Associate in Arts in Economics for Transfer Degree

Foothill College

Economics is the study of how society allocates scarce resources-such as land, labor, and capital-in an attempt to satisfy unlimited wants. It is broadly divided into two branches: macroeconomics and microeconomics. Macroeconomics is concerned with the workings of the economy as a whole. It is the study of broad measures of economic performance: Gross Domestic Product, unemployment, and inflation. Microeconomics focuses on the role of individual decision-makers-consumers and firms-and analyzes the efficiencies and failures of a market system. The two branches approach the fundamental questions of resource allocation from opposite sides: one from the perspective of the economy as a whole and one from the perspective of the individual agents in the economy.