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1500 questions
114
votes
16 answers
How will non-rich citizens make a living if jobs keep getting replaced by robots and are outsourced?
Decades ago a factory job could support a wife and kids until retirement and they offered insurance, benefits, etc. Now, no more unions, those jobs as well as tech and customer service jobs are outsourced, and anything left in the US is mostly being…
Bruno1993
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96
votes
9 answers
If women are paid less for the same work, why don't employers hire just women?
If women are paid less for the same work, why don't employers hire just women? Do employers decide to lose profits just out of sexism, in feminists' and researchers' opinion? It doesn't make sense to me. In the free and competitive market, if people…
Sergey Zolotarev
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80
votes
20 answers
What are some results in Economics that are both a consensus and far from common sense?
What are some results in Economics that are both a consensus between most economists and far from common sense?
I would also welcome suggestions of clear definitions for what we should mean as consensus , specially considering that economics is an…
psn
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74
votes
5 answers
Why is the oil future price negative?
I don't understand why the price of oil futures went negative today.
News say it is because sellers cannot sell it. But, why don't they just hoard it until the coronavirus crisis is off?
Why don't speculators jump in and bring up the demand again…
user928172
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69
votes
13 answers
Fundamental equations in economics
For the other sciences it´s easy to point to the most important equations that ground the discipline. If I want to explain Economics to a physicist say, what are considered to be the most important equations that underly the subject which I should…
Lumi
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67
votes
4 answers
Why do economists disagree so much?
I'm coming at this from a scientific point of view, having had no formal training in economics - most of what I know about it was from self-studying an undergraduate economics textbook.
My question is, why do economists disagree so much? This…
Allure
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66
votes
23 answers
Criticism of Math in Economics
I've been reading and speaking to a number of educated economists and economics PhDs who are against the use of intense mathematics and mathematical proof in economic theory. Specifically I've been speaking to those of Marxist and heterodox…
EconJohn
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55
votes
7 answers
Why do Australian milk farmers need to protest supermarkets' milk price?
Sorry this might be borderline off-topic (and I am an economics layman at best), but I found this rather puzzling and would like to know why this is happening.
I just came across an article which documents another development in the quarrels between…
FriendFX
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49
votes
8 answers
How do economists explain why people contribute to Wikipedia?
What incentives do contributors have?
I believe they earn no money. And usually, they earn no reputation either, because most of the contributions are anonymous.
I believe this is a public goods game. Have economists studied this "Wikipedia puzzle"?…
user16353
47
votes
9 answers
Seminal papers that later were proven to contain errors
I was reading on institutions, and I came across Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (AJR) paper on The Colonial Origins of comparative development: An Empirical Investigation, and this paper seemed so 'perfect' that spawned a lot of other papers based…
An old man in the sea.
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45
votes
1 answer
What is structural estimation compared to reduced form estimation?
I've heard a lot of definitions given for structural estimation. But it's never seemed entirely clear to me. Some times I've heard that what one person might call "reduced form" estimation should actually be called structural estimation. Sorry I…
jmbejara
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42
votes
3 answers
Why is healthcare so expensive in the USA?
I find this phenomenon to be kind of puzzling.
USA is one of the countries with one of the highest purchasing powers in the world, yet when it comes to healthcare an standard US citizen is likely to not be able to afford it if what needs to be dealt…
user2638180
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42
votes
11 answers
What is the economic purpose of increasing the minimum wage?
It is generally accepted among economists that minimum wage warps the equilibrium point between the supply and demand of labor by instituting a price floor and increases unemployment for unskilled laborers (while increasing the wage for the…
Mathematician
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41
votes
7 answers
Is zero inflation desirable?
Is zero inflation really desirable?
To be more precise: Does inflation in real life have benefits that in some situations outweigh its social cost? E.g.: it works as a disincentive against holding money. The treasury derives income from printing new…
Giskard
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38
votes
5 answers
Did real incomes drop significantly since the 1950s?
From what I heard, in 1950s America, you didn't have to go to college to support a large family and a stay-at-home wife. People could buy houses easily, drove giant cars and didn't worry about gas prices.
Did real incomes drop significantly since…
MWB
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