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Currency Manipulation

Question A:

Economic analysis can identify whether countries are using their exchange rates to benefit their own people at the expense of their trading partners’ welfare.

Question B:

Bank of Japan monetary policies that result in a weaker yen make Americans generally worse off.

 
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Nash Equilibrium

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

Behavior in many complex and seemingly intractable strategic settings can be understood more clearly by working out what each party in the game will choose to do if they realize that the other parties will be solving the same problem.  This insight has helped us understand behavior as diverse as military conflicts, price setting by competing firms and penalty kicking in soccer. 
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Local Tax Incentives

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:

A)  Giving tax incentives to specific firms to locate operations in a city or state typically generates local benefits that outweigh the costs to the city and/or state providing the incentives.

B) The US as a whole benefits when cities or states compete with each other by giving tax incentives to firms to locate operations in their jurisdictions. 
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Vaccines

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

A) Declining to be vaccinated against contagious diseases such as measles imposes costs on other people, which is a negative externality.

B) Considering the costs of restricting free choice, and the share of people in the US who choose not to vaccinate their children for measles, the social benefit of mandating measles vaccines for all Americans (except those with compelling medical reasons) would exceed the social cost. 
Which Economist Are You?

Survey: Which Famous Economist Are You Most Similar To

Last year Chris Said, who is now a data scientist at Twitter, created a tool for summarizing the answers from the experts panel so that anyone could see which expert they would be most similar to. Chris has updated his analysis to include the 2014 questions and answers. If you are interesting in taking his […]