Positive and normative statements

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In economics and philosophy, a positive statement (or descriptive statement) concerns what "is"; this is contrasted with normative statements (or prescriptive statements), which express a normative judgment about a proposition. Positive statements are the opposite of normative statements: whereas the former is meant to describe the world as it is, the latter is meant to talk about the world as it should be.^[1]

Positive and normative statements are often applied in economics to distinguish between the explanation of economic phenomena and normative evaluation of economic policy.

This distinction is regardless of whether the statement is empirically true or not; for example, "the Big Bang occurred in 2007" is empirically false, but remains a positive statement simply because it is a statement about what is.