Economics can also be divided into numerous subdisciplines including: international economics, development economics, labor economics, environmental economics, industrial organization, public finance, economic psychology, economic sociology, institutional economics and economic geography.

Another division of the subject distinguishes positive economics, which seeks to predict and explain economic phenomena, from normative economics, which orders choices and actions by some criterion; such orderings necessarily involve subjective value judgments.

There are also methodologies used by economists whose underlying theories are important.

• The most significant example may be econometrics, which applies statistical techniques to the study of economic data. Computational economics relies on mathematical methods, including econometrics.
• Another trend which is more recent, and closer to microeconomics, is to use social psychology concepts (behavioural economics) and methods (experimental economics) to understand deviations from the predictions of neoclassical economics.
• Evolutionary economics often deals with the otherwise difficult questions related to the role of 'routines' and 'capabilities' in explaining heterogeneity in firm outcomes.
• Economic history is the study of economic change, and of economic phenomena in the past.

Finance has traditionally been considered a part of economics – as its body of results emerges naturally from microeconomics – but has today effectively established itself as a separate, though closely related, discipline.

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