34
votes
Did real incomes drop significantly since the 1950s?
Most of the US real earnings data which go only as far as mid 60s. According to the statista data presented in this article by world economic forum the evolution of real hourly earnings in the US for ...
- 41.6k
23
votes
Did real incomes drop significantly since the 1950s?
Average standard of living is massively higher today compared to the 1950s, primarly due to technological progress.
Even a cheap low end car today is much better than the big cars of the 1950s, it is ...
- 567
15
votes
Did real incomes drop significantly since the 1950s?
The book “The Two Income Trap” (2003) by Elizabeth Warren (recent Democratic presidential candidate) and Amelia Warren Tyagi discussed this. They looked at spending breakdowns in the 1970s and when ...
- 9,726
13
votes
How could the economic cost of the world not speaking the same language be estimated?
To measure the costs of different people speaking different languages, researchers use a "linguistic distance" metric, see for example this paper. However, measuring the cost of linguistic diversity ...
- 6,652
11
votes
Why is capital income taxed differently than wage income?
One reason is the inflationary gain problem. Let me give an example with simple numbers. I make \$100 in income and pay 20% tax of \$20. I have \$80 left, which I invest in a stock. The stock goes ...
- 1,152
11
votes
What was economics like as a field before Adam Smith, the father of *modern* economics?
There exists the... "Adam Smith of the Arabs": Ibn Khaldun. He lived during the 14th century. The work of his that focuses on Economics is Muqaddimah translated in English in 1958 as "The Muqaddimah: ...
- 31.8k
10
votes
Accepted
What was economics like as a field before Adam Smith, the father of *modern* economics?
Direct predecessors to Adam Smith within the classical tradition (maybe a more useful distinction than modern) include Hume, Locke and Dudley North. Before the classical economists, there were the ...
- 1,996
10
votes
Is money capital?
"...capitalists buy and sell money as though it were a productive
economic good."
No they don't. They buy and sell currency, because the price of currency fluctuates (due to imagination and/or ...
- 31.8k
7
votes
Accepted
Why could interest rates go up if Brexit happens?
What would happen in the event of a "Leave" vote in the referendum? Well, the pound would quickly fall in value against its major trading partners - and some falls have already happened as the "Leave" ...
- 7,992
7
votes
Accepted
Historical US Housing Data Availability
I feel this barely qualifies as an answer, but doesn't Shiller have house prices data on his webpage? Currently here.
Specifically:
Historical housing market data used in my book, Irrational ...
- 1,048
7
votes
What causes the "imperialism of economics" and how did it start?
I find the following quotes to be interesting:
"[Political economy is] a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator [with the objective to provide] a plentiful revenue or subsistence for ...
- 16.6k
7
votes
Applications of Optimal Transport in Economics
Optimal transport methods are very much still in use in economics. The show up in two-sided matching with side-payments, contract theory, hedonic pricing, partial identification in econometrics, and a ...
- 9,435
6
votes
Accepted
Book for Bretton Woods conferences and gold standard
Covering the historical part, you may want to look at:
1) The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order
which appears to be written in a "...
- 31.8k
6
votes
Did capitalism exist before the 18th century?
According to some yes. In this (historically oriented) view, whatever succeeded feudalism is called capitalism.
Capitalism, broadly accepted as a phase of history, is dominating the last half-a-...
- 3,730
5
votes
How wealthy are modern day humans compared to preindustrial times?
There is significant debate about whether such x exists.
For example Louis XIV had things in his estate that are not in mine (I do not have two palaces). But there are also things in my estate that ...
- 26.1k
5
votes
Are simultaneous equation models out of fashion? Why?
I think this is already answered in the paper itself and in addition I think this is due to the way how they define 'simultaneous equations' topics.
First as authors of that paper opine:
This ...
- 41.6k
5
votes
Accepted
Why is having a big corporation keep its money in foreign countries a bad thing in the public's eye?
Firms can always shift their profits from one tax territory to another via various methods.
Consider a simplistic example, let’s say we have firm ABC that has most of its business in Sweden. The ...
- 41.6k
4
votes
Accepted
What is Islamic Banking?
Both another answer and the OP have linked to the wikipedia article on the matter. I think the following passage from the article sums adequately the situation (bold mine):
"The term “Islamic ...
- 31.8k
4
votes
Why is capital income taxed differently than wage income?
There are two main reason for the difference in tax rates that I see from the literature.
First, some papers argue that the optimal tax rate on capital is zero. This is the famous "Chamley-Judd" ...
- 5,404
4
votes
How wealthy are modern day humans compared to preindustrial times?
As others noted, these kinds of things are extremely difficult to calculate because we don't have good data going back much further than the start of the 20th century and because it is hard to make a ...
- 16.6k
4
votes
How wealthy are modern day humans compared to preindustrial times?
For comparison with mainly agrarian pre-industrial societies, it is possible to derive estimates of X from figures in the Maddison Project Database, which contains estimates of real per capita GDP at ...
- 6,718
4
votes
Why could interest rates go up if Brexit happens?
Just to come back on your two questions: (i) whenever the market is getting "tense", interest rates go up. Because people usually sell their bonds, and so interests rates go up as these two are ...
- 583
4
votes
When and why women left the labour market?
They worked at home. Like "Household Engineers" do today, doing everything working from down to dusk like their husbands, and like their husband they shared in the earnings of the household.
Until the ...
- 41
4
votes
Accepted
Did the idea of “making money” originate in the United States?
No, the idea of wealth as something to be created did not originate in the United States. It was part of the mercantilist approach to national economic policy that was widely adopted in Europe in the ...
- 6,718
4
votes
Accepted
Was the aid in the Marshall Plan a loan?
The plan did involve loans but was mostly in the form of grants (gifts). As the Wikipedia entry states:
The Marshall Plan [...] consisted of aid both in the form of grants and in the form of loans. ...
- 8,437
4
votes
Accepted
Who created the concept of "present value"?
It has been argued that the concept of present value was implicit in Liber Abaci (1202) by Leonardo of Pisa (also known as Fibonacci). This paper by Goetzmann makes this claim in its abstract and ...
- 6,718
4
votes
Predicted recessions that never happened
One example is this UK Government analysis:
"Britain’s economy would be tipped into a year-long recession, with at least 500,000 jobs lost and GDP around 3.6% lower, following a vote to leave the ...
- 16.6k
4
votes
Applications of Optimal Transport in Economics
I am very (very) much not familiar with optimal transport, but there are applications in mechanism design.
For example, Daskalakis, Deckelbaum & Tzamos (ECTA 2017, "Strong Duality for a ...
- 5,090
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