Economic Resources

Abstract

Chapter 1 begins by explaining why economics must be studied with data, and the first data to be considered relate to the economic resources of the economy: namely, labour and capital. We look first at data on the British labour force and on the population from which the labour force is drawn. We look at the distribution of people in the economy and at the growth and fluctuations in numbers. En route we consider some technical matters such as: the distinction between stocks and flows; how the population and the labour force are counted; why we use a ratio, or ‘logarithmic’, scale to present certain data and how such scales work; how to deal with compound growth; and the useful ‘Rule of 70’ is explained.