Economic Behaviour (Routledge Revivals)

Chapter 6The National Income

So far in this book we have concentrated attention on the behaviour of consumers, producers and factors of production in individual markets. Our object has been to show how resources are allocated by a pricing system.

There is, however, another way of looking at things. This is to ignore the fine details and to step back and view the economy as a whole. The time has come to adopt this wider approach, which concentrates on the aggregate behaviour of major components of the economic system.

Macroeconomics

The branch of economics which deals with aggregates, such as the total national income, is known as macroeconomics, as opposed to microeconomics, which examines questions of resource allocation in individual markets ...