I am writing an essay with this sentence:
This study focuses on the transformation of the economy.
I wonder if to refer to the economy as a whole I could say
This study focuses on the transformation of economy.
According to both the Macmillan Dictionary and the Cambridge English Dictionary, the word economy when referring to the whole of trade, business, and industry should be countable. It is only an uncountable noun when used to mean "saving money". Does it mean it should always be preceded by the definite article when used in this sense?
It seems strange that I found a lot of examples online that defy this.
More clearly even than the transformations of economy, the transformations of law reveal the influences of the quantity, for example, or of the heterogeneity of the associated unities.
The course examines contemporary Latin America, and the transformations of economy, society and politics that have occurred in the twentieth century.
The transformations of economy and society since the mid-1970s have generated a more political world, as conceptions about ways of resolving the emerging problems have sharpened and fractured the postwar political consensus.
… to analyze how the adaptiveness of states is today accomplished within the framework of globalized inter-state integration, although often still haphazardly regulating the transformation of economy and society on a global scale, and how well this is embedded in global society;
Best Answer
As a countable noun, ("the economy", "our economy", etc.), the word means "the system of production, distribution, and consumption, especially within a political or geographic entity".
(James Carville's strategy for Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign — i.e. harp on the economic troubles caused by Bush's tax policy and brief Gulf War.)
An an uncountable noun ("economy"), the word used to mean the science of economics; now it means "frugal use of resources", e.g.
I think you mean the former.