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3k views

Is zero inflation desirable?

Is zero inflation really desirable? To be more precise: Does inflation in real life have benefits that in some situations outweigh its social cost? E.g.: it works as a disincentive against holding ...
24k views

How can I obtain Leontief and Cobb-Douglas production function from CES function?

In most Microeconomics textbooks it is mentioned that the Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) production function, $$Q=\gamma[a K^{-\rho} +(1-a) L^{-\rho} ]^{-\frac{1}{\rho}}$$ (where the ...
7k views

What is the economic purpose of increasing the minimum wage?

It is generally accepted among economists that minimum wage warps the equilibrium point between the supply and demand of labor by instituting a price floor and increases unemployment for unskilled ...
16k views

Fundamental equations in economics

For the other sciences it´s easy to point to the most important equations that ground the discipline. If I want to explain Economics to a physicist say, what are considered to be the most important ...
4k views

How do economies grow?

These days, we hear again and again about the so-called "need" for economic growth. But how do countries actually grow economically? That is, why/how does their GDP increase over time? Related, what ...
1k views

Implications of abolishing Fractional Reserve Banking on mortgages and interest rates

Suppose for a moment that someone with legislative power decides to abolish Fractional Reserve Banking and passes a law that forces banks to only lend the money they own, that is M0. What would be the ...
2k views

What is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?

I suppose GDP is supposed to create a measure of a country's wealth/welfare, something easily indexable. But how exactly is it composed? And is its composition disputed? How good is it at measuring a ...
3k views

Mathematical Micro/Macro Economics Textbook Recommendation

I was formerly an economics major and now also majoring in mathematics. I want a textbook that is rigorously based on mathematics; not just using mathematcis whenever the author wants, but in a more ...
18k views

How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?

Decades ago a factory job could support a wife and kids until retirement and they offered insurance, benefits, etc. Now, no more unions, those jobs as well as tech and customer service jobs are ...
1k views

What would happen if the world switched to a single currency?

What would happen if all countries suddenly stopped using local currencies and adopted a global currency (like the Euro, but for everyone)?
2k views

From an economics perspective, what are the ramifications of a currency with fixed money supply?

I'm thinking specifically of bitcoins. What are the pros and cons of having a fixed number of coins, as opposed to more "normal" currencies? Would the currency have no inflation?
511 views

Experiments contradicting the expected utility model

This is a question I asked on the cognitive science beta, but which never got any answer. I do not know what the policy should be for question migration/reposting (maybe worth discussing in the meta?),...
1k views

3k views

Seminal papers that later were proven to contain errors

I was reading on institutions, and I came across Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (AJR) paper on The Colonial Origins of comparative development: An Empirical Investigation, and this paper seemed so '...
3k views

Productivity vs real earnings in the US — what happened ca 1974?

Somewhat related to the most recent US elections, I've been researching the whole "white working class" situation, and one strange anomaly has popped up. When one looks at a graph of productivity (...
617 views

Destroying the dollar

Let's destroy the USD dollar: I am the government of a small, economically and geopolitically unimportant country that has its own currency and a local central bank. I order the local central bank (at ...
444 views

The aim of this question is to better explore the mathematical economics model behind Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage and the claims that can be made based on this model. This seems ...
789 views

Interest rate parity: Counter intuitive

What is the basis for interest rate parity to hold? I know, the reason stated is excess returns Excess returns as such should not be the reason for a currency depreciation. for e.g. when we posit ...
960 views

Inflation and economic growth

Noticeable works about the impact of inflation on economic growth are dated back to the 90s. For example, Barro (1995): the impact effects from an increase in average inflation by 10 percentage ...
334 views

Are there fundamental reasons why (exponential) economic growth is highly desirable?

One of the most widely published measures of the economy is the economic growth as a % of the GDP; i.e. the degree to which an economy grows exponentially. In my understanding, when the rate of ...
25k views

919 views

Why is modest inflation a good thing? [duplicate]

I have been reading a BBC news article about inflation in the UK, which is saying that inflation has recently become negative (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33147660). The article suggests that ...
1k views

Alternatives to Pigouvian tax

Two common drawbacks of Pigouvian subsidy mentioned in the literature are related to monetisation and measurement of social cost (Baumol) and reciprocity of social cost (Coase). What alternatives to ...
10k views

Finding demand function given a utility min(x,y) function

I am confused about a particular point regarding finding a demand function. All the problems in this practice set I am doing have involved applying the method of Lagrangian multipliers. But I am ...
2k views

Why do top professional sport players get usually paid so much?

I'd like to find an answer to this question as I can't see how something like this can be happening. I can see three reasons that they would earn that much but any of them if thought better is wrong. ...