The analysis of economic forces in society is the basis of the academic discipline of Economics. In microeconomics we study how people use their limited resources to try to satisfy unlimited wants inside the market economy. Since an unregulated market can lead to an ineffective use of resources, we also study how the market can be influenced in a useful manner. In macroeconomics we try to explain how the economy develops inside society as a whole. These theories can be used to analyse many different specialised topics, e.g. financial economics, health economics, international economics, labour economics and public economics.

The Department of Economics is part of the School of Economics and Management at Lund University. Economics have been studied in Lund since 1668, and the department was founded in its present form in 1947. The department is today one of the largest in Sweden, with about 1000 undergraduate students every term and about 45 active PhD students. The faculty consists of 35 teachers and researchers, of which 12 are full professors.