What is Economics?

Economics struck me as a tool,

how you can analyse something, figure out what's going on,

and then come up with the best possible solution

to help the general public.

Economics is the study of trade offs.

It brings in history and psychology

and politics and current events.

Economics spans lots of different disciplines.

It's a bit mathematical, it's a bit business-y,

it's a social science.

The way I see it is trying to understand

the uncertain world around us.

We sometimes use data on interesting things

and just create fun graphs.

A bit of coding goes on, I think,

in the spare time of a lot of economists.

A very novel peice of economic work

done a few years ago was to look at corruption

in the sumo wrestling industry.

I actually don't think that many people

necessarily have a strong idea about what

an economist actually does.

I think people think that I'm a bank teller sometimes,

and I'm sitting there cashing checks

for members of the public.

My wife often thinks that I know a lot about accountancy.

I know very little about accountancy.

A lot of people think economics is all about money.

Money's just a convenient measure for something.

Accountants are sitting there studying books,

thinking about how much tax needs to be paid.

An economist thinks about well, how much tax should be paid?

My day-to-day job is in an organisation

that thinks about interest rates and the financial sector,

but it can go much further than that.

Currently I work on the prices desk at the RBA

so I look at inflation and of course,

inflation is one of the indicators

of the health of the economy.

Just after the election of Donald Trump,

I was the U.S. economist, helping to

figure out what was going on in the U.S. economy

and trying to work that into a narrative

and a set of forecasts.

I am analysing the Chinese economy

and Chinese financial markets.

So what I do in my job is

actually implement monetary policy.

The idea is to make sure the cash rate is what

the Reserve Bank Board sets it at.

People in economics think about world poverty.

Analysing the macro economy for say, a bank

or an investment bank, or in the private sector

in another capacity.

Environmental economics being one of them,

health economics being another.

NGOs require economists.

They think about history,

they think about what went on in the Great Depression.

They think about family decisions,

people thinking about the trade-offs involved in that.

It's a very broad subject.

A career as an economist or choosing to be an economist,

is really versatile, so you're really not

pigeonholing yourself into one particular area

or one particular discipline.

It really just gives you a nice way

to think big picture.

I think if you're really keen to understand

the world around you, economics is really something for you.

It's fun, it's interesting.