Economics Stack Exchange
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Is Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell a good book for a layperson who isn't interested in pursuing economics?

I heard that Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell is a good book for a layperson to get a feel for how the economy works. I have also heard some criticisms but they seem to be based on Thomas Sowell's political views. I have read 2 academic journal…
ApplePiePoodle
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Economics term for those who benefit even though they didn't contribute

I believe there's an economics term that describes people who refuse to participate in a community project even though they receive the same benefit from the project. For example, the village needs a new fence to keep the wolves out. There are…
michael
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When treating a relative, normalized utility function as a pmf, what is the interpretation of Shannon entropy or Shannon information?

Suppose $\Omega$ is a set of mutually exclusive outcomes of a discrete random variable and $f$ is a utility function where $0 < f(\omega) \leq 1$, $\sum_\Omega f(\omega) = 1$, etc. When $f$ is uniformly distributed over $\Omega$ and $f$ is a…
EM23
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Is there an economic analysis of the rationality of buying lottery tickets?

It's quite clear that the expected return on a lottery ticket is less than 1. However, I think it can still be argued that buying lottery tickets is still a economically rational decision by consumers. There are a few lines of reasoning: The…
dwjohnston
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What is the definition of exogenous and endogenous preferences?

Wikipedia states: Exogenous Preference -- one that comes from outside the model and is unexplained by the model. Endogenous Preference -- preferences then cannot be taken as given, but are affected by individual internal responses to the external…
Stan Shunpike
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What is the difference between ATE and ATT?

I saw ATE and ATT in some discussions regarding DID settings recently. ATE is the Average Treatment Effect while ATT is Average Treatment Effects on Treated. I am wondering the difference between these two terms and is there any example to clarify…
Phil Nguyen
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Can I refine the set of equilibria in a signaling game to the sender-optimal outcome?

Main question: I've been reading about communication games a lot, and I'm wondering if there are good criteria to select between two separating-ish equilibria. I think of a separating equilibria as coordination equilibria among types. So, if we…
Pburg
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Does a store suffering increased theft generally cause higher prices?

If a store suffers an increase in theft, will it generally lead to higher prices at that store? My answer is that prices should have already been set to maximize the trade off between profit-per-sale and volume sold, so that if the store experiences…
user28791
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What is the point of all the models in an economics degree?

I am a student of Economics doing my masters degree and I have to say I am a bit tired of all the models. On the one side, there is these models where I can see how they are derived, which always seems to be a mixture of using the Lagrangean with…
ArOk
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If public roads are public goods, in what way are they non-rivalrous?

I get why, say, the military is a public good, but I don't get why public roads are public goods, since they can't be non-rivalrous, given that at any time only a subset of the population can actually be on them.
Atonal
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What is an example of a utility function where one good is inferior?

Say the consumer has a standard convex, monotonic preference over Apples and Bananas. (Update: I'd like the preference to be as 'standard' as possible. So ideally we have diminishing MRS everywhere and we also have "more is better" everywhere.) Say…
user18
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What is the definition of a "Stackelberg leader-leader equilibrium"?

I have encountered the equilibrium concept of "Stackelberg leader-leader equilibrium" while reading Product Line Rivalry (AER, Brander and Eaton (1984). They say "we define a Stackelberg strategy as one which involves taking into account the…
sehb
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Does land value tax create an incentive to merge land ownerships?

LVT is "a tax on the unimproved value of land", and "in theory, it does not distort decision making". But if I own land then improvements such as buildings on my neighbour's land can easily increase the value of mine. It seems like the total LVT…
bdsl
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Nash equilibrium - mistake in proof of paper?

I have a question regarding the proof of Proposition 1 in Besley and Ghatak (2007) in Appendix A of their paper. It is a quite highly cited paper but I believe there is a mistake in the proof of their Proposition 1. The model is described in Section…
elbarto
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What have been the main developments in macroeconomics and financial economics since the 2008 financial crisis?

In the aftermath of 2008 economists were, fairly or not, blamed for a failure to foresee the coming crisis. Ideas such as "The Great Moderation" and market efficiency were openly ridiculed as hubristic. Now, almost a decade later, seems like a good…
Ubiquitous
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