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 “...
Economists generally agree with Henry George that land value taxes promote efficient use of land. A small country with a tourism-based economy seems like an excellent case for the efficiency of a land value tax. The bigger issues...
You have asked a very interesting question. Without more specific information, it would take volumes to answer this general question appropriately; however, I can point you to a few resources that may be useful.
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In short, there are probably many ways that you could get a rough estimate of this and they are all likely flawed in some way or another which makes this a really tough question to answer. Also, we probably haven't fully realized the impact of...
What measures can be taken to keep the cattle industry in the U.S. from imploding? What can prevent vertical integration from further occurring? How can the American farmers and ranchers be kept from bankruptcy, (without gov’t subsidies or handouts) making sure that private ownership of land persists? What kind of market manipulation could cause all this?
Here are several resources that begin to address many of your questions.
Beef Marketing Margins - http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2020/5/4/beef-marketing-margins
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Thanks a bunch!
Ours is called a consumer economy because consumption is nearly 70% of our GDP. Countries like China, are more investment-driven with investment (often by the public sector) at nearly 50% of GDP.
Economists measure the economic health of a country by its G.D.P per capita. They see low unemployment as good because it means labor resources are not sitting idle. They also consider whether income disparities are good or bad. In fact, these...
In short, we do not know, especially so because nothing like this has hit the US in modern times. The Great Depression was a massive disrupter and devastator but caused ultimately by economic forces from within. This time around, the fundamentals...
We traditionally get our data from two sources: 1) call report filed by banks quarterly which does not go into enough detail to get the information that we want; and 2) the banks themselves when we conduct an examination. Banks generally have concentration reports that will break down debt on many different levels; however, this doesn't give us aggregated point in time data.
I have been looking at the ISU, Ohio State University, and USDA websites in an attempt to get the data we are looking for, but cannot find it. I find news reports or research that mentions these sources, but I can't get to the raw data we are looking for. When I do find data that is close to what we want, it is a couple years old.
Do you have any suggestions on where we can find this data? We appreciate any assistance you are able to give, as we monitor the impact of COVID-19, particularly in the ag sector. Thank you!
Tracy Bergmann
The most relevant reports to track the evolution of the financial situation of well-managed mid-size commercial farms in Iowa are:
- “Financial Performance Measures for Iowa Farms” Dec 2019....
The way in which prices and money enter models of the economy is important and potentially confusing. So this is a great question.
In most models, lowering (or raising) all prices, including the price of labor (wages) would...
The short answer is, no. By law, the U.S Fed is an independent authority in charge of the monetary affairs of this nation. The White House cannot formally ask or force the Fed to do anything. If the Fed tried such a move, it would send panic...
It is common for industries to claim that they create jobs outside the industry, especially when they are seeking government subsidies. A few years back, a consultant for the Iowa ethanol industry claimed that ethanol was responsible for 90...
My best understanding is that the acquisition you indicated was completed in 2007, but Aramark retained its identity as a company. TARP was created in 2008, and a comprehensive list of companies that received “bailout” funds can be found at...
How very thoughtful and considerate a project you have in mind!
You are already exhibiting entrepreneurial behaviors by reaching out for advice. When starting anything new, you need to get questions answered for which you don’t know the...
I am assuming you have to keep the cell or wifi plan and you are just upgrading the fixed cost of a new router or cell phone. Let’s take the smartphone/cellular plan case.
Suppose you currently pay $100 per month for your cellular plan and...
The most correct way should be adjusting inflation according to each country's inflation data before converting the values to NZD if New Zealand is the baseline to compare with. The latter will not necessarily result in bad data as long as the...
1) The coronavirus is everywhere. It is not obvious it would affect the U.S. dollar differently than the Euro or Yen or Yuan. All the governments and economies are stressed, and so relative values will be unaffected.
2)...
When banks lend out money, they do so expecting repayment. If banks are not repaid, the value of the loan decreases. By law, banks are obligated to value their loans at the fair market value. Mandating that all repayment stop...
This question is predicated on five assumptions: first, that investors generally now prefer capital gains over dividends, a shift that occurred in the '60s or '70s; second, that this preference for capital gains encourages corporations seeking equity funds to appear to have potential for growth; third, that this appearance causes equity markets to overvalue such firms; fourth, that the second and third factors cause managers to make deceptive decisions, ultimately misallocating capital. This story is based on a couple essays I read defending short selling as a way to devalue overvalued firms.
Whether or not short selling is "encouragable", the story was convincing enough that I came to think it would be a good thing to push investor preferences back towards dividends, so that capital would be at least somewhat more allocated towards sustainable profitability instead of unsustainable growth.The policy that occurred to me to accomplish this was to raise the capital gains tax and lower corporate income tax.
What is your opinion of this story and policy proposal? Are either plausible? Where do these views sit in today's economic rhetoric?
Thank you for these interesting questions. As they indicate, you are already well aware of potential distortions associated with tax policies. It is quite possible that your suggested policy proposal would be associated with distortions and...
This is very confusing to me, as coming of age in a post-GFC United States I've always associated neoliberalism with things such as low interest rates. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your question! These ideological "definitions" and distinctions can be quite confusing and arbitrary. In the Latin American context, usually neoliberal is associated with policies that are orthodox, that is, based on notions of free...
While it is true that lower prices at the pump benefit consumers, stock markets also infer that low oil prices signal weak demand for oil, in this case from travel-related fears due to the corona virus. And weak demand for oil often indicates...
The adverse effects of the minimum wage depend on how high it is compared to the prevailing wage in the area. Because wages are higher in San Francisco than Des Moines, a $15 minimum wage in San Francisco, where the median wage is $25.11,...
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has an annual projection of employment and labor force growth. The most recent is Employment Projections: 2018-2028, available...
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