Economics is a social science concerned with theproduction, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It studies howindividuals, businesses, governments, and nations make choices about how toallocate resources. Economics focuses on the actions of human beings, based onassumptions that humans act with rationalbehavior, seeking the most optimal level of benefit or utility.The building blocks of economics are the studies of labor and trade. Since there are many possible applications of humanlabor and many different ways to acquire resources, it is the task of economicsto determine which methods yield the best results. Economics can generally bebroken down into macroeconomics,which concentrates on the behavior of the economy as a whole, and microeconomics,which focuses on individual people and businesses.