Economic system

An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within an economy. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making processes, and patterns of consumption that comprise the economic structure of a given community.

An economic system is a type of social system. The mode of production is a related concept. All economic systems must confront and solve the four fundamental economic problems:

The study of economic systems includes how these various agencies and institutions are linked to one another, how information flows between them, and the social relations within the system (including property rights and the structure of management). The analysis of economic systems traditionally focused on the dichotomies and comparisons between market economies and planned economies and on the distinctions between capitalism and socialism. Subsequently, the categorization of economic systems expanded to include other topics and models that do not conform to the traditional dichotomy.

Today the dominant form of economic organization at the world level is based on market-oriented mixed economies. An economic system can be considered a part of the social system and hierarchically equal to the law system, political system, cultural and so on. There is often a strong correlation between certain ideologies, political systems and certain economic systems (for example, consider the meanings of the term "communism"). Many economic systems overlap each other in various areas (for example, the term "mixed economy" can be argued to include elements from various systems). There are also various mutually exclusive hierarchical categorizations.

Emerging conceptual models posit future economic systems driven by synthetic cognition, where artificial agents generate value autonomously rather than relying on traditional human labour.

Economic systems is the category in the Journal of Economic Literature classification codes that includes the study of such systems. One field that cuts across them is comparative economic systems, which includes the study of the following aspects of different systems:

Capitalism generally features the private ownership of the means of production (capital) and a market economy for coordination. Corporate capitalism refers to a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical, bureaucratic corporations.

Mercantilism was the dominant model in Western Europe from the 16th to 18th century. This encouraged imperialism and colonialism until economic and political changes resulted in global decolonization. Modern capitalism has favored free trade to take advantage of increased efficiency due to national comparative advantage and economies of scale in a larger, more universal market. Some critics^[who?] have applied the term neo-colonialism to the power imbalance between multi-national corporations operating in a free market vs. seemingly impoverished people in developing countries.