My Interest In Economics & Finance
When students like myself begin learning about economics in school we are bombarded with the definition that ‘economics is the study of the scarcity of resources’, however in reality it is far more abstract than that. I prefer to think of economics as the study of behaviours and choice. As choices range over every imaginable aspect of the human experience, and economics does the same, as economists have investigated the economic implications inherent in all manner of issues.
Having read Thomas Picketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century I was able to gain a fuller insight which extends beyond the curriculum into one of the most prominent issues regarding all societies past and present, independent of socioeconomic status, inequality. Amongst the various lessons in Capital I found Picketty’s theory of capitalist accumulation to be most fascinating. He argued that the ratio of capital to income, ceteris paribus, will rise indefinitely and without limit, as long as the rate of return on capital is substantially higher than the given economy’s rate of growth. Living in a world of widespread inequality I found it harrowing how the impoverished are fuelling their own misfortune in working for large scale industrialists which suggests there to be no end in sight for the low-skilled and low-paid labour and thus suggesting that there may be some truth to Picketty’s argument. I found many of the arguments made in the book compelling and often refer to it when trying to form developed and detailed evaluations from data in all my lessons from a statistical hypothesis testing question on maths paper or a geography essay involving the examination of eustatic sea-level change.
Having attended UCL’s Economics & Finance workshop for prospective undergraduate economics students I was able to talk to many senior officials working for large financial institutions such as Credit Suisse and Deutsche, the lecture on widespread asymmetric information in the US’s lucrative sub-prime mortgage market was interesting for me as I was able to apply the fundamental economic principles that I have learnt from my lessons and further reading to help me understand what caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. One aspect of the workshop that resonated with me most was learning about empirical models that economists use frequently in order to provide a logical yet abstract template of how systems function in an economy. This affirmed my enjoyment for how rigorous the mathematics can be in an economics degree whilst typically being accompanied with historical factors and naturally I was keen to find out more.
