# Economics Stack Exchange Community Digest

## Top new questions this week:

### Auction theory reference request

I am interested in finding the literature or at least some references (books, journal papers etc.) for the following problem: Suppose there is an auction with one seller and one buyer. The seller ...

reference-request auctions mechanism-design

### What happens to interest rates when they are already at (near) zero and the stock market crashes?

Let's say the global stock market crashes in the coming months (it's currently at an all time high in the western world). What happens to interest rates? "Usually", as I understand from my absolute ...

interest-rate stock-market

### What is the purpose of multiple regression?

For instance, consider the following regression equation $College Score=\beta_0+\beta_1HighSchool GPA+u$. We interpret this $\beta_1$as the effect of a higher High School GPA holding all other ...

econometrics

### Utility theory and portfolio optimization: utility of what exactly?

In finance, a common problem is selection of an optimal portfolio given some constraints (e.g. budget constraint and perhaps nonnegative allocation constraint). One can define the optimization problem ...

utility finance portfolio-theory
 asked by Richard Hardy 1 vote

### What limits central banks from setting highly negative interest rates?

What limits central banks from setting highly negative interest rates if needed? Is it only that people can take out a lot of cash and put it in a vault, or are there other reasons? If we had removed ...

monetary-policy interest-rate

### Business climate data collection experiments

Hernando de Soto in his book "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else" describes a series of experiments in different countries, illustrating economic ...

data-request history-economic-thought
 asked by Sergei Akbarov 1 vote

### What problems arise when the minimum wage is directly linked to the inflation rate?

For example if the minimum wage is 10, and the inflation for the year is 3%, then next year the minimum wage is 10*1.03 =10.30. the next year, inflation is 5%, so the minimum wage becomes 10.82. The ...

inflation minimum-wage real-analysis

## Greatest hits from previous weeks:

### Can one Calculate Fixed and Variable Cost From TC and Quantity Alone?

I have been asked a question and believe there is a mistake in the problem. I have been given a table of values, Quantity and corresponding Total cost. From those numbers I can easily calculate the ...

microeconomics cost

### Car prices haven't changed in 20 years, no inflation?

I notice that there seems to be little or no change in car prices over the last 20 years and they seem to be unaffected by inflation. For example, a Toyota Camry sold for about \$23,000 +/- \$2,000 ...

inflation price united-states

### When do supply and demand curves shift?

Let's assume that the price of apples has risen and that the quantity of apples sold during the last couple of weeks has decreased. From that, we can infer that the supply curve must've shifted to the ...

microeconomics

### Why can't a country print its own money to spend it only abroad?

If a country prints money and distributes it between the people, it causes inflation. But what if a country prints its own money to spend ONLY abroad, which would allow a country to buy whatever it ...

inflation

### Effect of lower Government spending on Loanable Funds Market

I'm having trouble with understanding what the results would be... Let's suppose the situation where the newly formed government act to cut government spending and, by doing so eliminate the ...

macroeconomics government-spending
 answered by Ian Brigmann 1 vote

### Why are imports subtracted from GDP?

GDP is a measure of a country's production. $$GDP = C + I + G + X_n$$ $C$ = Consumer Consumption $I$ = Gross Investment $G$ = Government Expenditures $X_n$ = Exports - Imports Exports are what we ...

## Can you answer this question?

### Shortcuts for elasticity of substitution

How can I find the elasticity of substitution (I know the definition) if I know the utility function $u(x,y)$? I know its increasing in $x$ and $y$, etcetera, and has everything else you want from a ...

mathematical-economics utility consumer-theory