Economics is not business. Business classes teach professional skills that are useful for
starting and operating companies. Business strategy and financial management classes often
exploit insights from economics in providing better advice to businesses, much the way
clinical psychologists apply the relevant research from academic psychology to help them
treat their patients. Economics and business are related, but business is professional
training ultimately aimed at making profits, while economics is a science that pursues an
improved understanding of our social world.
Economics is also not policy. It is true that policy considerations often motivate economic
analyses, that economists often make policy recommendations on the basis of their
analyses, and that insights from economics are relevant to almost every policy debate.
However, economics must be supplemented by other perspectives for a fully informed policy
evaluation.