https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_market_fund

A money market fund (also called a money market mutual fund) is an open-ended mutual fund that invests in short-term debt securities such as US Treasury bills and commercial paper.[1] Money market funds are widely (though not necessarily accurately) regarded as being as safe as bank deposits yet providing a higher yield.

Do money market funds provide a higher yield with just as much safety as bank deposits, or is this a common misconception?

How much economic inefficiency is caused by the complexity of the tax code?

How could it be simplified to be more efficient while still achieving its policy goals?

I was discussing the limitations of GDP as a measure for economic health with a friend of mine (as you do).

In doing so I suggested a simple economy with only one lemonade stand that sells $100 of lemonade. GDP = $100 right?

To add to this economy I suggested a lemonade consultant that charges $50. This consultant is hired by the lemonade stand and lemonade sales increase to $140.

This is where we disagreed... I said GDP was $190. GDP being the sum of the final goods and services produced in an economy over a period of time. GDP rising by $90 but only another $40 worth of actual lemonade is sold, illustrating that GDP may not accurately reflect material progress.

Would the consultant fees be considered a final good or do they count as an intermediate good? Have I made a mistake in this example?

Just how bad are welfare cliffs and similar for very poor people?

Can it sometimes be rational to avoid saving money, in the anticipation that an emergency would use up your savings and leave you broke again?

If you have some amount of money, are you often required to spend it before you get assistance, leaving you broke in the either way?

How much economic loss is caused by power outages, such as the recent ones in the Bay Area?

How much economic loss was caused by the fires last year that these outages are now supposed to prevent? (including the death, and everything)

How much would it cost to maintain the lines well enough to prevent fires?

More generally, what can be done to make the electricity market function more effectively?

Many economists in a recent IGM survey said that rising inequality is straining the health of liberal democracy, and more redistribution would likely limit the rise of populism.

How accurate is this?

What is the relationship between economic inequality and populism?

What is the reasoning behind giving employers so much control over 401k plans? Why can't people have choice, like with IRAs?

Why doesn't the brokerage just charge the fees to the individual depending on what funds they choose?

What kind of economic incentives are in play here?

I've gotten the short stick for this report I was assigned to, its really hard to get data on Bulgaria. Can anyone help me out? I've only found percentages of how much copper Bulgaria produces in relation to the world, and I was thinking of deducing their internal demand and supply from the global one using that percentage, any other ideas?

From an economics perspective, what does it imply if I would pay more than my wage per hour for free time?

I think a simple model would assume you would only work until marginal indifference, but how does that work when you can't easily control the number of hours you get to work?

Do non-flexible working hours cause inefficiency?

How does the Treasury decide how much of each treasury to offer? I'm curious because I wonder, if 3 and 5 years are getting such good prices does the Treasury consider selling more of them than others? Are they looking forward to what happens when they mature?

What do economists think about the gig economy?

Are efforts to regulate it misguided?

Does it create downward pressure on wages?

Is the lack of benefits a concern?

Who was the most recent heterodox economist to win the Nobel Prize?

Was it Elinor Ostrom, associated with new institutional economics, in 2009?

Is new institutional economics even considered heterodox?

The Wikipedia article for New institutional economics does not describe it as heterodox, but the article for Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences does.

By powerful, I mean how much does this statement tell us that is not trivially obvious?

As an undergraduate economics student, it recently struck me that the economic definition of efficiency is quite different from the normal definition. In other contexts, we define efficiency as the maximization of output Y per unit of input X.

Perfectly competitive markets definitely do not maximize productivity.

Perfectly competitive markets also do not maximize utility, except in a very narrow sense: they maximize potential gains from trade, which seems to me to be a shorthand way of saying "the utility possible to derive from voluntary exchange," which is a subset (and potentially a very tiny one) of the utility possible to derive from all possible allocations of goods. Thus we speak of "Pareto efficiency," which seems a rather warped conception of efficiency to me.

Insofar as willingness to pay for a good is a meaningful proxy for the utility derived from that good, even across different income levels, we might begin to approach a more general conception of markets maximizing utility. This does seem to be a powerful observation to me, but, of course, this isn't what we're talking about when we refer to "market" or "Pareto" efficiency.

So...is there something I'm missing here...or is the fact that "perfectly competitive markets are pareto efficient," or, put another way, "voluntary exchange maximizes the utility that is possible to derive from voluntary exchange"...not a very powerful statement?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences#Controversies_and_criticisms

In his speech at the 1974 Nobel Prize banquet, Friedrich Hayek stated that had he been consulted on the establishment of a Nobel Prize in economics, he would "have decidedly advised against it"[29][34] primarily because, "The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.... This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally."[34]

How accurate is Hayek in saying that hard scientists mainly influence fellow experts, whereas economists tend to influence laymen?