# All Questions

557 questions
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 ...
594 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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?
504 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?),...
945 views

### Price Elasticity of Demand for Positive Price Increases

What does it mean when the price elasticity of demand %Qd/%P is greater than one? Typically I hear that it means the demand is elastic since if, say, the price decreases by 1% the demand for the ...
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### How does a central bank create the money used for quantitative easing or lowering the value of their currency?

Up until last week, the Swiss central bank used Francs to buy Euros, in an effort to lower the value of the Franc; today the European central bank announced that it would use Euros to buy bonds in ...
328 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 ...
1k views

### Who exactly foots the bill if Greece defaults

Apologies if the topic is not appropriate (economics newbie here) but I am curious as to who exactly would foot the bill if Greece defaults on the ~300 billion dollars it owes. It looks like most of ...
1k views

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### 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 ...