Ask an Economist

I should be clear that economics cannot provide an answer, but it can help us to organize our thoughts about an answer.

Interesting idea.  As you note, the idea is extreme, but it addresses some of the underlying causes of high healthcare prices.  

You ask, “Is it moral to have their customers pay” by raising prices? Well, let’s ask it this way.

Great question. First off, when we’re talking about a firm, be careful with what you label economic (or opportunity) costs: they are the sum of implicit and explicit costs.

You are correct in observing that efforts to limit competition have the potential to produce market outcomes that diverge from the "free market ideal" that economists commonly use as their baseline of comparison.

I know you are asking this out of intellectual curiosity and for fun; in the U.S., it is illegal to create any sort of currency. Having said that, you raise an important point.

Interesting question. The Braves defeated the Dodgers on Oct. 20 (2021) to take a 3-1 game lead in the National League Championship Series and are now just one game away from the World Series.

Your observation about the lack of material on the Simon Abundance Index is a valid one. Perhaps its newness accounts for a general lack of peer-reviewed material on the subject.

There are very few places to find county-level farm rental rate information. Iowa State has conducted a long-running survey on farm rental rates.

Small business owners who most effectively use economics knowledge to the advantage of their business do so through the lens of unit economics. What are the per-unit expenses of the business and how do those expenses compare to revenues per unit.

John Green, Nicole Swepson, and I recently completed a paper, College Quality as Revealed by Willingness-to-Pay for College Graduates, that addresses this question.  First, we examined the correlation between traditional measures of

You can do a lot of different things with an economics degree so it's a bit of a tough question to answer. Of course, one thing you can do is be an economist.

A seller has market power if it is able to PROFITABLY price higher than the competitive price because it has a downward sloping demand curve and sets its output where marginal revenue equals marginal cost but sets its price above its marginal cost

There seems to be two questions here.