The craft of designing believable trade, currency, resources, and labor systems that shape how your fictional societies actually function.
Economic worldbuilding is figuring out how people in your world make a living, what they trade, what's scarce, and what's valuable. It covers currency systems, trade routes, labor, class structures, and the resources that drive conflict. You don't need a PhD in economics; you need to understand what your world's people need to survive and who controls the supply. When readers see characters buying bread, paying taxes, or smuggling cargo, they're experiencing your economic worldbuilding.
Economics creates some of the most relatable conflict in fiction because everyone understands scarcity, debt, and wanting more than you have. A world where you never think about money feels fake. A world where a failed harvest means war, where a trade monopoly funds tyranny, or where a magic resource reshapes the class system feels alive and urgent.
The spice melange is the most valuable substance in the universe, and Herbert builds every political and military conflict around controlling its production.
Baru uses economic manipulation as a weapon of empire. The novel treats accounting and trade policy as genuinely thrilling plot tools.
Pratchett explores economics with wit and insight, from the invention of paper money in Making Money to the 'boots theory' of socioeconomic unfairness.
Decide what a day's labor is worth in your world. From that anchor, you can price everything else. Think about barter, credit, and local currencies too.
Ask where the food comes from. Who grows it, who ships it, and who pays for it. Even one sentence about harvest season grounds your world.
Real economies are messy. Some people game the system, some benefit by accident, and some suffer despite doing everything right. Show the gray areas.
Invent a single scarce resource for your world (a mineral, a magical substance, a crop that only grows in one place). Spend 15 minutes writing a scene where two characters from different social classes interact because of this resource. Show how the resource's scarcity shapes both of their lives differently.