<P> The most frequently used current sense, denoting "the economic system of a country or an area", seems not to have developed until the 19th or 20th century . </P> <P> As long as someone has been making, supplying and distributing goods or services, there has been some sort of economy; economies grew larger as societies grew and became more complex . Sumer developed a large - scale economy based on commodity money, while the Babylonians and their neighboring city states later developed the earliest system of economics as we think of, in terms of rules / laws on debt, legal contracts and law codes relating to business practices, and private property . </P> <P> The Babylonians and their city state neighbors developed forms of economics comparable to currently used civil society (law) concepts . They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records . </P> <P> The ancient economy was mainly based on subsistence farming . The Shekel referred to an ancient unit of weight and currency . The first usage of the term came from Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC., and referred to a specific mass of barley which related other values in a metric such as silver, bronze, copper etc . A barley / shekel was originally both a unit of currency and a unit of weight, just as the British Pound was originally a unit denominating a one - pound mass of silver . </P>

Who makes the economic decisions in our country