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How does GNU software development sustain economically?
I apologise if this question is out of topic, but it is simultaneously an economy and a programming question. If it should go to another SE communality, please indicate me.
In theory, GNU software is entirely developed by volunteers during their…
Bregalad
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Why is pre-specification of punishment order necessary to manipulate compliance?
According to the book Thinking Strategically by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff, a government can coerce every citizen to register for the military by threatening to punish only the first person whose name ranks highest in alphabetical order…
user10478
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How does Google price the items on Google Play?
I am a fledgling computer science researcher working in intersection of economics and computation. Please excuse me if this question seems out of place to the administrator.
I am currently studying different pricing models and studying the…
pareshnakhe
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The Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics in Economics
In 1960, the physicist Eugene Wigner wrote the article "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" explaining how unexpected it is that mathematical formalism can make predictions about reality. Although his article was…
Davius
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Why hasn't innovation in the agricultural industry led to a significant reduction in food prices?
There has been a lot of innovation in the agricultural industry. GMO, giant silos, factory farming, machinery, etc.
But if we look at actual food prices since 1960 food actually got more expensive. So why hasn't the innovation led to a drop in food…
user2741831
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Does risk aversion cause diminishing marginal utility, or vice versa?
Let $A$ be the set of possible states of the world, or possible preferences a person could have. Let $G(A)$ be the set of "gambles" or "lotteries", i.e. the set of probability distributions over $A$. Then each person would have a preferred ordering…
Keshav Srinivasan
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Are there any economic peer-reviewed journals dedicated to, or at least committed to publishing, replication studies?
Because it is widely perceived that generally science has a reproducibility and replication problems recently some replication journals were set up such as ReScienceX (see Roesch & Rougier, 2020).
Is there any example of such initiative within the…
1muflon1
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11
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Is elasticity of substitution between goods empirically constant?
In New Keynesian models, we use a lot of CES assumption, usually Dixit-Stiglitz, to develop an economic model. Is CES, constant elasticity of substitution between goods, empirically (approximately) true?
CESboy
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What is the consensus (if any) on Peters "The ergodicity problem in economics" (2019)?
Peters (2019) made a splash criticizing the theory of expected utility on the grounds that it implicitly assumes ergodicity where this is unwarranted. He stated this applies widely in economics, to the point of making the whole field…
Richard Hardy
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What are the known / alleged problems against using energy as currency?
What are the known (and alleged) problems of using Joules (i.e. a measure of energy/work) as a currency? I tried to find such idea in Google (searched terms like "technocracy", since someone told me that technocracy had such idea), but I'm not clear…
Luis Masuelli
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11
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Gross substitutes vs. net substitutes
Wikipedia explains the difference between products that are "gross substitutes" and products that are "net substitutes". However, the mathematical explanation doesn't give much intuition about these concepts. So my questions are:
What is the…
Erel Segal-Halevi
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11
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1 answer
Are there fundamental reasons why (exponential) economic growth is highly desirable?
One of the most widely published measures of the economy is the economic growth as a % of the GDP; i.e. the degree to which an economy grows exponentially. In my understanding, when the rate of economic growth is declining or close to 0%, this is…
gerrit
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The Case for Basic Income in developed and underdeveloped countries
From what I can tell, the idea of the basic income guarantee is very popular in some circles as an excellent alternative to a lot of modern welfare systems.
Has anybody developed a theoretic or empirical model in which minimum income is tested? In…
Jamzy
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Are financial markets "unique" for each "currency pair", or are they simply "translated"?
This is something I've been long wondering about.
Let's say that I have statistics showing the daily closing Bitcoin price in USD since early 2009. Great. Now, if I wanted to get the daily closing Bitcoin price in SEK or EUR or whatever currency…
Izak
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11
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Will printing more money during COVID cause hyperinflation?
When COVID started, many countries started printing loads of money and handing it out to their people. Here are some examples
US is printing money to help save the economy from the COVID-19 crisis
We’re Paying for Coronavirus Stimulus by Printing…
logee
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