growth and prosperity

a. to stimulate economic demand, growth and prosperity

20. economic recessions and depressions

a. to mitigate negative effects of economic recessions and depressions

21. globalization

22. the emergence of a global economy

Developing Skills

Match the halves from the list A (1-7) with their possible endings (the list B, a-g) to make word combinations.

A	B
1) a separate	a) school of economics
2) a branch of	b) tools
3) emergence of	c) economic thought
4) use of	d) domestic science
5) economic	e) discipline
6) the history of	f) a global economy
7) the classical	g) resources

Use the word combinations from 1.1 in the following sentences. Change the verb / noun form where necessary.

1) _________ concerns thinkers and theories in the field of political economy and economics from the ancient world right up to the present day.

2) But economics was not considered ________ until the nineteenth century.

3) First it was considered as _______ (home economics) dealing with such matters as the management of slaves and the allocation of manure.

4) An understanding of the different approaches to economics, the causes for those differences and how they have evolved over time provides a historical and philosophical context that encourages a more critical analysis of current ______ and their applications.

5) ______, which is regarded as the first school of economic thought, is associated with the 18th century Scottish economist Adam Smith, and those British economists that followed, such as Robert Malthus and David Ricardo.

6) As contemporary economic thought deals with the issues of globalization and the _______, economists have turned to the multitude of other disciplines which, like economics, developed independently.

7) Economic history is different from history of economic thought. It is the study of the economic aspects of societies in the past; the history of theeconomic _______ (land, labour and capital); or the examination of the past performance of economies.

 

Guess the term by its definition.

 

aggregate demand; laissez fair; wages; globalization; full employment;

loan interest; recession; political economy

 

1) the original name of what is now known as economics;

2) payment for a loan additional to repayment of the amount borrowed;

3) a fixed regular payment earned for work or services, typically paid on a daily or weekly basis;

4) the doctrine of unrestricted freedom in commerce, especially for private interests;

5) a slowdown or fall in the rate of economic growth;

6) a state in which the labour force and other economic resources of a country are utilized to their maximum;

7) the sum of demands for all the goods and services in an economy at any particular time;

8) the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale

 

Fill in the gaps choosing from the box.

a) economic recessions and depressions; b) the classical school; c) laissez fair; d) the Wealth of Nations; e) self-regulating; f) government intervention;

g) political theory; h) the price mechanism; i) Lord John Maynard Keynes; j) Adam Smith; k) fiscal and monetary policies

 

By the beginning of the 18th century economic matters were largely studies bythe branch of (1) _____ dealing with problems of government intervention in economic affairs. Then in 1776 the Scottish moral philosopher (2) ______ published the first edition of his work «Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of (3) _____», and economics soon became an independent science.Adam Smith and his followers Robert Malthus and David Ricardo represent the first school of economic thought – (4) _____. The main idea of the Classical school was that markets work best when they are left alone. (5) _______ could and should replace government direction and regulation in economics, Smith argued. Markets should beleft to work because (6) ______ acts as a powerful 'invisible hand' to allocate resources towhere they are best employed. The economic system is a (7) _______ mechanism that, like the human body, tends naturally toward a state of equilibrium if left to itself.

The classical doctrine dominated economic thinking in all advanced economies for the next 150 years. It was first seriously challenged by the great English statesman and economist (8) _______, who claimed to see in the Great Depression of the 1930s the evidence that the economic system was not self-adjusting. The economist and his followers argued that without continued (9) ________ the economic system couldn’t operate at the level of activity that is required to achieve full employment of labour and other resources. He advocated government’s use of (10) ________ to stimulate economic demand, growth and prosperityandmitigate the negative effects of (11) ________.

 

4. Get ready to report in class on one of the following schools of economic thought:

a) Greek Economic Thought;

b) Merchantilism;

c) Physiocracy;

d) The Classical School;

e) Marxism;

f) Neo-classical school;

g) Keynesian economics;

h) Institutionalism;

i) Monetarism