Economics (Honours) (Optional Co-op)

At its core, economics is the study of reasoned choice in the context of scarce resources and competing interests. The need to make such choices pervades the day-to-day lives of all individuals and of society as a whole. Along with the study of decision-making and the interactions between the associated individuals, economics examines many important social problems such as health care, pollution, resource depletion, poverty, social assistance, and the tax system.

In addition to being applied to the problems of society, economics is applied in many business fields including labour relations, banking and financial markets, and international trade and finance.

An education in economics is very different from one in business. While the latter provides training in specific areas of current interest to prospective employers, the former is a social science: it is an intellectual discipline that seeks to analyze and understand social phenomena. The focus of an education in economics is on individual intellectual growth and development rather than on training for a particular job that may become less valued or obsolete in the not-too-distant future.