# All Questions

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### 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 ...
32k 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 ...
2k 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 ...
22k 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? ...
19k 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 ...
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

### 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 '...
4k 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 mathematics whenever the author wants, but in a more ...
1k views

182 views

### What amount of Quantitative Easing will cause hyperinflation?

You all know that Quantitative Easing shifts the LM and AD curves right, so I haven't taken the time to redraw this picture. What's the maximum amount of Quantitative Easing that the Federal Reserve ...
3k views

### Is the economy a zero-sum game?

Theoretically speaking, if all the Earth's inhabitants were to save money and invest, is it possible for everybody to get, let's say, a 4% yearly return for everyone? Is the economy a zero sum game (...
14k views

### Does GDP count both the investment and the house rental?

Suppose you bought a new house in the year of 2010. Then the price of the house in counted toward the 2010 GDP. Say then you live in the new house in the following years. So in these years, the GDP ...
798 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 ...
1k views

### How is the interest on fractional reserve money creation paid?

In fractional reserve banking commercial banks create money when they make loans. When these loans are paid back the account is zeroed, the created money disappears, but the bank is still entitled ...
1k 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 ...
528 views

### Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage

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 ...
9k views

### Consumer surplus in case of perfectly inelastic demand

How do we define consumer surplus in the case of perfectly inelastic demand? This question was inspired by the comments following this answer. For a graph of inelastic demand please also see the ...
246 views

### Is belief in future dividends the only long term value of stock?

Are future dividends the primary value backing that a stock price will rise? (Let's assume that purchase by a competitor is an unlikely event and discount the value this might have). It seems to me ...
262 views

### 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 ...