Topic: Economics (Page 8)
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π Gresham's Law
In economics, Gresham's law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good". For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will gradually disappear from circulation.
The law was named in 1860 by Henry Dunning Macleod, after Sir Thomas Gresham (1519β1579), who was an English financier during the Tudor dynasty. However, the concept itself had been previously expressed by others, including by Aristophanes in his play The Frogs, which dates from around the end of the 5th century BC, in the 14th century by Nicole Oresme c.β1350, in his treatise On the Origin, Nature, Law, and Alterations of Money, and by jurist and historian Al-Maqrizi (1364β1442) in the Mamluk Empire; and in 1519 by Nicolaus Copernicus in a treatise called Monetae cudendae ratio For this reason, it is occasionally known as the GreshamβCopernicus' law.
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- "Gresham's Law" | 2020-03-15 | 33 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Price revolution
The Price Revolution, sometimes known as the Spanish Price Revolution, was a series of economic events that occurred between the second half of the 15th century and the first half of the 17th century, and most specifically linked to the high rate of inflation that occurred during this period across Western Europe. Prices rose on average roughly sixfold over 150 years. This level of inflation amounts to 1β1.5% per year, a relatively low inflation rate for modern-day standards, but rather high given the monetary policy in place in the 16th century.
Generally it is thought that this high inflation was caused by the large influx of gold and silver from the Spanish treasure fleet from the New World, including Mexico, Peru, and the rest of the Spanish Empire.
Specie flowed through Spain, increasing Spanish prices, and then spread over Western Europe as a result of Spanish balance of payments deficit. This enlarged the monetary supply and price levels of many European countries. Combined with this influx of gold and silver, population growth and urbanization perpetuated the price revolution. According to this theory, too many people with too much money chased too few goods.
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- "Price revolution" | 2018-06-16 | 33 Upvotes 5 Comments
π The βFinancializationβ of Society
Financialization (or financialisation in British English) is a term sometimes used to describe the development of financial capitalism during the period from 1980 to present, in which debt-to-equity ratios increased and financial services accounted for an increasing share of national income relative to other sectors.
Financialization describes an economic process by which exchange is facilitated through the intermediation of financial instruments. Financialization may permit real goods, services, and risks to be readily exchangeable for currency, and thus make it easier for people to rationalize their assets and income flows.
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- "The βFinancializationβ of Society" | 2021-11-01 | 37 Upvotes 1 Comments
π The Theory of American Decline
American decline is a term used by various analysts to describe the diminishing power of the United States geopolitically, militarily, financially, economically, socially, and in health and the environment. There has been a debate between declinists, those who believe America is in decline, and exceptionalists, those who feel America is immortal.
Some analysts say that the U.S. was in decline long before Donald Trump ran for presidency; becoming the first presidential candidate to promote the idea that the U.S. was in decline. While others suggest the decline either stems from or has accelerated with Trump's foreign policy and the "countryβs ongoing withdrawal from the global arena." According to Noam Chomsky, America's decline started at the end of WWII, dismissing the "remarkable rhetoric of the several years of triumphalism in the 1990s" as "mostly self-delusion".
Gallup's pollsters recently reported that worldwide approval of U.S. leadership has plunged from 48% in 2016 to a record low of 30% in 2018, in part due to the increasingly isolationist stances of Donald Trump. This drop places the U.S. a notch below China's 31% and leaving Germany as the most popular power with an approval of 41%. Michael Hudson describes financial pillar as paramount, resulting from bank-created money with compound interest and the inbuilt refusal to forgive debts as the fatal flaw.
China's challenging the U.S. for global predominance constitutes the core issue in the debate over the American decline.
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- "The Theory of American Decline" | 2020-06-10 | 32 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Professor Ronald Coase has died aged 102
Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 β 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. He was the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School, where he arrived in 1964 and remained for the rest of his life. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991.
Coase, who believed economists should study real markets and not theoretical ones, established the case for the corporation as a means to pay the costs of operating a marketplace. Coase is best known for two articles in particular: "The Nature of the Firm" (1937), which introduces the concept of transaction costs to explain the nature and limits of firms; and "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960), which suggests that well-defined property rights could overcome the problems of externalities (see Coase theorem). Additionally, Coase's transaction costs approach is currently influential in modern organizational economics, where it was reintroduced by Oliver E. Williamson.
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- "Professor Ronald Coase has died aged 102" | 2013-09-08 | 27 Upvotes 9 Comments
π Parable of the Broken Window
The parable of the broken window was introduced by French economist FrΓ©dΓ©ric Bastiat in his 1850 essay "That Which We See and That Which We Do Not See" ("Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas") to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not actually a net benefit to society.
The parable seeks to show how opportunity costs, as well as the law of unintended consequences, affect economic activity in ways that are unseen or ignored. The belief that destruction is good for the economy is consequently known as the broken window fallacy or glazier's fallacy.
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- "Parable of the Broken Window" | 2023-08-20 | 21 Upvotes 15 Comments
π Boots Theory
The Sam Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness, often called simply the boots theory, is an economic theory first popularised by English fantasy writer Terry Pratchett in his 1993 Discworld novel Men at Arms. In the novel, Sam Vimes, the captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, reasons that poverty causes greater expenses to the poor than to those who are richer. Since its publication, the theory has received wider attention, especially in regard to the effect of increasing prices of daily necessities.
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- "Boots Theory" | 2023-01-14 | 28 Upvotes 7 Comments
π First-Mover Advantage
In marketing strategy, first-mover advantage (FMA) is the advantage gained by the initial ("first-moving") significant occupant of a market segment. First-mover advantage may be gained by technological leadership, or early purchase of resources.
A market participant has first-mover advantage if it is the first entrant and gains a competitive advantage through control of resources. With this advantage, first-movers can be rewarded with huge profit margins and a monopoly-like status.
Not all first-movers are rewarded. If the first-mover does not capitalize on its advantage, its "first-mover disadvantages" leave opportunity for new entrants to enter the market and compete more effectively and efficiently than the first-movers; such firms have "second-mover advantage".
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- "First-Mover Advantage" | 2020-03-22 | 21 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Mechanism design
Mechanism design is a field in economics and game theory that takes an objectives-first approach to designing economic mechanisms or incentives, toward desired objectives, in strategic settings, where players act rationally. Because it starts at the end of the game, then goes backwards, it is also called reverse game theory. It has broad applications, from economics and politics (markets, auctions, voting procedures) to networked-systems (internet interdomain routing, sponsored search auctions).
Mechanism design studies solution concepts for a class of private-information games. Leonid Hurwicz explains that 'in a design problem, the goal function is the main "given", while the mechanism is the unknown. Therefore, the design problem is the "inverse" of traditional economic theory, which is typically devoted to the analysis of the performance of a given mechanism.' So, two distinguishing features of these games are:
- that a game "designer" chooses the game structure rather than inheriting one
- that the designer is interested in the game's outcome
The 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson "for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory".
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- "Mechanism design" | 2015-05-06 | 31 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion
Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization.
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- "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" | 2020-09-01 | 29 Upvotes 1 Comments