The caring services performed for dependent persons by professionals, family members, and friends are crucial for the functioning of the economy. Yet economists' notions of caring, its basic elements, and structural characteristics remain fragmentary. In this study, Maren A. Jochimsen presents an analysis of caring, systematically integrating existing approaches and proposing a new concept for caring in economic theory. The author identifies the three components that make up a caring situation: motivation, reflecting the need and the responsibility to care; work, the hands-on caring activity; and resources, the material/financial basis and time to sustain a caring relationship. Complemented by a detailed analysis of asymmetries in caring and their impact on economic theory, Jochimsen's concept lays bare the structures of care, defining central categories for its analysis and locating major co-ordinates for its social and economic organization.