"You could have a central authority that decides what gets produced and who gets what, and we would call that visible-hand control because you can clearly see who’s calling the shots," explains Dr. Walden, a professor of agricultural and resource economics. "A good example of those kinds of economies would be the current-day Cuba and the former Soviet Union.

"The alternative is what economists call a market economy.," he adds. "We would argue that’s an invisible hand economy because we don’t have any central authority directing things.

"Really it looks chaotic if you look at it from the outside. Resources are priced by the interaction of supply and demand. And individuals make decisions about what to purchase based on those prices. Businesses make a decision about what to produce based on whether they can make a profit.

"But it all seems to work out. And furthermore, economists who study these things say that actually standards of living in countries that use the invisible hand, compared to the visible hand, are much higher."