This term evolved from the French Mercantilist usage of économie politique, which expanded the notion of economy from the ancient Greek concept of household management to the national level, as the public administration of state affairs.
[2] On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle (1849) coined 'the dismal science' as an epithet for classical economics, a term often linked to the pessimistic analysis of Malthus (1798).
[12] Gary Becker, a contributor to the expansion of economics into new areas, describes the approach he favours as "combining the assumptions of maximizing behaviour, stable preferences, and market equilibrium, used relentlessly and unflinchingly".
[13] One commentary characterizes the remark as making economics an approach rather than a subject matter but with great specificity as to the "choice process and the type of social interaction that such analysis involves".
A recent review of economics definitions includes a range of those in principles textbooks, such as descriptions of the subject as the study of: It concludes that the lack of agreement need not affect the subject-matter that the texts treat.