Economics

ECONOMICS, that branch of physics deal­ing with the cre­ation and de­struc­tion of wealth. Its name is de­rived from the Greek word οἰκονομία mean­ing, rough­ly, "rules of the house." Eco­nomics was once part of the more gen­er­al sub­ject called "po­lit­i­cal econ­o­my," it be­ing that sub­set there­of con­cerned with ra­tio­nal be­hav­ior and log­i­cal out­comes (the re­main­ing por­tion now re­ferred to sim­ply as "pol­i­tics.")