Questions tagged [political-economy]

a term used for studying production and trade, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth.

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Predicting the Impact of War?

How would an economist go about predicting the impact of a potential war on a certain country's economy? Say we are interested in assessing the impact of a possible war over Taiwan on the GDP of ...
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Market failure in the provision of facilities for people with disabilities

In the US, I believe it is a statutory requirement that all places are accessible for people with disabilities. However, if it were not for this statutory requirement, I would imagine that accessible ...
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what are the economic effects of Criminal policies that impose mandatory minimum sentances and lack of parole?

is it a good tool to reduce crime and contribute to the overall utility of a community ? is the cost worth the effects of policies which impose minimum sentences for various crimes ? TL;DR what are ...
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Who controls banks in Diamond's model?

In Diamond's model banks are delegated to monitor borrowers for the investors, in this case, who monitors the banks?
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What do we know about the economic effects of lay participation in courts? (empirically)

https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268009000123 tests various theories to find if lay participation has any effects on the economy (like output per worker, corruption in judiciary etc);...
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Why does Game Theory seem to ignore the impact that collectively altering a player's possible strategies can have on their utility?

A recurring theme I've noticed in Game Theory is the tendency to dish out ideas for collective action, with the stated goal of tipping or forcing society toward a strategy vector with better (perhaps ...
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"Technological breakthrough changes social-economic relations" - how this Marxian thesis is perceived in orthodox economy and political economy?

This article https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/newproposals/article/view/2017 from Neo-Marxian peer-reviewed journal applies the Marxian thesis "technological breakthrough changes social-...
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How will more stimulus checks in California affect inflation?

So we're getting more money here in California. I thought the consensus at this point was that we probably overstimulated the economy. What gives? What was the reasoning economic advisors had for ...
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In what ways will taxing corporations reduce inflation?

President Biden Tweeted to the effect that taxing corporations will reduce inflation. When I look at what goods are experiencing the most inflation it seems to be things like groceries and rent. What ...
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(Game Theory) Why is voting for your worst alternative a weakly dominated action?

I don't fully understand why voting for your worst alternative is a weakly dominated action. The question comes from a question I'm working on: "Assume there are three candidates, A,B and C,...
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What are the reasons for Russian Ruble to strengthen in the past few days?

1 USD was about 75 Russian Rubles before the war in Ukraine began. After the sanctions, Russian Ruble quickly declined and 1 USD skyrocketed to 139 Rubles. Now it is back to around 85. What are the ...
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Any good resources on Information Economics Theory?

I am coming from a political economy/public choice perspective, trying to explore some ideas in signaling, especially the supply-side analysis of information transmission by the media/news. Although I ...
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Which industries are widely agreed upon to require central regulation on a national basis, regardless of economic or political system?

For example, the most straightforward cases of widely accepted centrally controlled regulation on a national basis would be the nuclear power generation and nuclear fuel supply industries. Where every ...
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Why land supply is inelastic?

I am reading about Georgism, and I am puzzled by the notion that the land supply is inelastic. I posted a question in the reddit of georgism, but that left me more confused than before. It seems that ...
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best examples of helicopter money in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

A quote from "The Optimum Quantity of Money", a Milton Friedman paper of 1969... Let us suppose now that one day a helicopter flies over this community and drops an additional $1,000 in ...
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Is possible implement a thrid-way economy without undesired side effects, that persists in time? (Under the Austrian School of Economy) [closed]

The questions is very much in the title, but some clarification are necessary For the porpourse of this question the term third-way economy will be defined as a economic system that tries to have ...
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Have there been more US CDS curve inversions since 2011, and do these correlate with (political) disputes around the debt ceiling?

Gori proposes a model of the 2011 US debt ceiling crisis in which the spread (and ultimately inversion) of the US government credit default swaps (1Y/2Y vs 5Y) is used as a proxy measure for the ...
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Is climate change an economic question?

The assumption that the Keeling Curve can be approximated with a function $$k=A+B\cdot e^{\alpha t}$$ leads to a solution with $A=258.6$, $B=4,243\cdot 10^{-13}$ and $\alpha=0.0166$ with a high ...
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Will economic discrepancy between democratic and authoritarian states decrease over time? [closed]

The most popular explanation for the economic discrepancy between different states is that in the authoritarian states the leaders need corrupt extractive institution to preserve their power. However, ...
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Are democracies more economically productive than autocracies?

The book The Dictator's Handbook claims in several places that democracies are more productive than autocracies. It's central to their argument of lower taxation rate in democracies giving more wealth ...
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Is there contradiction between automation created resilience and the full employment (with high wages)?

From the one side - full employment with the high wages (but still under the level of creating inflation threat) is nice thing and politicians and central banks are highly motivated to achieve this. ...
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How does foreign trade work in a planned economy?

I know that in a planned economy all economic processes are ruled by the state and that there are disadvantages such as too much bureaucracy and that sometimes deals are not always met with demand... ...
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How did Pareto came up with Pareto Distribution of wealth law?

I am not an economist but a mathematics student. I heard about the Pareto law - the mathematical modelling of the distribution of wealth, how did Pareto come up with this law? technically speaking ...
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Can machines create value?

Marx wrote that only humans can create value. But why is that so? Ok humans can, with their work, create more value than they need to consume in food and so on, that's obvious. But why is this so ...
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Which metrics best characterise 'socialist' and 'capitalist' economies?

I am interested in finding some metrics that capture how 'socialist' or 'capitalist' a country was throughout modern history, and to include these alongside those in the gapminder dataset, to explore ...
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How long into the past can we trace the effect of institutions?

In one of my courses we recently went through several institutional economic papers (The colonial origins of comparative development, The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa, The Long-...
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Is Keynesian economic theory still considered capitalism?

When we compare neoclassical economic theory with Keynesian economic theory as they pertain to capitalism, do they both fall within the spectrum of capitalism? or is Keynes's idea of state ...
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What does 'Health spending as a share of GDP' mean?

I am watching a video essay talking about healthcare spending in different countries and one of the first graphs shown was titled: 'Health spending as a share of GDP'. After doing some reading, I ...
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What was the Summers memo of 1991 sarcastic about?

I have read a twitter thread about Summers memo (wikipedia article) today, and trying to understand the last part (bolded). The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more ...
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Universal basic loan

I'm looking for feedback and critiques of an idea. Universal basic income is an increasingly popular idea, but most agree that it would be terrifically expensive. Assuming that the goal of UBI is to ...
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Interventions during the current Corona crisis: Government credits

In the light of the current public health crisis caused by COVID-19, I would like to know more about how government or central bank interventions are supposed to influence and limit the economic ...
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What would happen to US economy before US government lose control over its national debt?

From this wiki page we can clearly see that US national debt is growing steadily after 2010 and now it's larger than US GDP already (at the end of 2019). Still it's commonly believed the debt is ...
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Country specific economic recession/financial crisis data?

Many financial crises are at the global level, yet some of them can be country-specific, especially the ones connected with political instability. For example, the 1990 recession of Russia, the 1958 ...
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Yang's Impact on Algorithmic Trading?

Presidential candidate Andrew Yang has published the following policy proposals on his website: 1. FINANCIAL TRANSACTION TAX Financial markets have grown dramatically over the past decades. ...
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Why the source profit is not only trade markups?

I'm researching the source of profit. In Marx I've found the following passage: If then, speaking broadly, and embracing somewhat longer periods, all descriptions of commodities sell at their ...
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Arrows Theorem: Dictatorship

How does Arrow's Impossible Theorem show that the only aggregation rule that works is Dictatorship. Couldn't we have a Non-dictatorship with IIA or a Non-Dictatorship with Pareto Efficiency?
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Are there political economy models that include a "majority capture" of (protectionist) trade policy?

A highly cited model of protectionism is the "protection for sale" model or Grossman and Helpman. (For an [updated] evaluation of that model see for instance the Advanced International Trade textbook ...
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What would happen if a country defaulted on its public debt?

Could someone explain in full detail to someone that does not understand much what would happen if a country refused to pay its pubic debt? Someone told me if this happens banks would fall and ...
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What were the limits of trade and exchange in the Soviet Union? What about other communist countries?

I'm particularly wondering about what implications the abolition of private property had for families. Since private property was to be abolished, I assume houses were not legally allowed to be traded ...
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How will the UK's economy be affected, if it will be a hard Brexit?

Will the outcome of Brexit have any positive impact on the UK market? Are there any available studies on this topic?
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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 ...
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Why does China spend so much on agricultural/farming subsidies?

I use the OECD's Total Support Estimates (TSE), which I think is a proper measure of total agricultural subsidies (but correct me if I'm wrong). China's TSE is by far the largest at \$239B in 2017 ...
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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 ...
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Is it possible to imagine humanity without a modern understanding of money? [closed]

Of course we can't just take money from current world order and give nothing back. In theory, can an advanced civilization exist without money at all? May be this is an utopic idea because of... what?...
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Is utility in neoclassical economics a circular argument/concept?

Neoclassical economics as a utility function that represents a consumer's preference ordering over a choice set. Joan Robinson criticized utility for being a circular concept: "Utility is the ...
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Well-informed citizen can contribute better to country's economy?

As the title stated, how can a person from the general public contribute to country's economy by being well-informed? I understand one of the reason would be tax. If a person understands the ...
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What does liberal economic theory say about monopolies?

Ludwig von Mises in his book "Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition" writes that in liberal economic the monopolies are rare and have a tendency to disappear. For an onlooker like me, however, his ...
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Why would a rise in the discount rate stop foreign gold drain and make banks fail?

I am reading "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman. In Chapter 3, "The control of Money", Dr. Friedman explains how the Fed exacerbated the Great Depression of the 1930s. In particular: In ...
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Does fiat currency disprove labor theory?

From what I understand. LTV predicts that fiat currency, which requires zero labor to produce, should have zero value. Empirically, fiat currency does not have zero value. Would this prove that the ...
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Post Brexit Referendum employment theory

According to Chuka Umunna, Labour MP for Streatham and prominent pro-EU campaigner: People were told: "if immigration levels fall, it will be easier to get a job, and easier to get a job that's ...