These are the typical definitions that students will find in Economics textbooks.
•the coordination process
•the effects of scarcity
•the economy
•the science of choice
•human behaviour
•human beings as to how they coordinate wants and desires, given the decision-making mechanisms, social customs, and political realities of society.
In my opinion the most important one there is the science of choice. Do to the fact that our wants are unlimited and our resources are limited, we are always having to makes choices about what we do with our limited time or money.
Each of these decisions will have some kind of trade off and economists can help us to make better ones.
There are only 24 hours a day, on average a person will sleep 8 of those. If they make a choice to sleep less they will have more time to do waking activities! Missing an hour or two of sleep every now and again will have little long term impact on us but do it repeatedly over the long term, leads to some negative effects.
If you were to reduce your hours of sleep over the longer terms to say 5 hours per night, studies suggest that an individual is at
- Substantially higher risk of cardiovascular disease
- Increased risk of obesity and diabetes
- Weakened immune function
- Higher rates of anxiety and depression
- Poorer memory and learning ability
- Increased risk of accidents due to slower reactions
So that additional 3 hours of being awake to pay video games or to earn additional income comes at a cost. If he have good information we can make good choices. If we don’t have good information or only partial information, we may not be making the best choice for ourselves.
What is it for you? 8 hours or 5 hours of sleep?
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