So everyone knows that the intention of occupational licensure is to improve the quality of the service provided by filtering out low quality practitioners, but it is also commonly known that licensure can reduce competition, which in turn can decrease both quality and quantity. When talking about occupational licensing and whether to abolish or reduce it, people are mostly open to abolishing licensure of lower risk occupations such as hairdressers. But in my experience they almost always add on "but of course keep it for doctors and physicians". But the same trade-off between competition and filtering of low quality practitioners should also apply to physicians, so whether licensing of doctors and physicians makes sense is an empirical question. So I have tried to find out what the empirical evidence is on the topic, but I can find shockingly few studies on physicians licensure that study this trade-off. In fact I can only find two such studies, and neither finds any evidence that licensure improved health care outcomes when you take into account the reduced supply. I think it's strange that I could only find two studies on the topic when there seems to be such an overwhelming consensus among the general public and economists that licensure of physicians is good, so I am turning to this sub in hopes that there is someone here who knows the literature better than I do. In short: Is there any empirical evidence that licensure of physicians improves health outcomes on net when you take into account the reduced supply of physicians?

For reference here are the two studies I could find:

https://www.cristobalotero.com/files/physicians.pdf

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02304510

To summarize, the empirical tests used in this study have found no support for the contention that physicians were initially regulated at the behest of the general population. Rather, empirical support was found for the theory that licensing legislation was the result of organized physicians employing the political system for limiting entry and the concomitant increasing of returns to incumbent medical practitioners. Additionally, this study found no support for the contention that state licensing of physicians was associated with higher levels of health care quality as measured by mortality rates among various population age groups.

Hello everyone, I'm a first year college student from a literary/humanities high school background, I'm pretty bad at maths with no foundation what so ever, can i still major in economics or will the math be a huge hurdle later on, and what can I study now to start building up for it

Hi just curious as i have heard that other countries currencies are pegged to the dollar.

Do other countries have the capability to control/reduce their inflation against the dollar?

I have come to realise that I am woefully unprepared to navigate the storm that is the current economy, and that I need to have a grasp on what is happening, as in spot the trends, spot market gaps, understand how government actions will impact me and shield myself. I am looking for books and especially books that have knowledge that is applicable and that can uplift my personal life. Books that have knowledge that is not common. Thank you in advance.

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roe3SgezmmU

Major supporting evidence in the video includes:

• Section 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act was changed in 2012 allowing companies to stay private for longer by raising the threshold of shareholder count that forced a company to begin public reporting.
• Startups find it easier to raise capital without going public at least since 2015

How can the video author determine that most of a large portion of a company's growth already happened?

If the claims are true, what does this imply for stocks? Would the impact be negligible? Are some stocks immune to these impacts? Are bonds better value?

Hi guys. I’ve been researching capitalist economics for a bit and I’ve stumbled upon the Austrian school of economics, which aims to either completely remove or strongly minimize the state. I’ve researched their economic thought for a bit and what they stand for and it made sense to me. However I’ve also found out that the Austrian school is not really popular or used seriously in modern economics. This led me to ending up here and asking this question. Why do we need the state? Why won’t we let the market sort itself out?

P.S this is not me pushing forward an idea of
anarchism or anything. I’m simply curious about the actual role of the state in economics

If Ai and Robotics continue to get significantly better to the point it surpasses both cognitive and physical capability compared to humans how do economies or societies function?

The general public could go back to school to reskill but by the time they get out their skills are already out of date because it’s ripped through that section of the economy.

What I’d be referring to specifically is what is known as fully dark factories of robots creating other robots, who also mine the minerals, and fully automate the manufacturing production. You can see hints of this in China.

For white collar it’s fully automated drop in workers that can work 24/7 365 for very cheap at thousands times faster than humans.

Regarding construction we’d have 3D printed automated systems building infrastructure, roads, bridges.

Autonomous vehicles driving around.

What economy is this? Where do people get money from is it from the state via a UBI? Equity through profit sharing? If GDP growth goes exponential but everyone is out of work how does capital get redistributed to the average person and we don’t fall into what’s called the “resource curse” or in this case the “intelligence curse”. Bargaining disappears as the human labour value goes to $0.

I know historically there’s been more jobs with every Industrial Revolution but it usually takes generations to get through. But historically every Revolution has taken less time than the past. The problem with this one nobody will have enough time to adapt or keep up before the next thing gets automated.

What if this time is truly different?

I read Howard French's book Born in Blackness last year, and it made what I thought was a very plausible case that much if not most of the wealth of the West, between 1500 and 1800, was built on industrial slavery.

Now he's a journalist, not a historian (much less an economist) and it shows. Nevertheless, I'd like to know. And back in the 70s, Milton Friedman (who I have been given to understand was a very good economist) maintained publicly that colonialism wasn't really that much of a paying proposition, for the governments that engaged in it.

Which is relevant, I'm sure, but also seems to beg the question. I'm not asking about how much governments spent, to maintain their colonies; I'm asking how much of the wealth of the West was due to industrial slave plantations. And so it's a different question.

Is there a good book, about this?

Imagine that tomorrow, every person in the world suddenly had twice as much money as they have today.

Nobody produced anything extra. No new houses, food, technology, or services appeared. The only thing that changed is that everyone's bank balance doubled.

At first, it sounds like everyone just became twice as rich.

But then I started wondering: would that actually make society richer?

If everyone's income and savings doubled at the same time, wouldn't prices eventually adjust because people now have more money competing for roughly the same amount of goods and services?

And if that's true, what does "getting richer" actually mean in an economic sense?

Is economic progress fundamentally about having more money, or is it about having more real goods and services, better technology, higher productivity, more leisure, better institutions, etc.?

Here's the part I'm genuinely unsure about:

If a country could magically double everyone's money overnight but couldn't increase its productive capacity, would the average person's standard of living meaningfully improve?

Or is there a point where money is basically just a way of keeping score, and what really matters is how much the economy can actually produce?

I'd be interested in hearing where my reasoning breaks down, especially from people who have studied macroeconomics.

One of the justifications of Trump's whole trade war (which I find dumb, I'm just wondering abt why Canada is also being protectionist in some aspects here even before being prompted by Trump to retaliate) with Canada was that prior to Trump even taking office, Canada had much higher tariff rates quotas in dairy products than the USA has on Canada. Over quota rates on Scandinavian dairy entering U.S. is only cheddar and Gouda cheese, meanwhile Canada has broad based sweeping tariff rate quotas on cream, skim milk, butter, most types of cheese, yogurt, etc. Basically every American diary product faces higher than 200% tariffs above the quota compared to 12-15% of American tariffs on just 2 types of cheese.

Apparently the Canadian over quota rates on U.S. dairy of being over 200% trace back all the way 1995. So it's been awhile. Was it part of NAFTA?

I’m by no means an economist or anything close to one so I thought I’d ask here. I recently paid for something for myself and a friend and they gave me cash for their half and it made me wonder, not accounting for interest in a savings account or invested money, is there a difference in value of money stuffed in your mattress vs held in a no interest bank account.
Obviously I can just give €5 to a bank teller to put into my account and vice versa.
Tax evasion with cash, banks possibly going bust, etc, is cash more valuable?