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Did countries ever default against Federal Reserve's swap line?

Did foreign countries ever default against Fed's swap line or Foreign and International Monetary Authorities ? Or is it technically possible? I guess they will lose their collateral, and it's a big ...
Matt Frank's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
63 views

Why is the barter economy predating money taught when it never existed?

As described here, and from what I remember from economics class (this may sound anecdotal, but I think it's common knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong), a barter economy is said to predate money. But ...
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Was pre-industrial economy more likely to have overproduction or shortage problem. How large would be the gap

I read in somewhere that the per capita annual production of cast iron in the roman empire was on par with per capita annual consumption of cast iron in 15th century England. Assume this is accurate, ...
user30303's user avatar
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0 answers
17 views

How does one get FIM exchange rates prior to 1999?

I have long known of and used the data from: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/euro_reference_exchange_rates/html/index.en.html But it only goes back to February 1999. FIM (...
K. Cowette's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
29 views

What factors influence whether an invention is not patented?

Various inventions that have become well-known were never patented, including matches, emoticons, and the magnetic strip. Other noteworthy examples include the polio vaccine (Jonas Salk), monoclonal ...
Max Muller's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
53 views

History of Education Economics

I am looking for an historical overview about education economics covering especially the 20th century, e.g. the randomized experiments beginning in the 1960s or the early as well as recent attempts ...
Arne's user avatar
  • 210
0 votes
1 answer
98 views

Where does the euro/dollar rate data prior to 2002 come from?

The Euro was created in 1999 and introduced in 2002. But if you search for the euro/dollar rate data there is a rate value back to Aug 1983. Where does this data come from?
gacero's user avatar
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3 votes
0 answers
55 views

Who first promoted the idea that competition leads to a better economy?

Who first promoted the the idea that competition leads to a better economy?
Geremia's user avatar
  • 453
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0 answers
36 views

How do I build a synthetic measure of economic activity for linear regression?

I'm trying to estimate the effects of WW2 on the economy using historical data for cities. The regression is pretty simple: ...
Tototulbi's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
47 views

Alternative to Investing.com

Do you know of any alternative to Investing.com that allows me to get historical data by editing the URL? What I mean is that in Investing.com in the historical data page I get the form data retrieved ...
Fábio LinharesCPC's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
299 views

Is there any evidence that socialist systems are/ were constrained by capitalism and this is the main cause for its demise?

Following the definition of socialism by Oxford dictionary. Socialism a set of political and economic theories based on the belief that everyone has an equal right to a share of a country’s wealth ...
CuriousIndeed's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
185 views

What's the highest percentage of output any country spent on its military?

I was surprised that in 1941: American military spending accounted for 2 per cent of it's national output. Compared to Japan's 70 per cent. 70% seems incredibly high, especially given people still ...
stevec's user avatar
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1 answer
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The Amsterdam stock exchange market

The Dutch East India Company (founded in 1602) was the first joint-stock company to get a fixed capital stock and as a result, continuous trade in company stock occurred on the Amsterdam Exchange. I ...
unmarriedinquirer's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
30 views

Why is having a big corporation keep its money in foreign countries a bad thing in the public's eye?

I have been trying to dig deeper into corporate tax evasion, and how it works, to really determine if they're doing something bad or what. I don't know much about economics or politics, but I hear ...
Lance's user avatar
  • 103
1 vote
1 answer
134 views

Was the financial crash of 2008 caused by top graduates of the American Ivy Leagues working at wall street banks?

From this article by Lisandro 'Leloy' Claudio, a Philippine/a Filipino professor of history, politics, South & Southeast Asian Studies (and not necessarily of finance, economics, mathematics or ...
BCLC's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
78 views

What was the US monetary policy like in the 70s?

Today the US inflation target is roughly 2%. However in 1974 the inflation rate was 11% and in 1980 it was 13.5%. What monetary policy did they follow at that time that allowed the inflation to rise ...
Andy's user avatar
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1 answer
53 views

How does the size of the largest cryptocurrency compare to the largest traditional currency?

'Money' has evolved throughout economic history, and has included moving from: barter economies (i.e. no 'Money' - simple trading of final goods/services) commodity money - money whose intrinsic ...
stevec's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
962 views

Why is South Korea classified as an Emerging Market economy?

I have recently found out that South Korea is part of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, and that the South Korean Won (KRW) currency trades as a non-deliverable currency. Furthermore, the South Korean ...
Jan Stuller's user avatar
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0 answers
31 views

Are there any books on economy of the medieval England?

I would like to learn more about how the medieval economy in the UK worked. Are there any economists that research medieval society in the UK? Are there some good books on this?
Ezekiel's user avatar
  • 265
7 votes
2 answers
233 views

Applications of Optimal Transport in Economics

The 1975 Nobel Prize winner in Economics was Kantorovich who reformulated the optimal transportation theory of Monge and applied it to optimal resource allocation. The Wasserstein distance is central ...
develarist's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
217 views

Are simultaneous equation models out of fashion? Why?

According to Angrist & Pischke "Undergraduate econometrics instruction: Through our classes, darkly" (2017) Tables 2 and 3, econometrics textbooks deemphasized simultaneous equation ...
Richard Hardy's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
35 views

How exactly could you protect your debt, by enclosing it in larger debts with better security?

I don't understand the notion below of "enclosing" or "including" the 2nd bad debt into the 1st more secure debt. If you already owe the larger debt with larger security, then ...
user avatar
39 votes
5 answers
10k views

Did real incomes drop significantly since the 1950s?

From what I heard, in 1950s America, you didn't have to go to college to support a large family and a stay-at-home wife. People could buy houses easily, drove giant cars and didn't worry about gas ...
MWB's user avatar
  • 511
4 votes
1 answer
58 views

How are historic economic statistics calculated?

Sources like Our World in Data can have statistics that date back hundreds of years. Specifically, the Our World in Data source has a graph of GDP Per Capita in England dating all the way back 1270. ...
Scc33's user avatar
  • 353
0 votes
0 answers
28 views

References on foreign ownership of domestic assets

In Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, he occasionally analyzes the ownership of domestic assets by foreign countries. On p. 192, he writes: Japan and Germany have accumulated quite significant ...
Favst's user avatar
  • 121
0 votes
1 answer
30 views

There is a paragraph about the history of credit rating agencies that I don't understand

"For a few decades, ratings were nothing more than private assessments, no different from any other form of consultancy provided to investors. Born out of a need in the burgeoning industrial world of ...
Pulse Reborn's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
28 views

Is there a reference that plots different countries' debt-to-GDP ratios over (long) times?

This old blog post has an interesting plot that demonstrates that the U.K.'s current debt-to-GDP ratio is significantly below its very-long-term (180-year) average. Is there a plot anywhere that ...
tparker's user avatar
  • 760
2 votes
1 answer
49 views

Why did foreigners keep buying Swiss francs at -41% (not a typo) interest rate in the 1970s?

A Bloomberg (opinion) piece notes In January 1975, the Swiss government held an emergency meeting and then took the extraordinary step of slapping a 41% annual penalty on foreign deposits. But even ...
Fizz's user avatar
  • 3,918
2 votes
1 answer
115 views

why did the 2008 financial crisis happen inspite of banks having 85% insurance on deposits in U.S.?

I read What Happened in 2008? which gives some idea and similar things are happening in India. Seems India's 2019/2020 is similar yet different as millions are educated unemployed. While I can ...
shirish's user avatar
  • 145
1 vote
1 answer
105 views

Who took utimatum game and dictator game as the evidence against Homo Economicus assumption of individual utility maximization?

Wikipedia and this McGill University page states that the two games "have been taken as both evidence for and against the Homo economicus assumptions of rational, utility-maximizing, individual ...
High GPA's user avatar
  • 1,796
6 votes
2 answers
307 views

Did capitalism exist before the 18th century?

Were there capitalistic economies before the 18th century?
Geremia's user avatar
  • 453
0 votes
1 answer
1k views

What is "industrial capitalism"?

What's the difference between "industrial capitalism" and "agrarian capitalism" and "mercantilism" and the "industrial revolution" and the 20th century ideas of "Keynesianism"? Is agrarian capitalism-...
Nulas's user avatar
  • 1
6 votes
2 answers
183 views

Predicted recessions that never happened

It seems generally accepted that recessions are hard to forecast, in both onset and intensity, but the bias seems to be toward rosy outlooks: The main finding is that, while forecasters are ...
Fizz's user avatar
  • 3,918
0 votes
1 answer
134 views

Leontief Tableau Économique (produit net)

I’m doing some practice questions and I found this one about calculating produit net. I know that produit net or surplus is the amount that has to be paid to the landlords, and which becomes available ...
Alex's user avatar
  • 9
0 votes
2 answers
144 views

Key points for a speech on Capitalism [closed]

I was given an English task in which the teacher has asked us to do a presentation/speech on Capitalism. The thing is he didn't specify which aspects (historical, economical and the political) we ...
moistandunstable's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
64 views

History of Municipal Bonds

Does anyone have a good book on the history of Muni Bonds that focuses on the reasons why they grew in popularity, adoption, and gov policy souring them. Background on why I need this info I am ...
Conrad G's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
34 views

Need help reading early 20th century stock market list

I have a bit of a problem understanding the stock market price listings for the London stock market. I am mainly concerned with Argentinian government bonds.
user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
216 views

Who was the inventor of Utility function?

To my knowledge, the idea of representing weak-order with a function dates back to Cantor. So my questions are: 1) Was Cantor the first person to rigorize these kinds of representation? 2) Were ...
High GPA's user avatar
  • 1,796
1 vote
2 answers
112 views

How to convert an historic value denoted in foreign currency to a modern value in local currency?

I want to convert GBP in 1968 to USD in 2018, in order to "translate" an amount paid by an individual in Britain fifty years ago. My intention is that an American reader today will be able to better ...
sig_seg_v's user avatar
  • 119
0 votes
1 answer
73 views

Does the Italian national debt really go all the way back to Mussolini's excessive prewar spending?

The WWI & WWII debt is quite well defined in the UK for example and quite shocking how many years it took to pay off. Somebody told me that the Italian debt crisis really goes all the way back ...
onepound's user avatar
  • 101
3 votes
1 answer
47 views

Military expenditure over time

The following graph from the world bank website shows the world wide military expenditure in percentage of the world GDP over time from 1988 to 2015 I am trying to find similar data over a much ...
Remi.b's user avatar
  • 131
2 votes
1 answer
46 views

Pascali (2015) Natural Experiment

In The Wind of Change: Maritime Technology, Trade and Economic Development (2015), Pascali estimates various effects on freight rates (i.e. the cost of transport) on outcomes such as trade volumes and ...
user526463's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
72 views

What are some great economic reforms from the Middle Ages / the Ancient History?

Is there any great economic structural reforms, which date back to the Middle Ages or to the Ancient times?
Übel Yildmar's user avatar
1 vote
3 answers
222 views

What are modern examples of established economic theories being used on a large scale in real life?

I was thinking recently how economic theories (the stuff they teach you in college) affects real-life decisions. I found some examples (see below), but most of them are from the past and many of those ...
user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
2k views

Has Trickle-Down economics ever worked?

With "trickle-down economics" on the tongue of Americans this year, I wanted to do some research. The prevailing opinion is "trickle-down economics doesn't work." I can find many resources which ...
Cort Ammon's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
2k views

Who created the concept of "present value"?

I cannot find anything on this online. The wikipedia article is purely technical, except by a mention that such system was used in England in early 16th century. Do you know who was the first to come ...
chatGPT's user avatar
  • 1,344
5 votes
5 answers
259 views

What are good books on economic world history?

I am trying to find a book that covers human history with a special focus on economics. It should answer questions like: What economic systems prevailed during which eras? How did these systems work ...
stollenm's user avatar
  • 181
16 votes
1 answer
2k views

How could the economic cost of the world not speaking the same language be estimated?

While languages are fun and add color and flair to cultures and make the world a more interesting place, they also have a cost. Beyond the monetary costs of translation/editing/proofreading, ...
Dan Dascalescu's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
7k views

Was the aid in the Marshall Plan a loan?

In the aftermath of the Second World War the USA organised the Marshall plan for the post-war reconstruction of Europe. I take it this was actually a loan of some kind; on what kind of terms was the ...
Mozibur Ullah's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
72 views

Historical GDP of world economies back to 1945: What are the most complete and reliable data sets?

I need the historical GDP of all modern countries (or at least the vast majority) from 1945 to now. It seems the world bank data only starts in 1960 or later. I found Angus Maddison's data, but I don'...
Benjamin Tremblay-Auger's user avatar