Ask an Economist
Would the transition be better if I pursued pure mathematics instead, because my experiences has been lately in proof making? What can I look forward to? How and what should I be looking into, to start off, if economics is a good choice? I am a highly curious person. Plus, I have worked hard, I have been doing pure mathematics on my own since 2004 until presently; but, it has been slow going; so, I thought that by going into something that has a better return in investments of my intellectual energy, I should try microeconomics?
The prospect of a mid-life career change would be daunting for anyone. In the end, you’ll have to make that difficult decision on your own. But I can give you a few tips on how you might begin to explore whether a career in economics...
After about a month when the commodity has less than 2 weeks of shelf life it may be sold at .69/lb and then discarded after another week.
1) Why would the store not further discount these items at let's say .30/lb to clear the complete stock? ( I understand it is so as not to let the global/US prices of the commodity go down.)
2) Is wasting better for the store than to sell it at a discount?
3) Even if customers stop buying fresh commodity and start to wait until the price goes down to .30/lb. Isn't it economically profitable to the store to actually sell it than waste it ?
Thanks
Food waste arises from preferences, incentives, and constraints. Retailers have time and other resource constraints which implies that it simply will not be worth it to sell every last item of food in every instance. It can be said that there is...
Okay, so this is going to be a really stupid question but I need to know the answer to this. There is a message board about collecting video games and we got into a argument about the definition of the word "rarity." With these games, we all know the exact amount of copies printed for each title. Say Game A has 2000 copies printed and Game B has 5000 copies printed. Assuming that no copies are lost or destroyed, Game A will always be rarer, correct? Someone else is arguing that the availability of copies on the secondary market changes this.
If Game A has 20 copies available on the marketplace right now and Game B only has 2 copies, would Game B be considered to be rarer overall? At that moment in time, sure, but overall, I would say no. Is either of us correct? Would the monetary value of the game on the secondary market change the definition of rarity? Thanks for your time!
In the strictest (or standard) sense of the word, you would be correct that game A is “rarer,” given that there are fewer of these in existence than game B. However, the other person is not totally wrong because, in the words of economists, the “...
The question you asked is complicated, but I think it boils down to: “do longer commute times lead to community decline?”. First, I am not sure if communities are in decline generally, but you cite some examples of community decline, such as...
I am unaware of any discussions pertaining to a Marshall-like plan for the Russian economy presently.
The official digital Yuan issued by the central bank of China does not has the expiration date. The "digital Yuan" mentioned in the question should be the digital consumption voucher which is issued by the local government and has the expiration...
There is a lot in this question to digest: the trade war, impacts by farm size, and the effectiveness of government support. For the soybean market, the U.S.-China trade dispute did have a significant impact. Roughly half of U.S...
1. How do you personally live your best life?
2. What are some challenges you face as an economist?
3. Is there something that keeps you moving forward?
4. How advantageous is it to have the support of others?
5. Are you always motivated to do things or does it require discipline?
6. Anything else you'd like to share?
How do you personally live your best life?
I live my best life by doing what I enjoy daily. That is researching and teaching economics. When you do what you love, it’s hardly working. In addition, I love going to...
People sometimes have different ideas in mind when considering home price appreciation. Most conventional discussions do not adjust for inflation. A more nuanced consideration could account for rises in the general price level, i.e.,...
Running a business is always risky, and owning an auto mechanic shop is no different. Your concern about changing technology is interesting because I see two main avenues of change. First, there may be changes in the process of repairing vehicles...
Economics provides a framework for understanding aspects of individual and collective behavior. In particular, economics focuses on how individuals and societies allocate resources. Economists also offer important insights about how...
As a corollary thought, were the FED to have real time data on inflation, they could micromanage rates rather than waiting a month and then having to jump rates in an attempt to catch up to inflation. If inflation jumps a tiny bit Tuesday then lift rates a tiny bit immediately. I assume that there would be some good reasons not to move rates frequently, but if the big picture intention is to limit inflation to a desirable zone, agility would be a valuable tool. It feels like we are spending 29 out of every 30 days driving out of control.
Yes, more timely inflation measures do exist. For example, academics have used new data-gathering techniques, referred to as "big data", to create daily inflation measures; see, e.g., the Billion Prices Project (...
It is not a necessity to use a seasonally adjusted data for VAR and Granger Causality. If one, however, uses a data with seasonality for estimating VAR / Granger causality and does not do anything to deal with it, the results would capture both...
As you wrote, to compute concentration ratios, you would need data on quantities produced or sold (property appraisals in your case) and a reasonable market definition, which can be a separate challenge on its own.
Assuming you have...
You asked how a monopolist might use marketing campaigns to increase profit. As you discussed, marketing efforts would likely result in consumers willing to pay more, shifting the demand out. This can only be good news for the firm if...
Indeed, one answer to a fundamental question in international trade -- why do countries trade? -- is that specialization based on comparative advantage leads to gains from trade for all countries. This same principle also applies at the...
The incentive to work should really not be a higher wage, working ANYWHERE should immediately give you the right to live comfortably.
Now, the main answer to the original question I realize; is inflation. Demand rises and then so do costs whether it’s for more product or more labor, whatever the reason… if from the beginning we gave every single worker regardless of the role access to food, water, shelter, clothing, and whatever else is needed for a human to be happy and healthy, I don’t see how the economy could suffer. Maybe my point is: the reason poverty exists is because of this economy.
I realize I’ve got off track, but if the government printed $50k and gave it to EVERYONE; sure people would absolutely use it irresponsibly but if that money is going back into the economy anyway… why does inflation even matter? Bc the American dollar in a way loses value? So what… just print more money… it’s paper, $1 = $1 but what’s the deal with $1 being $10 if there’s like a lesser need for people to make large profit because we can just print more money…
Printing more money does not solve a country’s financial problems, rather it would exacerbate those. Suppose an economy prints more money, it would mean that the consumers can now buy more goods or a greater quantity of the same good. The...
First, it is important to understand what a proportional or regressive tax means. A proportional tax system requires all taxpayers to pay the same proportion of their income regardless of how much money they earn. Whereas, under a regressive tax...
When the Fed raises interest rates, it raises the cost of borrowing by firms which raises their cost of doing business. That induces firms to hire less, delay or eliminate capacity expansions, etc. This is why it is not a good idea for...
The term you’re looking for is “non-rivalry.” Rival goods (in contrast to non-rival goods) are the standard stuff of economics: chairs, computers, etc. As you say, they are the kind of good where multiple people cannot use the good simultaneously...
Economists start from the presumption that producers want to maximize their profits, and are not running a business to promote social welfare or social justice. If a producer can sell 1 unit of a good to Mr. A for $10, he would always prefer to...
The sudden and persistent drop in labor force participation that began with the pandemic has been called the Great Resignation. The labor force fell by 3.2 percentage points at the beginning of the pandemic (Figure 1), but almost immediately...
For example, I am looking at the MRTS of good b for a. Thus, MRTS = marginal product of a / marginal product of b.
Let's say that good a is very productive with a high marginal product, while good b is unproductive and has a low marginal product. This means that the MRTS of good b for a is very high. Thus, a lot of input a must be reduced for a 1 unit increase in input b, to maintain the same level of output.
This conclusion does not make sense to me since I thought that input a was very productive. How come when we increase the unproductive input by 1 unit, we have to reduce a lot of the productive input in order to maintain the same level of output?
The question is based on the definition of the MRTS of B for A as the (the amount of input A)/(the amount of input B), which is flipping the numerator and the denominator of the correct definition, probably because of the definition of...
Steady-state level of output per worker is roughly the same as per capita income in the long run. There is nothing good or bad about it, except countries and their residents enjoy higher standards of living in a material sense if the per capita...
There are several statistical reasons why you would covert the variable into a logarithm. Logarithm transformation, for example, can change a highly skewed variable into a more normalized distribution. It is also useful when you wish to linearize...
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