ABSTRACT
The economy is all around us. It loosely defines the relationship between individual wants, needs, and desires through exchanges of various forms. In other words, the economy is the “production and consumption of goods and the transfer of wealth to produce and obtain those goods” through market interactions “to get what they [the individuals] want or accomplish certain goals” [2]. Economics, or the study of this process, like all social sciences is extremely broad with many facets from broad, worldwide impacts (e.g., gross domestic product, global recessions) to localized or even individual choices (e.g., buying bread at the store). Unfortunately, many emergency management and homeland security professionals have only a rudimentary understanding or consideration of economics before disasters and an even murkier view of how economic processes are impacted (and/or occur) during response and recovery efforts.
