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Would Econometrics questions be allowed? I am assuming so, since it is necessary for any graduate-level economics students. – Waleed Al-Balooshi Jun 2 '10 at 2:46

Why not broaden the scope and allow for any level of economics? I think that even graduate students can benefit from undergrad questions, the site would get more users, and graduate students would be able to help other people with their problems (and learn in the process) – Vivi Jul 21 '10 at 12:08

That problem is typical with most topics. Homework questions can be flagged as such. A broader discussion can be useful to more people. – awithrow Aug 23 '10 at 18:39

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83 Example Questions (8 closed)

active newest votes

up vote 24 down vote

added by Lance Roberts Jun 2 '10 at 5:41

The stock market crash and bank closings of 1929 shrunk the US money supply by one third, and the Federal Reserve's reaction was basically to do nothing to fix this. There were other problems as well but for Friedman this drastic fall in the money supply is the main cause of the Depression. – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 15:21

@1Armed, This is just the site to vote on the questions, not to answer them. Check out the FAQ. – Lance Roberts Jun 6 '10 at 16:36

up vote 21 down vote

added by Shane Jun 2 '10 at 13:50

The biggest example in the world today is commercial fisheries in international waters. No one owns the fish, and so each individual fisherman wants to take as many fish as they can. If one person refrains from taking all they can, someone in one of the next hundred boats from a dozen countries will do so. Because of this, fish stocks are plummeting. By contrast, when one country has exclusive fishing rights they can assign and enforce property rights / quotas. – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 15:08

This question would become community wiki because there are many, many good answers. – MatthewMartin Jul 10 '10 at 13:51

up vote 20 down vote

added by Shane Jun 2 '10 at 13:47

Because of the diminishing marginal utility of income, people like to smooth their consumption across time. They prefer to consume a moderate amount for two years rather than a lot this year and very little the next. People earn most of their money between age 25-65, but rather than go on a total consumption binge then they will borrow against future income while they are young, and save to enjoy retirement when they are old. – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 15:53

up vote 20 down vote

added by Sinan Ünür Jun 16 '10 at 21:44

	If we want to move to the next phase, we need four people to vote this question as a great on-topic example. – Daniel Bingham Nov 22 '10 at 18:21
	This question needs some urgent votes. Just do it so we can move forward! – Patrick Beardmore Nov 22 '10 at 21:04

up vote 20 down vote

added by Gelatin Jun 20 '10 at 13:16

up vote 10 down vote

added by InKind Jul 20 '10 at 23:32

Economic Modeling and Inference, by Christensen and Kiefer – Anonymous Jul 21 '10 at 9:21

up vote 9 down vote

added by awithrow Aug 23 '10 at 18:36

up vote 6 down vote

added by Kredns Jun 2 '10 at 0:34

Mercantilism is alive, unfortunately. – Sinan Ünür Jun 16 '10 at 22:07

up vote 6 down vote

added by Waleed Al-Balooshi, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Jul 16 '10 at 0:46

Actually, Prisoner's Dilemma is interesting because in the single-shot game, the suboptimal outcome is the result of a dominant strategy equilibrium. Of course, every dominant strategy equilibrium is a Nash equilibrium. – Sinan Ünür Jun 16 '10 at 22:10

up vote 6 down vote

added by Chris W. Rea Jun 3 '10 at 14:55

There's a good wikipedia entry for this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand – Noam Jun 29 '10 at 18:48

up vote 6 down vote

added by Sinan Ünür Jun 16 '10 at 21:42

up vote 5 down vote

added by Kredns Jun 2 '10 at 0:33

This is more appropriate for a financial management board – InKind Jul 20 '10 at 23:31

up vote 5 down vote

added by Waleed Al-Balooshi, edited by WikiSpeedia hang-around Jul 16 '10 at 0:46

up vote 5 down vote

added by 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 16:12

	This year at Temple we used Acemoglu's book on Growth, though for the most part we ignored it and worked on different DSGE problems. – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 16:13
	This is the sort of question that frequently gets closed in StackOverflow, but also that if survives tends to have the highest degree of popularity and number of answers. This type of question often serves as reference and is interesting to browse through. – Vivi Jul 9 '10 at 2:25
	This is not a question about economics. This is just chit-chat. – Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya Oct 15 '10 at 18:03

up vote 5 down vote

added by Sinan Ünür Jun 16 '10 at 21:46

up vote 4 down vote

added by Kredns Jun 2 '10 at 0:35

up vote 4 down vote

added by Chris W. Rea Jun 2 '10 at 2:01

This is from a real question at my site basicallymoney.com/questions/528/… ... but it is probably more advanced & on-topic for this site. – Chris W. Rea Jun 2 '10 at 2:01

There can be both nominal and real negative interest rates. The real interest rate is the nominal rate minus inflation, so negative real interest rates are fairly common, especially in countries with high inflation rates. Greg Mankiw explains how negative nominal interest rates could work here: nytimes.com/2009/04/19/business/economy/… As far as I know Sweden is the only country to have actually used negative nominal interest rates, so that banks had to pay to store money with the Swedish central bank, see here: online.wsj.com/article/SB124821575735770003.html – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 15:40

up vote 4 down vote

added by Waleed Al-Balooshi Jun 2 '10 at 2:49

up vote 4 down vote

added by dsolimano Jun 3 '10 at 2:58

The best (least DWL) taxes are those which people can't or don't want to change their behavior to avoid. A lump sum taxes hits everyone equally, they can only avoid it by emigrating or going to jail, so it has practically no DWL. Taxes on inelastic goods like basic necessities or addictive drugs (tobacco) also change behavior relatively little. Greg Mankiw has half-jokingly proposed a height tax because it has low DWL gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/04/… – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 15:17

the classic answer is a tax on land (proposed by the Georgists), assuming you can't make more of it. Lump-sum taxes would also do the job. – Anonymous Jul 21 '10 at 9:03

up vote 4 down vote

added by Tadeusz A. Kadłubowski Jun 15 '10 at 16:58

This is really a borderline case – Noam Jun 29 '10 at 18:46

up vote 4 down vote

added by Sinan Ünür Jun 16 '10 at 21:45

up vote 4 down vote

added by user12025 Jul 21 '10 at 10:03

up vote 4 down vote

added by Turukawa Aug 30 '10 at 21:54

up vote 3 down vote

added by Kredns Jun 2 '10 at 0:27

There have been books and books written on this, but my quick answer is 1) Tight monetary policy 1929-1933 and 1937-1938 2) Smoot-Hawley tariff 3) "Regime uncertainty", The future seemed very uncertain and so people were scared to invest. This is both because Roosevelt changed policy so often and because of the non-zero fear of a coup. 4) Contractionary fiscal policy and regulation. Once you count spending cuts by state and local governments and tax increases, you see that in most years of the Depression we were not using fiscal policy right. Plus wrong-headed regulations like wage support. – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 15:50

up vote 3 down vote

added by Waleed Al-Balooshi Jun 2 '10 at 2:41

up vote 3 down vote

added by Shane Jun 2 '10 at 13:49

	This is a little too basic and not appropriate for an "expert" site. The answer to this can be found in most principles books. – InKind Jul 20 '10 at 23:26
	Most questions on other stackexchange sites can be found in books, and many can be found with a bit of web searching. However, there's still some value in letting them be clearly answered. – poolie Nov 16 '10 at 23:56

up vote 3 down vote

added by user12025 Jul 21 '10 at 9:34

up vote 3 down vote

added by awithrow Aug 25 '10 at 13:36

up vote 3 down vote

added by Turukawa Aug 31 '10 at 8:10

up vote 2 down vote

added by Waleed Al-Balooshi Jun 2 '10 at 2:28

	I would prefer questions such as "What is first degree price discrimination?", "What is second degree price discrimination?", "What is the hurdle method of price discrimination?" etc to this overly broad question. – Sinan Ünür Jun 16 '10 at 22:02
	This seems a poor example. It's far too broad, and far too basic for the proposed stack exchange (at least, imo) – Cian Aug 10 '10 at 22:03

up vote 2 down vote

added by percent20 Jun 3 '10 at 16:36

I can't find, on Google, a single thing called Flat and Fair Tax, though obviously a lot of people use those words together. For this to be a good question, it ought to be clarified with "the Flat and Fair Tax proposed by Screwem and Gouge". But at that point... perhaps the question is trivial? – poolie Nov 17 '10 at 22:24

up vote 2 down vote

added by percent20 Jun 3 '10 at 16:37

closed as off topic by Noam, user12025, Mehper C. Palavuzlar, James Tauber, Dimitry L Aug 20 '10 at 3:29

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

This is really a question about government staffing and not economics per se. Also, it's essentially reference data -- there's not much benefit to getting community input for this. – David Goldsteen Jul 8 '10 at 13:02

I disagree. How the federal reserve works is a fundamental aspect of understanding how U.S. economic policy works (and doesn't work). – djangofan Jul 9 '10 at 5:16

up vote 2 down vote

added by Sinan Ünür Jun 16 '10 at 21:42

up vote 2 down vote

added by Aaron Roth Jul 18 '10 at 15:18

up vote 2 down vote

added by Mehper C. Palavuzlar Jul 23 '10 at 8:37

This could be community wiki. – Mehper C. Palavuzlar Jul 23 '10 at 8:38

up vote 2 down vote

added by Dimitry L Aug 20 '10 at 3:58

up vote 1 down vote

added by Kredns Jun 2 '10 at 0:28

	It is a French phrase literally meaning "let us do", as in, generally the government should let individuals and businesses do what they want. – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 15:09
	This is a good question and will help certain types of user looking for basic info. We can't exclude this type of question. – Patrick Beardmore Nov 22 '10 at 20:45

up vote 1 down vote

added by Kredns Jun 2 '10 at 0:29

closed as off topic by Shane, Lance Roberts, user12025, ivansml, awithrow Aug 25 '10 at 18:37

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

Subjective and will have crazy long answer. – Lance Roberts Jun 2 '10 at 5:39

In a sense they all do, since all have both government and private production. I don't know if anyone has a clear definition about whether it is the size of govt spending or the scope of govt regulation that counts, or what range either of these would need to be in to qualify as mixed. That said, people often give Sweden and China as examples. – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 15:30

Could be changed to: "What the classic examples of mixed economies?" or "What are some example of mixed economies?" – sixtyfootersdude Jun 27 '10 at 13:39

up vote 1 down vote

added by Kredns Jun 2 '10 at 0:29

closed as off topic by Waleed Al-Balooshi, Sinan Ünür, InKind, Bolo, Ivan Cherevko Aug 17 '10 at 15:06

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

This is a very broad question. There are books that focus just on this topic. – Waleed Al-Balooshi Jun 2 '10 at 2:36

A few definitions: 1) How economies work at the national and international level. 2) How to run a nation's economy, especially how to prevent and reverse recessions. 3) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. (Adam Smith's question which started economics) 4) "Microeconomists are wrong about specific things, while macroeconomists are wrong about things generally" -Yoram Bauman Macro emerged as a separate field during the Great Depression, largely because of Keynes. Econ was first divided into macro and micro in Paul Samuelson's 1947 textbook. – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 15:26

I honestly hope this site will bring more interesting questions than this – Vivi Jun 26 '10 at 14:59

Too basic and vague. Not appropriate for an experts site. – InKind Jul 20 '10 at 23:30

up vote 1 down vote

added by Kredns Jun 2 '10 at 0:37

closed as off topic by Waleed Al-Balooshi, dsolimano, Gelatin, Lance Roberts, ivansml Jul 21 '10 at 11:27

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

Using 2009 purchasing power parity GDP per capita (which tells us how much an average individual can buy with their 2009 income), the richest country is Equitorial Guinea (a tiny, oil-rich country). The country with the largest total GDP is South Africa. Ideally to measure "riches" we would use a measure of wealth rather than income, but this is not really available. – 1ArmedEconomist Jun 5 '10 at 16:02

If this question was seeking more than just data there's nothing wrong with it, but without the explanation it is unclear. – Patrick Beardmore Nov 22 '10 at 20:48