Economy, it is claimed, plays an important role in several theoretical frameworks, even some that are strongly opposed. For instance, in a usage-based perspective, Haspelmath (2006) attempts to generally reduce markedness to economy, whereas economy is advocated as a basic principle of grammar within Chomsky's Minimalist Program. In a similar vein, analogy seems to have become more relevant to the traditional neo-grammarian view, in that analogical modeling of grammar has attracted more and more of the interest of scholars of different theoretical credos. This paper investigates the relation between analogy and economy. It is argued that these two concepts should be viewed in relation to Wurzel's (1989) system adequacy, which accounts for a particular morphological system on the basis of its own structural properties—in other words, its "by itself" nature.