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1500 questions
8
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What models exists for explaining the price of nonrenewable resources?
It seems to me that the seminal model for the price of nonrenewable resources is Hotelling's rule. However, as the Wikipedia article describes, Hotelling's rule has empirically performed poorly. I know there are some variations that seek to improve…
jmbejara
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8
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Differentiation of the value function in Burdett Mortensen (1998)
I'm currently making my way through Burdett and Mortensen's classic paper of on the job search. What should be an easy task of finding an expression for the reservation wage is made slightly more complicated by the presence of the max operator. We…
mark
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8
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What is Saddle Point Stability?
What is saddle point stability and what sorts of functions or systems of equations give rise to such a thing?
For example, would we say that a two systems of stochastic difference equations that are interlinked give rise to an environment with…
Macronogood
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Does Craigslist Reduce Unemployment?
If a substantial (though admittedly I have no idea how large) part of the natural rate of unemployment is caused by the job search, do more efficient means of communication create more efficient labor markets, and if so, can anyone quantify their…
Jason Nichols
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8
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Teaching changes in "demand" v. "quantity demanded"
I am always struggling with teaching this one.
The terminology of standard intro textbooks is unfortunate, although it's so pervasive that we probably have to live with it.
By a "Demand", intro textbooks really mean a "Demand function" (but talk…
Martin Van der Linden
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8
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Qualitative methods in Economics
As a quantitative analyst and armchair economist I have seen little reason to do qualitative analysis as done in the other social sciences.
However I keep running into these rather wordy analyses of economic issues (primarily from social research…
EconJohn
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8
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How/why does foreign investment get scared by the monetary policy?
In an interview with Daron Acemoglu, he says "the hot money which was floating through Turkey has stopped after FED's declaration that we are going to give much more attention on monetary policy".
Basically I know some fundamental things like…
Mustafa Güven
8
votes
2 answers
Is the economy a zero-sum game?
Theoretically speaking, if all the Earth's inhabitants were to save money and invest, is it possible for everybody to get, let's say, a 4% yearly return for everyone?
Is the economy a zero sum game (where if someone gains, others lose) or not?
dreamoki
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8
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2 answers
Where do the rich and poor live in a city? (Calculus)
I am reading 'Cities, Agglomeration and Spatial Equilibrium' by Ed Glaeser.
People live in a monocentric city, where consumers of heterogeneous income $y$ work at the centre of the city. They buy $H(y)$ housing for a price $p(d)$ at distance $d$…
StevenRJClarke1985
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Historical US Housing Data Availability
Papers like Ng and Moench (2011) and Negro and Otrok (2007) use historical housing data to estimate latent variables that correspond to some "true" or "truer" measure of house prices or housing activity. I've put together a table of series one could…
BKay
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8
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2 answers
What benefits do OPEC countries obtain by cutting oil supply?
It is unclear to a economic novice like me why OPEC is not cutting down production and raising oil prices. I have read several journalists commenting upon this on the internet but perhaps an economist can explain this current fact better.
user1445
8
votes
2 answers
Empirical estimates of CRRA and CARA utility
I am working on macroeconomic model and I need to calibrate it.
I am looking primarily for a statistically-founded estimate for the
coefficient of relative risk aversion in the CRRA utility
function based on macroeconomic US data (but also for the…
Andrii Kapinos
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8
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3 answers
When and why women left the labour market?
It is well documented that women in now developed countries entered the labour market all thoughout the 20th century. As such, female labour participation have consistently increased. For example, this is a table from Godin (1977):
Here is a graph…
luchonacho
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8
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1 answer
Uniform bounds on rate of merging for Bayesian learners
Update. Cross posted at Cross Validated.
In a well-known paper, Blackwell & Dubins (1962) show that the posterior probabilities of two Bayesian agents, whose priors agree on events of measure $0$, will become arbitrarily close to each other under an…
user12162
8
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1 answer
Why doesn't anyone talk about GNW (Gross National Wealth)?
I just noticed a very interesting fact.
GDP of the United States: $18.5B
GDP of China: $11.4B
If we look at national wealth...
GNW of the United States: $84.8B
GNW of China: $24.1B
The margin of the GNW is 8.5 times higher of that of the GDP! Why…
tphilli
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