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If one person decides to reduce his lifetime consumption by (say) \$100, then someone else (or many someone else's) is made richer by \$100. For example, that $100 might be left to a single heir. Or …

Essentially, there was a bank run in the repo market. The repo market is where big institutions (like, say, Fidelity) deposit large amounts of cash for short periods of time with institutions like, s …

Quite obviously, the act of creating and depositing the coin can't possibly impact anything of economic interest (except for creating an imperceptibly small increase in demand for platinum and hence a …

So, is it correct to say that in an economy with X currency units, counterfeiting and spending Y fake units is equal to theft of Y/(X+Y) of the wealth of the economy? (Emphasis added.) No. It is co …

I'm adding this as a separate answer because it's quite independent of my other answer. We've agreed that if there are X dollars existing and you counterfeit Y dollars, then you've stolen Y/(X+Y) of …

Money is produced at zero social cost but held at a positive private cost (because to hold money you must forgo holding other assets). Therefore there is a positive externality from holding money, wh …

In the absence of inflation, the social cost of creating a dollar is essentially zero (at most a few cents worth of paper and ink), but the private cost of holding a dollar is a forgone dollar's worth …

Yesterday I promised my wife that if she would do the dishes, I would sweep the floor. Five minutes earlier, my promise didn't exist. I created it myself. Does that strike you as unhealthy or bou …

It depends on the context, of course, but most often in policy analysis "the value of a life" has nothing (directly) to do with output, etc, but instead means the maximum amount that people would want …