What is an Economist?
” Dinosaur #1: “A flunkie mathematician who tries to predict the population of kangaroos in Australia. But that’s not important and don’t ask what a Kangaroo is.” Dinosaur #2: “I don’t know, how many?” Dinosaur #1: “10 economists and one grad student. One economist to make a model, one to run the regression, one to test the hypothesis, one to interpret the results, one to conclude how to screw it on, one grad student to screw it on, and five economists trying to fight off the dinosaurs trying to eat them. Economists have forecasted 9 out of the last 5 recessions. An econometrician and an astrologer are arguing about their subjects. The astrologer says, “Astrology is more scientific. My predictions come out right half the time. Yours can’t even reach that proportion”. The econometrician replies, “That’s because of external shocks. Stars don’t have those”. SOCIALISM: You have two cows. State takes one and give it to someone else. COMMUNISM: You have two cows. State takes both of them and
An economist is most simply described as a person who has expertise in the field of economics. In most cases, this expertise is gained after years of study in an academic setting, plus real-world experience. In most cases, there is no particular job that has as its title that of economist. Rather, the job may refer to an economic analyst or adviser, or any one of a number of other different titles. An economist will often specialize in a certain area of the economy. In most cases, this will likely be in one of two major areas, microeconomics or macroeconomics — the difference being one of scale. Microeconomics may focus on an individual, group of individuals or an organization. Macroeconomics will focus on how a larger group of individuals affect and behave in an economy. The main job of an economist, no matter what the specialization, is to examine the inner workings of the economy of interest to their organizations and make predictions and recommendations based on that. For example,
