Ask an Economist

In discussing the impact of economic policy on aggregate demand and the balance of trade in open economies, international economists often talk about two types of (non-monetary) policies: “expenditure reduction policies” and “expenditure switching

In the US at least, financing Govt expenditure/budget deficit by using more Federal Reserve notes is not an “usual” option (the way it is in India for example) is primarily because the central bank’s independence from the Treasury and the Govt’s c

When trying to quantify "civic satisfaction," we need to determine what a community is willing to pay, in dollar terms, to remove the landfill.

No. The world consumes about 100 million barrels of oil per day. US consumes 20 million, while China consumes 10 million barrels per day.

Thank you for your question. Yes, we have recently developed a new Iowa Land Value web-portal which allows you to visualize the trends in Iowa land values at the county, district and state level.

First of all, I want to make it clear that, when a central bank increases its FX reserves, it supplies local currencies and increases liquidity in the money market. But this is certainly not the reason that China’s banking system grew so much.

Currently, Saudi Arabia’s foreign exchange reserve is about $600 billion. Saudi’s oil export is about 8 million barrels per day, or about 2800 million barrels per year.

There are several issues here. First, the US central bank, the Fed, is an independent monetary authority and does what it thinks best to keep inflation and unemployment low. They cannot be "asked" to print more money or change interest rates.

This is a great question. Currently interest (but not principal) on student loans is deductible within certain limits.

Partner A secures a loan for startup through a business (business 1) he owns 90% of. Partner A will have significant input in business decisions but little to do with day to day operations.

Hello, and thank you for sending us a question! The GDP growth rate is measured relative to last year’s GDP.

To a certain extent, the quoted sentence is tautological.

As an accounting identity, from the GNP accounts, the Balance of Trade (positive is a surplus) = (Savings – Investment) + (Taxes – Government Spending)

To explore the relationship between the Peoria live hog price, Interior Missouri live hog price, National negotiated prior day purchase base price, National negotiated slaughter base price, CME lean hog futures price, and farrow to finish profit,