Jesse Jaramillo; Zihang Liu Essays - Economics, Economy, Greg Mankiw

Jesse Jaramillo; Zihang Liu Hala Sun Writing 2 26 November 2017 Writing in Economics and Mathematics Field All academic fields involve some kind of writing. Being able to understand writings in your particular field is crucial in determining your success in your career. Of course, varied fields have even more varied writing styles. Literacy is important because it allows members of all fields to read each other's pieces and come to understanding. It allows us all in the academic community to discuss our ideas, learn, and solve major problems. Where the lines blur between fields is where real life issues need to be solved. In this essay we will discuss the unique writing styles in Economics and Math using example texts and interviews with experts in the respective fields. Economics, as a field, is the study of scarcity and what people do with limited resources. Economics, in its broadest sense, deals with production and consumption. The limited resources that are factors of production, the acquisition and consumption of those products are all covered in this wide-reaching field. Economics is heavily driven in theory and research, and there are not many new developments in the field. In other words, the theories that drive Economics are not challenged or changed often. So that the sources Economists can used are in smaller scope compared with in other field. In an interview with a UCSB Economics professor Jesse asked "What is considered good' writing in your field? What should you always and never do?" He answered that a good writing in Economics must be clear, precise, systematic, and use common language. This is summed up well in the introduction to chapter two of the textbook Principles of Macroeconomics by Gregory Mankiw, "Every field of study has its own language and its own way of thinking. Mathematicians talk about axioms, integrals, and vector spaces.[...] Economics is no different. Supply, demand, elasticity, comparative advantage, consumer surplus, deadweight loss--these terms are part of the economist's language." ( Principles of Macroeconomics , pg. 19). It boils down to using common and agreed upon language so that your peers in you field are able to understand your writing. This is extremely important to the clarity of the text. Without common language, passages like, "Because the tax change would alter the incentive for households to save at any given interest rate, it would affect the quantity of loanable funds supplied at each interest rate. Thus, the supply of loanable funds would shift."( Principles of Macroeconomics , pg. 268) would be unclear and lose meaning. Terms like, "loanable funds" and "interest rate" allow the reader, an economics student, to follow the text and comprehend the meaning. We can expect other economic texts about this topic to use the same terms. In the same interview Jesse asked the Economics professor, "What are some things you are expected to know in your field?" He answered that as Economists, we are expected to know basic problems, basic math, statistics, measurements of economic quantities, Supply and Demand, and other theories. There are a lot of basic economic ideas that are needed to understand economic writings. Without knowledge of the basic principles, any writing expanding on these subjects would be lost on the reader. These are foundation pieces on which Economists build their arguments on. We can see how basic concepts are used in order to further the discussion in Nature Genetics, "Casting genomic research as a government priority sent the message that the genome is a public good, that scientific findings were accountable to US taxpayers and that private investment in genomics would be accompanied by vigorous discussion of rules for participation in the new knowledge."( Nature Genetics , pg. 71 5). In this example we can see that the basic knowledge of what private investment and public good are allows us to comprehend the statement made. With basic understanding of foundational concepts, we are able to decipher texts that would otherwise be much too complex to understand. Graphs are used often in Economics. The ability to understand the graph and the theory in the graph is essential in understanding economics. In Figure 1 we can see the changes in Supply and Demand. This (Figure 1, Principles