Economics, as a dismal science, can sometimes be frustrating. You don’t specifically know what you are dealing with and sometimes everything seems artificial and delusional. Do supply and demand really drive the market? Market and price both are created by us, then how can these two properly function without any intervention? Even they perform best when there is no outside force.

When I started studying Economics, I had little idea about the subject. I never read it before and I had always skipped the business section of the newspapers. GDP, inflation, stock, unemployment rate, money exchange, prices of oil, gold and so forth—I used to find this boring and couldn’t think why people would read these. Now I am studying these every day and it became entertaining in some ways. Because you know, there is joy in knowing something that many people don’t know well enough.

Well, today I am going to discuss 11 things I learned from studying economics for my Bachelor of Social Science in Economics degree. I actually discovered economics is not boring if you know what you are doing. Even economics is shaping the world in many ways.

Lesson 1: Economics matters in reality

 Economics actually matters. The law of economics is working in the real world. For example, the demand and supply law is one of the basic laws of economics. If supply reduces, the price of the product has the opposite effect. Price increases as it is happening now with the increase in oil price worldwide and inflation is rising. Because of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, the supply of oil was shortened.

If you look carefully at the data, you will see economic laws are relevant.

Lesson 2: People make rational choices despite them not knowing this

We, the people, often take rational decisions to make ourselves better off. When prices are up, many people reduce consuming the product or totally refrain from consuming, which in turn, takes the prices go back to the previous level. This is what a well-functioning economy does. The market knows best what to do.

Lesson 3: Studying Economics is useful if you want to be smarter

Economics teaches you how to make decisions which might help you in making some well-thought decisions in real life. In economics, we make decisions on what to consume, how much to consume, what to produce, how much to produce, and so forth. It’s about decisions in a world, where resources are scarce.

If you study economics and apply the economic lessons to real life, you might be able to make smarter decisions. It will pay off eventually as you are taking all the things into account to make choices.

Lesson 4: Statistics can be misleading. Take statistics results with a grain of salt.

Statistics is a great tool to know whether the observations we make are correct and in line with reality. But it can be flawed. People manipulate the dataset to get the result they want. I used to have great respect for data. I had faith in all kinds of research (really dumb, right?). But now I take every research result with a grain of salt as it can be misleading. You should too. Before taking a research result seriously, carefully analyze who the researchers are, how they did their research, and whether they took the right samples.

Lesson 5: If you want to convince people about something, use mathematics and graphs

Oh, well! In economics, graphs are everywhere. I didn’t know graphs could be this useful. It makes you understand the concept easily within a short amount of time. Graphical representation is a great way to convey your theory, and thoughts to others, and people will really like it. This kind of presentation will convince them to believe what you are saying. That is the reason you need to use graphs with great care so that it doesn’t state wrong or manipulated information.

Lesson 6: Economists make lots of predictions

Yes, this is one of the main jobs of economists. They make predictions a lot while they write in newspapers, talk on shows, and discuss in a meeting. They love to predict what will happen in the economy. Is inflation going to rise? Is the unemployment rate going to fall? How much the country’s GDP will increase in the next year? You will find economists talking about these things all the time.

Lesson 7: Having a well-functioning economy makes everybody happy in the country

Having a well-functioning economy means adequate production for all, reasonable prices, people are employed and paid enough, GDP is rising, and so forth. When people have enough money in their pockets to consume products and there are enough products in the market, they are happy. The sellers, and owners of the businesses, are happy, and so is the government.

Now the government knows people are not going to participate in any movements or protests and they (government officials) are safe.

Lesson 8: Unstable economy creates chaos

Sri Lanka is the most recent case of this. The country is suffering badly from the chaos and an unstable economy created. The prime minister of the country Mahinda Rajapaksa has resigned amid extreme protests. All of this began when the country couldn’t produce enough products to feed its people. People were losing jobs. Even exams were canceled because there were not enough papers.

This is how a bad economy influences a country. This is the reason governments are too conscious of the economy.

Lesson 9: Although economists know many things about economic policies, real decision-makers are politicians

Unfortunately, in some economies, politicians take policy decisions involving the economy rather than economists. Economists help them taking the decisions, but ultimately, it’s under the control of politicians.  

Lesson 10: Economics are best understood through real-life examples

A good economics class should contain stories from newspapers, books, or something like this so that students know that the things they are studying can be applied in the real world. When a professor takes a real-life example, the class becomes interesting. Students should know economics is not all about studying theories, graphs, statistics, and mathematics,  there are thought-provoking implications to all of these.

Lesson 11: Economics is relatively easy if you understand graphs, mathematics, and the concept of marginality well

Now, here’s a tip about doing well in economics tests which I found when I took the tests. You need to understand how to articulate a theory through graphs and mathematics. It will make you look wise to teachers and actually, you are wise as you understand these well. You will find the concept of marginality in many places in economics. So, a good concept about this will make you a decent student in economics.

These are the lessons I found out while studying economics at university. Economics is not boring at all, even it is a very interesting subject. Having a good concept of economic theories will make you feel good and you will understand many complex economic processes that others might not know.