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1500 questions
6
votes
2 answers
Public Goods - Voluntary provision
I am currently reading the book "Microeconomics: Principles and Analysis" by Cowell (2006), page 452-453. e have a two-commodity world, in which there are
${n_h}$ agents (households): commodity 1 is a pure public good and commodity 2 is
purely…
user10699
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6
votes
3 answers
What are the arguments against a zero corporate tax?
I've read a title in the news proposing a zero corporate tax. Thinking about it I couldn't figure a good reason against.
Why couldn't a country just set the corporate tax rate for firms to zero and then tax any gain obtained via negotiating shares…
Three Diag
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6
votes
3 answers
How wealthy are modern day humans compared to preindustrial times?
I would like to see a quantitative wealth comparison between the average human in a hunter gather or agrarian society to average human in the today's world.
I'm mostly interested in how the discovery of natural energy resources combined with…
Jordan Evans
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6
votes
1 answer
Differentiating a conditional expectation: RBC models with uncertainty
Is the following true? \begin{equation}\frac{\partial}{\partial X_{t+1}}E_t(f(X_{t+1}))=E_t(\frac{\partial}{\partial X_{t+1}}f(X_{t+1}))\tag{1}\end{equation} where $f$ is some affine function (e.g., $f(x)=a+bx$), $E_t(X_s)=E(X_s|I_t)$ denotes the…
Elias
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6
votes
3 answers
Free source of large amounts of financial data
I am looking for a free source of large amounts of long term financial data on stocks, exchange rates, government bond rates, etc.
I know there is Thomson Reuters, but this requires a costly subscription.
The data doesn't have to be super…
user56834
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6
votes
2 answers
Is there a comprehensive list of all market failures ever discovered?
I'm looking for a complete run down of all different kinds of market failures;
Wikipedia has a list but I'm not sure if there might some obscure kinds of market failures that Wikipedia is missing. Are there types of Market failures that are not…
Lee Wang
- 61
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6
votes
1 answer
How to specify a Diff-In-Diff Regression with multiple time periods?
I'm working on analysing experimental data for a thesis project. The data consists of subjects performing the same task over five rounds, and I'm interested in the difference in trends between subjects in two different treatments. The two treatments…
econra2017
- 61
- 1
6
votes
1 answer
What is the advantage and disadvantage of fiscal illusion policy in terms for the financial market?
What is the advantage and disadvantage of fiscal illusion policy for the financial market?
Fiscal illusion suggests that when government revenues are not completely transparent or are not fully perceived by taxpayers, then the cost of government is…
Victor
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6
votes
3 answers
Why is elasticity not defined simply as the slope of the graph?
It makes more intuitive sense to me: as I increase the quantity, this is how much the price changes. Why is a much more complex formula used that takes into consideration the current quantity and price at a given point on the curve?
JobHunter69
- 187
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6
votes
3 answers
Why does BC Hydro want us to use less power?
I live in British Columbia, Canada, and we have a hydro electric company called BC hydro that supplies our power. They run ads encouraging us to use less power. I have been wondering why they would do this as money we spend on power is their profit.…
user10959
- 61
- 1
6
votes
1 answer
EU and North America with CETA
The CETA trade deal is supposed to involve only the EU and Canada, but Canada has already a trade deal with the USA and Mexico : I don't understand how this is possible.
For example, if I own one company in Paris, one company in Toronto and one…
shadok
- 63
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6
votes
1 answer
What is a homothetic function?
Suppose we have the following equations for the MRS of a utility function. $$U(x, y)$$
Which of the following corresponds to a homothetic utility function?
$$MRS (x, y) = \frac{x^2+y^2}{xy}$$
$$ MRS(x, y) = 2(x + y)$$
The answer is 1. But why…
EconDude
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6
votes
4 answers
Why are elasticities defined as logarithmic derivatives?
In my economics class, we often compute the elasticity of $Y$ with respect to $X$,
$$\eta = \frac{\partial \log Y}{\partial \log X}.$$
You can compute this from the slope of a line fit to a log-log plot.
Why is it more natural to consider this…
knzhou
- 215
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6
votes
3 answers
When to use the market and when to use central planning?
I have a basic question: my understanding is that in a market economy, economic decisions are governed by prices, i.e prices signal what should be produced & how much. This is opposed to central planning, where a committee decided what should be…
appa
- 161
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6
votes
1 answer
Estimating the rental rate of capital from data
Take the classic optimization problem of the neo-classical firm:
\begin{equation}
\begin{array}{*2{>{\displaystyle}r}}
\mbox{maximize (over $K, L$)} & f(K, L) - RK - WL
\end{array}
\end{equation}
The first order condition equates the marginal…
Matthew Gunn
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