Comparative Economics as a Science and Educational Discipline: To the Outlook of "Comparative Economics"

Abstract

Comparative economics, a young interdisciplinary science, which proper formation belongs to the twentieth century only, has been recently attracting more attention of the scientific community. This quite predictable interest is based on the very subject of the comparative economics which is socioeconomic systems in the mankind history. Researchers want to know what factors make systems come into being, transform, achieve prosperity, stop to develop; they need to understand how systems are functioning and which of their institutions should be attributed to as being fundamental – difficult or not transformed at all, and which of them are not so stable and therefore can be easily changed. This knowledge is crucially needed to elaborate an appropriate economic policy in order to meet national interests and cope with possible crises. Attention to the science is also based on its methodological possibilities: comparative analysis can provide complete and compact socio-economic panorama of mankind evolution versus traditional historical studies. This possible-to-embrace picture of global human history viewed as a set of different economic systems might be a good ground to conclude which of them possesses such attractive features as capacity for development, flexibility, readiness for self-improvement, ability to achieve and maintain reasonable socio-economic balance under negative internal and external influence, openness to interaction with other peoples and states, i.e. what system can provide the best sufficient infrastructure for growth and development focusing on ensuring a high standard of living for the people. Comparative analysis allows to predict, to some extent, the further evolution of economic systems, and chose the most attractive one as a desirable benchmark for national development. Thus, comparative economics is both of academic and practical value for society. Professor R. M. Nureev in his fundamental work "Comparative Economics (Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems)". Financial University. M.: Knorus, 2017) explores socio-economic systems as a subject of comparative economics, discusses methodology of the science, its advantages and limitations, challenges it faces, ideas argued by the most popular scholars; all these questions are discussed in this review.

Keywords

• Economic comparativistics
• socio-economic system
• methods of comparative analysis
• forecasting
• economic behavior
• mentality