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Hi there,

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. Are either of us correct? Would the monetary value of the game on the secondary market change the definition of rarity? Thanks for your time!

I understand that the balance of payments should be equal, and that the Current Account should equal the Capital Account. The U.S. imports more than it exports, so other countries have more of our currency and can use it to buy assets. What I don't understand is how that USD is categorized in the interim. If Company U.S. buys $1 million worth of goods from Company China, how is that cash categorized while it remains unspent in Company China's bank account? What if they just let it sit there and continue to save that cash, wouldn't this throw off the balance of payments and cause the Current Account to be greater than the Capital Account due to the unspent cash?

Thank you!

Dear Economists,

I recently had an argument in my fantasy football group that I believe an economist can answer. I need to define some terms and give some background before I get to the question.

I am in a 12 team league and we conduct a snake style draft every year to pick our players. A snake style draft is one in which teams are assigned a draft position and the draft is conducted 1-12 in the odd numbered rounds and 12-1 in even numbered rounds. Our rosters consist of 16 players. Every year your roster completely resets and we redraft in reverse order of standings (meaning that the team that finished last picks first and the team that finishes first picks last) with the following exception. You are allowed to keep up to 2 players, one player that you drafted (class B) and one player that went undrafted the previous year (class C). Provided that they are on your roster on Thanksgiving.

Players can be divided as follows:

Class A1 players cannot be kept by definition, and cannot be dropped from your roster.

Class A2 players cannot be kept, but can be dropped from your roster.

Class B players can be kept by giving up a draft pick that is 3 rounds earlier than where they were selected the year prior. i.e. If they were selected in the 5th round you would have to give up a 2nd round pick.

Class C players can be kept by giving up a draft pick that is three rounds later then where they are projected to be picked that year. i.e. If they are projected to be picked in the 5th round you have to give up an 8th round pick to keep them.

Generally speaking, Class A1 players are more talented than Class A2 players, who are more talented than Class B players, who are more talented than Class C players. Also, it is impossible to know how good a player will perform in future years, or what their projected draft position will be because those projections are not released until July of the following year.

As a result of these rules I adopted the following strategy after I was eliminated from this year's playoffs. I dropped all Class A2 and B players from my roster and picked up 16 Class C players using the following logic. Class A players are worthless for future years because I will lose them for nothing when the rosters reset. Class B players require me to pay a premium to keep them, and because they would need to vastly overperform expectations they are not worth the investment. Class C players are the least talented of the bunch, but I will have 16 chances to pick one that is in a good position to perform well, and I will get that player at a discount because I will be able to draft them later than when the market says they should be drafted. The other teams do not acknowledge this as a legitimate strategy. I believe that this illustrates relative value (valuable players that have no value considering my circumstance), opportunity costs (roster spaces that have worthless players but could have players with some value), and expected value (players who are worth very little now, but may have value later and can be drafted at a discount).

What do the economists think of my strategy?

As a post script, I tried to trade Class A players for Class C players before dropping them, but no team would trade with me because they thought I was giving up too much value for nothing.

I am familiar with Karl Fox et al. "functional economic areas" framework of regional modelling. I am also aware of REMI products. These latter models are widely used by state and local governments. But I am not aware of the availability of computer models that would use functional economic areas per se. Can you inform me if there are such models that might be an alternative to REMI? Thank you.

At the risk of sounding like a socialist, I wanted to ask about potential economic potential of a maximum wage. Sweden tried it with a 12:1 ratio, failed sadly, but I wondered if a less extreme idea would be viable. Say 100 times the minimum wage is the most anyone could earn in gross taxable wages. I'd probably say it would be fair to exclude athletes and entertainment industries. It would be a hard sell for congress so this is purely a theoretical question. Short of how the CEOs would feel, what is the viability and potential impact on the economy?

I received my undergraduate degree in economics, with a hard focus on higher level and more mathematics. I did well with most everything up to advanced mathematics and real numerical analysis. I struggled greatly with those, much more than the others - and I'm not sure if I learned them well at all. So, with that kind of experience, should I consider applying to PhD programs in economics or calling it off, as all of my advisers told me "If you can't handle this, you won't make it to Christmas in a PhD program"?

Are there any positive effects of applying tariffs? Everything I hear in the news makes them seem like they are an objectively bad idea and are always a poor choice. If they’re so bad, why does China retaliate with their own tariffs when we apply tariffs to them? Would it not be better to just shrug them off and ignore them? Or respond in some other way?

My question is thus, If the U.S. has millions of jobs needing employees, how can any president take credit for the number of jobs being filled? i.e., Millions of unfilled jobs and people finally decided to fill those positions then obviously no president forced them to apply. So how can a president suddenly take credit for people deciding to rejoin the job market. Am I missing something here? The question is in reference to job growth vs millions already available jobs.

Additionally, when the job numbers are released, does it account for individuals working two jobs to make ends meet?

When the GDP is calculated for a country, is inflation taken into account? What I mean is, if a country has 2% GDP growth, is that before or after inflation is removed from the equation.Because it seems to me that if a country's GDP grows by 2%, and inflation goes up 2% in that time, they may cancel each other out to actually have neutral growth.

I have no formal background in economics, not even a college ot high school course, so my question may be simplistic. I am given to understand that bank assets include loans and the value of those loans is one factor in determine the asset holdings of banks. If this is correct, is debt reflected as a net economic positive in the GDP because the banks assets include debt, which is construed as income? By extension, what gets measured in GDP, income from the loan during that year (my payments) or the total value of the loan? Or is it both?

I was watching a documentary about microfinance in developing countries. Many of the loans were 20-100 dollars. What would happen if people living in poverty were just given the money, and not expected to pay it back? How would that effect the economy?