Questions tagged [economy]
Questions relating to the politics of economic theory or economic policy of any country or the international community. General economic questions can be asked on Economics.SE https://economics.stackexchange.com/
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When and why did US food prices surpass the ones in Western Europe?
I first visited the United States around 30 years ago and then a few times over the following couple of years. The last time was around 2005. One thing I remember is the low prices of food compared to ...
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Are there any countries or states which have fully embraced price gouging during emergencies?
As taught by Thomas Sowell in his book "Basic Economics":
If the prices of hotel rooms remain what they have been in normal times,
those who happen to arrive at the hotels first will take ...
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Why does Australia export so much raw materials instead of steel and other value added products?
According to the chart in this report although exports from Australia of iron ore and metallurgical coal are declining they are still quite high. On the other hand I see that Australia imports a lot ...
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What is the effect of removing certain denomination of a currency?
About yesterday the Indian government withdrew 2000 rupee notes in circulation ref. Typically, when stuff like this happens, the explanation is that the attempt is to combat black money. This answer ...
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How self-sufficient is Eritrea?
I'm researching Eritrea and I don't seem to be able to find much information about its degree of self-sufficiency. The government is aiming to make the country self-sufficient, but I have no idea how ...
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Why is there typically emphasis on education in general rather than for those related to jobs?
It is to my understanding, a popular opinion that education improves economy and quality of life. But, to me, while I get the intuitive notion, wouldn't it beven more better to focus on improving ...
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What is the theory behind using the 14th Amendment to ignore the debt ceiling?
President Biden raised a few eyebrows in that he's said he isn't ready to invoke the 14th Amendment and ignore the debt ceiling... yet. From Reuters
President Joe Biden said on Friday he was not yet ...
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Is Norway a rentier and resource-dependent country?
I have been reading a lot on the rentier state literature and have noticed that papers published in the last two decades focus on the typical rentier cases such as Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. However, ...
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What has changed in the last decade that causes tent cities to spring up?
As a regular visitor to the United States (Texas and Oregon, mostly) I can see that a lot of slum-like encampments have sprung up during the last decade, probably even the last few years. Some are so ...
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Is this communist-like economic ideology already a thing?
Everyone knows what communism is, and generally in the real world it doesn’t work out for the people. Communism has many flaws and after a long while of thinking how these flaws can be fixed it became ...
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Who described creative destruction as a process that will eventually balance the jobs created and destroyed?
I read many times articles talking about possible job losses caused by technological changes referring to Creative destruction as a hint that eventually as many jobs will be created thereafter. Often ...
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How do these contradictory claims about the US national debt square against each other?
(Not sure if this should be on the Economics SE or Skeptics SE)
The first source is this, from which there is an image:
This clearly implies that the US federal budget decreased under Obama, Carter, ...
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What are the pros and cons that a new common currency for Latin America bring to the region?
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/what-do-talks-about-a-south-american-common-currency-say-about-globalization/
Argentina and Brazil recently announced preliminary plans to form a
common ...
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Why do small African island nations perform better than African continental nations, considering democracy and human development?
This question is interdisciplinary between economics and politics, but I suspect the answer lies more in politics and history than in economics, which is why I decided to post it here.
Looking at the ...
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Indian PLI Manufacturing scheme
Indian govt has announced Production Linked Incentive schemes (PLI) to boost manufacturing sector growth in India. As it can be seen it is biased towards capital-intensive industries. What could be ...
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Clear and concrete definition of "Third World" [duplicate]
Commonly, when I discuss with a pro-western American, or perhaps sometimes Europeans about an African Country I always hear this, "But it's third world" on investopedia.com "Third World&...
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How does having minority stakes and board seats give the Chinese government effective control over companies?
From the New York Times:
All of that changed over the past few years as Beijing went after some
of the country’s biggest tech companies and its highest-profile tech
entrepreneurs. The aim was to ...
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To what extent does the west need China to be part of the SWIFT system?
The question and answers at To what extent does China need the SWIFT system? explain why China needs the SWIFT system to to interact with the west and whether it would be reasonable to come up with ...
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The changing relationship between Democracy and Economic Growth (log GDP)
There has been contradicting evidence on whether being a democratic state is correlated with economic growth and/or higher GDP per capita. For instance, Barro (1997) argues in his book that a ...
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What are the options for a government facing massive protests over seemingly unsustainable economical measures?
Context
France is currently facing nationwide strikes due to pension system reformation discussions. According to France24, there seems to be a debate over the opportunity of such a reform:
French ...
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To what extent is the UK's cost-of-living crisis Russia's fault?
I know that the UK's cost-of-living crisis is partly due to the war in Ukraine. Russia, of course, has sharply limited the amount of energy it exports to Europe; this substantially raises winter ...
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How does the World Economic Forum seem to have so much influence?
Searching on Google News for World Economic Forum produces:
About 23,800,000 results (1.00 seconds)
Sampling some of these produces quite a mixed array of opinions, from highly supportive, to bored, ...
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Why is the US government not worried about high deficit?
The US government has run a deficit budget every year since 2002.
As per this answer, in FY2012, the budget deficit was $1.12 Trillion while revenue was $2.47 Trillion.
That was a budget deficit of ...
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If only people with at least $1,000,000 annual income were taxed, what would their tax rate have to be to avoid a drop in income tax revenue?
If personal income taxes were eliminated entirely for anyone with less than $1,000,000 income, there is one flat tax rate for those who are taxed, and corporate income taxes and all other taxes staued ...
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What are possible explanations for why Democratic states appear to have higher homeless rates per capita than Republican states?
The principal argument I see regarding homelessness in blue areas is that cities draw a larger homeless population than rural areas which is objectively true. However, from the evidence I have found, ...
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How does the US benefit from waging wars?
It is often argued that the USA is constantly at war because the military industrial complex benefits from it in terms of public employment, and the moguls profit billions of dollars.
However, I don't ...
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Why do some European governments still consider price capping despite the fact that price caps lead to shortages?
Context
Due to multiple causes such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, most European countries have faced soaring prices for essential products. In some cases, the governments decided to impose price ...
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How did the UK race ahead of France in GDP
Source of data
In 2019,
GDP of the UK was 2,743.586 Billion USD, while that of France was 2,707.074 B.
That is just a difference of 1.33 percent. Some might even dismiss it as noise.
In 2022 however,...
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Why is the Gini coefficient of Egypt at the levels of Nordic countries?
The Gini coefficient of Egypt is about .3. This is about .02 or so away from the coefficient of countries like Finland, Sweden, etc. And for comparison, the USA is above Egypt by .04 points or so.
So ...
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Why is Empowering Women considered important by the UN? [closed]
I have some doubts about women empowerment, let's take 1 example to illustrate the problem:
a group of women organized a free computer programming class or lesson ONLY for women, by the intention to ...
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Do Ireland and the United Kingdom have a trade alliance similar to NAFTA?
Do Ireland and the United Kingdom have a trade alliance similar to NAFTA or USMCA?
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Are there any examples of modern, stable "command economies"?
Politico's October 24, 2022 China’s strongman is here to stay. And weaker than he looks. includes the following quote:
“Xi Jinping has made it clear that his preference is a command economy ... very ...
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What is the economic relationship between PRC and Hong Kong?
Does PRC collect taxes from Hong Kong?
Does PRC pay for the development of Hong Kong or contribute to the annual budget of Hong Kong?
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Is it possible to simulate a small tax change using the UK budget office business model?
Where can I use the OBR economic model for the UK Budget?
I want to see the impact on public revenue by increasing the upper rate of income tax by 1%.
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Why did Truss's planned removal of a tax increase cause the market/pound to tank?
I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around this one. Why was it that when a tax break (or, removal of a tax increase) was announced, the market and pound reacted negatively? Wouldn't the ...
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Semiconductor Capital Equipment Embargo
The US Government has successfully prevented SMIC (China Semiconductor) from buying 5nm equipment from the Dutch company ASML. Security concerns are cited as the reason for the embargo
Reports have ...
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What do we know about the effects of lay participation in courts? (empirically)
https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268009000123 tests various theories to find if lay participation has any effects on the economy (like judicial independence, corruption in judiciary, ...
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What are the pros and cons of having so many state-owned companies?
What are the pros and cons of having so many state-owned companies?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government-owned_companies
State-owned enterprises accounted for over 60% of China's market
...
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What is the intent of urban irrigation restrictions in California? [closed]
I apologize for the blue box above. It is being discussed here.
California is considering restricting the days of the week on which lawns may be watered. What is the upside that could make up for ...
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Did China make pledges to former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte that could be described as a "trap"? If so, which were most attractive to him?
In a May 11, 2022 tweet, (self-described "public educator, academic, columnist, and policy adviser") Richard Javad Heydarian1,2 first asserts that China took the previous Philippine ...
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Do EU regulations define the term "recession"?
At least one Eurostat publication uses the following def of recession:
A recession is normally defined in terms of zero or
negative growth of GDP in at least two successive
quarters.
And they cite a ...
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Why does the US not use the "two negative quarters of GDP" definiton for a recession?
The United States has now had two consecutive quarters of negative growth. This, in turn, has sparked a debate over what constitutes a recession. Wikipedia has this
In economics, a recession is a ...
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Why do Canadians complain more about cost of living than Saudis? [closed]
I do not get it.
Alberta’s recoverable reserves of oil are, still conservatively, the largest on Earth by far, and are larger than those of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela combined.
Canada is rich in water ...
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Has any government ever implemented a break-even tax policy?
I was reading Strong Towns by Charles L. Marohn Jr. In it, he describes how cities must have revenues that exceed expenses in order to survive. However, in his experience, most people react to the ...
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Does Individuals saving adversely effect the economy of a country? [closed]
Does decision of Individuals to save money affect the economy of a country negatively? I think so yes, because if a high earning individual refuses to spend money then it stop the 'gears' of the ...
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Why governments are against "producing" people in artificial wombs? [closed]
Many countries and regions have demographic problems, including all of Eastern Europe, Germany, Russia, and Japan. The reason - low birthrates and/or emigration to more developed countries.
So ...
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Is it possible for a country to grow its economy without foreign investment?
China's economic development is often heavily attributed to direct foreign direct investment (FDI) during the late 70's through 90's.
Is FDI absolutely necessary for a country to grow its industry?
If ...
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What is the reason for the high US inflation rate in 2022?
As reported in the news, for example the Guardian, US current inflation rate is above 8% in annual rate, close to a 40-year high. Can someone please help me understand the root cause?
I started ...
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How is printing money different from taxing people?
From what I understand, printing money gives the government more money while, in time, decreasing the value of the rest of the money in circulation (or reducing how much the value of the currency ...
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What is the wealth gap in the USA?
According to this article, India's richest 1% controls 73% of the country's wealth.
What is the scenario in the USA?
What percentage of the richest controls what percent of the wealth in the USA?