This feature was developed by Chris Said, and incorporates his Which Famous Economist Are You Most Similar To? project. It has been slightly modified to fit the Clark Center’s needs.
1. Giving specific presents as holiday gifts is inefficient, because recipients could satisfy their preferences much better with cash. Read More
2. Amending the Constitution to require that the federal government end each fiscal year without a deficit would substantially reduce output variability in the United States. Read More
3. Because labor markets across different sectors are connected, rising productivity in manufacturing leads the cost of labor-intensive services — such as education and health care — to rise. Read More
4. Large tech platforms, such as Amazon Marketplace and Google Search, should be designated as ‘platform utilities' and broken apart from any participant on that platform. Read More
5. An annual December spending surge on parties, gift-giving and personal travel delivers net social benefits. Read More
6. Part A: Considering a broad range of costs and benefits is a better tool for guiding climate policy than setting temperature limits (such as 1.5 °C , eg) based on expected links between temperature increases and the extent of environmental harm. Read More
7. Part B: Carbon taxes are a better way to implement climate policy than cap-and-trade. Read More
8. The net effect of admitting children of alumni and donors (including any impact on donations and any losses of other high potential applicants) is likely to be a reduction in the contribution of colleges and universities to society. Read More
9. It is best for society if the management of U.S. publicly traded corporations only considers the impact of their decisions on customers, employees, and community members to the extent that these impacts feedback to impact shareholder wealth. Read More
10. Economic analysis can identify whether countries are using their exchange rates to benefit their own people at the expense of their trading partners’ welfare. Read More
11. If the US reduced its fiscal deficit, then its trade deficit would also shrink. Read More
12. The Council of Economic Advisors is likely to give the US president better policy advice if the Chair and Members of the CEA have published peer-reviewed economics research. Read More
13. The typical chief executive officer of a publicly traded corporation in the U.S. is paid more than his or her marginal contribution to the firm's value. Read More
14. Freer trade improves productive efficiency and offers consumers better choices, and in the long run these gains are much larger than any effects on employment. Read More
15. If the US replaced its discretionary monetary policy regime with a gold standard, defining a "dollar" as a specific number of ounces of gold, the price-stability and employment outcomes would be better for the average American. Read More
16. If a small number of firms have a large combined market share in a properly defined market, it is strong evidence that those firms have substantial market power. Read More
17. Countries that borrow in their own currency should not worry about government deficits because they can always create money to finance their debt. Read More
18. Taxes or bans on large bottles of soft drinks containing sugar are not likely to have a significant effect on obesity rates because people will substitute towards consuming excessive calories in other ways. Read More
19. Restricting eligibility for senior government economic-policy posts by requiring a graduate degree in economics would reduce the chances for good public policy outcomes. Read More
20. Large movements in monthly oil prices, either up or down, are driven primarily by speculators, as opposed to changes in the current (and planned) supply or demand for oil. Read More
21. Within the software industry, the US patent system makes consumers better off than they would be in the absence of patents. Read More
22. A ban on very short-term loans at very high annualized interest rates (aka payday lending) would make most people who use or might use them better off. Read More
23. The association between health and economic growth in poor countries primarily involves faster growth generating better health, rather than the other way around. Read More
24. Laws to prevent high prices for essential goods in short supply in a crisis would raise social welfare. Read More
25. Letting publicly traded US firms report earnings annually rather than quarterly would lead their executives to place more weight on long-term issues in their investments and other decisions. Read More
26. Rather than using second-round runoffs to settle elections in which no candidate wins a first-round majority, it would be better to use ranked-choice voting (as in the state of Maine) in which voters are encouraged to rank all of the candidates. Read More
27. Holding labor market institutions and job training fixed, rising use of robots and artificial intelligence is likely to increase substantially the number of workers in advanced countries who are unemployed for long periods. Read More
28. All things considered, US society will be better off if sports betting becomes legal in more US states (beyond Nevada). Read More
29. Providing state and local subsidies to build stadiums for professional sports teams is likely to cost the relevant taxpayers more than any local economic benefits that are generated. Read More
30. Part A: Appropriately managed corporations could create significantly greater value than they currently do for a range of stakeholders – including workers, suppliers, customers and community members – with negligible impacts on shareholder value. Read More
31. Part B: Effective mechanisms for boards of directors to ensure that CEOs act in ways that balance the interests of all stakeholders would be straightforward to introduce. Read More
32. Taking into account the revenues, consumer surplus, purchasing patterns by income, and possible consumer biases, state-run lotteries (such as Powerball and scratch-off games) increase social welfare. Read More
33. Unless they have inside information, very few investors, if any, can consistently make accurate predictions about whether the price of an individual stock will rise or fall on a given day. Read More
34. When local governments compete by offering subsidies to a firm that is willing to relocate, and shopping across multiple alternative areas, the firm typically captures most of value that is created via the relocation. Read More
35. A market that allows payment for human kidneys should be established on a trial basis to help extend the lives of patients with kidney disease. Read More
36. Using surge pricing to allocate transportation services — such as Uber does with its cars — raises consumer welfare through various potential channels, such as increasing the supply of those services, allocating them to people who desire them the most, and reducing search and queuing costs. Read More
37. Even though the professors who select textbooks are different form the people who pay for them, the price of new edition college textbooks reflect classic forces of supply and demand. Read More
38. Because of the many special and unique roles that the dollar plays in global commerce, US citizens are substantially better off than they otherwise would be. Read More
39. Laws that limit the resale of tickets for entertainment and sports events make potential audience members for those events worse off on average. Read More
40. Refusing to liberalize trade unless partner countries adopt new labor or environmental rules is a bad policy, because even if the new standards would reduce distortions on some dimensions, such a policy involves threatening to maintain large distortions in the form of restricted trade. Read More
41. The existence of a multi-year trade deficit of Country A with Country B implies that B has successfully tilted the playing field in its favor in terms of such policies as tariffs, non-tariff barriers, and the exchange rate between them. Read More
42. The concept of “maximum sustainable employment” is well defined enough to be used beneficially in economic policymaking. Read More
