Ask an Economist
Welcome to Ask an Economist, a public service of the Department of Economics at Iowa State University, designed to answer your economic questions.
Our talented faculty and alumni can answer questions on a variety of economic topics to help you make more informed choices about your day-to-day decisions--or to just add a more reasoned voice when talk of the economy comes up around the dinner table.
Questions & Answers
Thanks for your very interesting question. GDP measures the market value of production. It is not intended to be a measure of aggregate well-being but it is often used as such.
The implementation of monetary policy – e.g., how exactly a central bank raises interest rates – differs across countries and even over time within countries.
The Federal Reserve has a long history as the nation’s central bank. While there have undoubtedly been many changes in the U.S.
The answer is that stock prices are indeed determined by supply and demand. If you see no change in price when you trade, it is because the amounts you are trading are relatively small.
Here is a definition that I found on an OECD website https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=1740. It is as good as any definition I have seen.
I always thought that it was the other way around: the closer you are to the departure date the higher the price.
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...
Continue Reading AnswerIn 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...
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...