Ask an Economist

You have described an economic concept called tax incidence. There is a wealth of studies centered around this in the field of public finance. The basic question, similar to what you have articulated, is who bears how much tax burden?

With a major in Economics, one does NOT need to decide on a specific career field until they graduate when they likely will have multiple options to choose from.  The Econ degree will prepare graduates for various career paths, even if the de

Q. Whenever a country signs up to an IMF package, there is a sudden increase in inflation which is difficult to control. My question is why does that occur?

Thanks for your question. I’m glad to hear about your interest in the financial sector. A degree in economics has many different career tracks: a policy analyst in government, a business analyst understanding how prices influence consume

In many ways, data is indeed just another item that can be bought and sold on a marketplace: there is a demand for it, and there are organizations willing to supply it for a price. So what can we learn from a basic supply and demand analysis?

The first question essentially asks, I think, whether the U.S. Treasury can spend money it doesn't have (i.e., can it "overdraft" its account at the Federal Reserve).

The concept of utility was introduced to represent decision makers' ordinal preferences.

There are two ways to think about this question, one straightforward and one more interesting.

I am not familiar with the report you mention, but conceptually it is possible to construct and measure GDP by specific demographic groups, say by educational levels, race/ethnicity, gender, or age.

There are several sources of publically available data on swine production costs and returns.

Income is the return of factors, such as labor, human capital and physical capital, that you own and exchange with other agents in the economy.

Inflation is the rate of change of the price level (i.e., the “cost of living” as measured in dollars).  The standard framework economists use to understand price changes is supply versus demand.  For example, if supply of an item (i.e.,

Currencies that are fully pegged to USD will continue to buy the same amount of US dollars. So a peg, by definition, keeps the exchange rate fixed against the base currency, which in this case is USD.

This is an interesting question with a complicated answer.

Similar to the response of your AP Micro teacher -- part (potentially a large part) of the gender wage gap can be accounted for by the differences in the fields and positions that working men and women hold in the workforce.

The RR is one instrument the Fed uses to control money supply or the amount of money in circulation. The Fed deems that the other instruments, such as open market operations, are better.