INTRO: Aristotle said that man is a political animal. He said the truth. However, it is no less a truth that man is also an economic animal. Economics is a field of study, one of those that have attracted the definitional interests of scholars. A couple of the definitions will concern us here. In his magnum opus (greatest work) published in 1776, and titled, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Wealth of Nations for short), Adam Smith defined economics as an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. This is a way of saying that economics is a study which focuses on the nature of the wealth of nations, and the study of the things that make nations wealthy. This definition captures the economics of the state in a broad subject of political economy (macro-economics). But then, economics is more than that, including individual persons’ economics (micro-economics). The ability of Professor Lionel Robbins to capture the individuals...
...so, why ask why?