The Data Driven Series – Economics (Introduction)
Welcome to our Data-Driven Series on Economics. Each of our data-driven articles uses real-world numbers and analysis to help explain how we reached our conclusions, and support our recommendations. Introductory articles in the series will be limited in numbers as they are only intended to introduce the subject and explain why we will be digging into them.
Data Gathering, Analysis, and Visualization
Unless otherwise stated, all data for our series comes from publicly available sources, and all analysis and visualizations are done by us using this data. We may use ideas or stories from other sources, but we verify that the available data agrees based on our own analysis before we use any conclusions based on the work of others.
We do our best to identify any assumptions we need to make and call out any areas of uncertainty in our conclusions. However, we are only human, so we know we will make a mistake at some point. We are always open to valid criticism and corrections and are willing to acknowledge any mistakes that are pointed out to us. If you have access to data to contradicts our work, please let us know so we can improve our work.
Since we maintain our own copies of all data we use, we are able to combine data from multiple sources to create deeper and more nuanced analyses. In the future, we intend to make all of our data and analyses available for other people to use on their own.
What is Economics?
What is economics? From the Oxford Languages definition, economics is the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. According to The Economist, the most concise, non-abusive definition is the study of how society uses its scarce resources.
Economics is very broad since it covers big-picture issues like inflation, unemployment, and national dynamics down to studying individual people, companies, and markets. Economists are interested in in everything from your grocery shopping list to the impact of tariffs on global gross domestic product (GDP). Big picture economics are referred to as macroeconomics, with microeconomics focused on the smaller scale economic interactions.
In short, economics includes everything that influences how money is earned, spent, saved, or lost because money is the proxy used to show how valuable things are in modern societies. How much are you willing to spend for something you want?
What Economics Are Important to Review?
Since we are interested in how things work together, we want to focus on markets and trends that impact people directly, as well as how economics interact with other Data-Driven Series areas like demographics, immigration, and investing. This still gives us a lot of areas of economics to study.
- Inflation
- Unemployment
- Economic Policies
- Supply Chain and Logistics
- International Economics
- Supply and Demand
- Individual Markets
- Agriculture
- Real Estate
- Manufacturing
- Information Services
- Customer Service / Retail
- Credit, Debt, and Bankruptcy
- Behavioural Economics
- White, Gray, and Black Markets
- Capital, Financing, and Investing
- Unions and Labor Markets
- …and more…
When we start looking at how economics interacts with other areas of human life it opens up even more worthwhile investigations.
- Demographic impacts on personal and group economics
- Healthcare and economic implications
- Economic consequences of immigration policies
- Relationship between investing and economics
- Economic changes and diversity
Major world events can also be examined from an economic perspective as well.
What’s Next?
This is just an introduction in a series on data driven insights across a diverse range of fields. Our goal as we continue is to not only learn and start discussions, but also help guide and develop solutions to modern problems. As we examine some of these subjects from a data perspective, we will find areas where a recurring or deep dive will help us better understand our world, and identify areas where we can have a positive impact.
