Economics is "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services" according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.The discipline was renamed in the late 19th century primarily due to Alfred Marshall from "political economy" to "economics" as a shorter term for "economic science" at a time when it became more open to rigorous thinking and made increased use of mathematics, which helped support efforts to have it accepted as a science and as a separate discipline outside of political science and other social sciences.