I've been thinking about the ethics of intellectual property, especially when it comes to patented seeds and genetically modified crops.

I understand that companies invest time, money and research into developing better crops, and they deserve to earn something from their work. But I think agriculture is a special case.

Food is something almost everyone depends on to survive. Should companies really have the same level of control over agricultural innovations as they do over ordinary commercial products?

Humans didn't create the biological ability of plants to grow and reproduce. Agriculture also builds on generations of farmers' knowledge, selective breeding and the preservation of natural genetic diversity. Yet companies can obtain intellectual-property rights over certain plant varieties and restrict how their seeds are used.

I'm not saying companies shouldn't profit from their research. But should the right to profit ever outweigh the public's right to access something essential to survival?

Here are a few alternatives I've been thinking about:

• Stricter rules for essential crops: Shorter exclusive periods or stronger licensing requirements for technologies critical to food security.
• Public or collective ownership: Especially for publicly funded research, allowing multiple parties to access and commercialise the technology under reasonable terms.
• Mandatory disclosure and eventual public access: Once exclusive rights expire, others should be able to use the disclosed invention without unnecessary barriers.
• Stronger farmers' rights: Protecting reasonable rights to save and replant seeds, while balancing the interests of breeders.

Of course, weaker intellectual-property protection could discourage private investment. That's a legitimate concern. But perhaps public funding, research grants and shared licensing could reward innovation without allowing a few companies to gain excessive control over essential resources.

I'm curious what others think:

1. Should food-related technologies have different intellectual-property rules from other inventions?
2. Could public or collective ownership work, or would it create even bigger problems?
3. Where should we draw the line between rewarding innovation and restricting access to something humanity depends on?

I'm not arguing that all patents are bad. I just think we should question whether the current balance between private profit and public interest is the right one.

Serious question. I’m a union trade worker and it seems it’s getting harder and harder to find work. A quick google search reveals that more and more GC’s in this country are turning to non union man power. What’s our future look like? Are we pricing ourselves out of work?

The union seems to have stooped to a new level just hiring people who can breathe. It wasn’t this way before. Not that it’a a bad thing but there was a big push for minorities and women in the trades. Is this a last ditch effort to bring in numbers?

My local speciffcally had a major with corruption. It seems the big guys are sucking it all up before the end. Thoughts?

I am trying to clearly understand the tools used by the Fed and what they accomplish. If you can explain them in simpler terms, I would be grateful. But as far as I understand (based on equation MV = PY, where P, the price level is what the Fed wants to control through their tools for controlling inflation if I understand correctly),

1. The old way, the fed would buy or sell treasury bills/bonds from/to banks. So this would directly control the "money supply" M, right? What I don't quite understand is that how does this incentivize banks to buy or sell back the bills/bonds to the fed?

2. The new way, the fed controls interest on reserve balance (IORB) (not sure if there are other tools as well). This kind of makes sense where the banks would have a interest rate for the loans they give to customers, greater than the IORB because they can already get IORB by keeping all the money at the Fed. Is my understanding correct? And which part(s) of MV = PY does this tool control? Is it the velocity of money or money supply (if so, how)?

3. When and why does the Fed actually create "new money"? As far as I understand, if there is a constant amount of money in a country, the fed can still control the "money supply" through their tools without needing new money. So why and when and how often would they actually create "new money" and how does this "new money" get into the economy? And is there sometimes any need for "destroying" money (but I guess this is just equivalent to reducing money supply)?

Are these tools global i.e., used by central banks in other countries as well? I would greatly appreciate if you could help me understand these in more detail. Thank you!

Hi. Sorry if this has already been asked.

Before the slower possible transition to new humanistic industries, what happens to our current standard of living/birth rates if AI replaces a large majority of our workforce?
Are there any theoretical books on this?
Thanks

Basically here are the steps I imagine:

1. Technology makes a region more competitive
2. Money flows into the region
3. Landlord raise rents since there is more money available but not more land
4. People in that more competitive industry can afford the higher rents but are no better off.
5. People other industries demand higher wages to pay for the higher rents
6. This makes these other industries uncompetitive compared to other regions. It fades away and the people in those industries lose their jobs.

What's wrong with this logic?

What if there was a law that said businesses had to provide consumers with a easy to understand price breakdown of a product that costs $1000 or more after tax?
It could be a four category structure, such as material costs, labor, transport and markup. This way consumers can better assess the value of a purchase and it could deter companies from over pricing products or use misleading language to give the illusion of value.
What does everyone think?

I'm finishing an MSc in Economics at Università Cattolica in Milan, a good university but not a target one (not LSE/Bocconi/TSE tier), graduating in March 2027. I'd appreciate honest input from people who've been through PhD admissions or work in central banks.
My profile:
GPA: approx. 3.6/4.0. Solid, but not top of the class.
Research experience: about 4 months as a research assistant for a professor, building a bank-level panel dataset to calibrate a DSGE model.
Next step: I'll most likely start a post-graduation traineeship in the monetary policy department of a euro area central bank.
No GRE yet.
My dilemma:
I've always had the idea of doing a PhD, but I'll be honest about my motivation. I want it mainly for the career, not out of love for academic research. My goal is to work as an economist at a central bank or in similar roles where a PhD is basically required. I'm not aiming for an academic career.
That makes me think a PhD only makes sense at a top program. If I'm doing it purely as a career investment, five years at a mid-tier place seems hard to justify. But with my grades and background, I'm not sure top European programs are realistic.
My questions:
With this profile, plus the traineeship, what are my realistic chances at good European PhD programs?
Does the "top program or nothing" logic hold for central bank research careers, or do central banks hire PhDs from mid-tier programs too, especially with prior central bank experience?
Is career motivation alone a red flag, for admissions or for getting through the program?
Are there other paths I should consider?

I’m in second year studying economics. I want to do a placement year and am about to start applying but I don’t really have much of an idea about what sort of job I want to do after I graduate. I am doing BA economics and I prefer the policy/ theory side of things as oppose to econometrics and the statistics part. What sort of firms would be good for me to apply for placements? I am also aware that I could maybe do a placement outside of economics and finance; are there any placements that would take me as an economics student that aren’t directly economics or finance roles?

Historically, workers have been able to negotiate better wages and working conditions by withholding their labor, forcing employers to absorb the costs of lost production.

As AI and robotics continue to advance, I'm curious how this might change the economics behind that relationship.

If employers become less dependent on human labor to maintain production, does that reduce the effectiveness of strikes and collective bargaining?

Is there existing economic research that examines how automation affects this relationship?

I remember back in school about 15 years ago when we first had informations about countries gdps in geography, i started to inform myself and back than the US had a GDP of about 16 Trillion. Now its 32 Trillion. And i just wonder how?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10/25/bill-gates-ai-is-an-evolutionary-event/

Hire the robot, fire the human and don't look back.
~Bill Gates

Mapped: Home Prices vs. Incomes Around the World

I am studying economics at undergrad and have read Kelton’s The Deficit Myth alongside some mainstream critiques (e.g. Mankiw’s 2020 AEA paper), so I’m familiar with the basic MMT framework: a government that issues its own currency can’t run out of money, so the real limit on spending is inflation, not deficits.

What I’m less sure about is the inflation-control side. As I understand it, MMT generally argues that interest rates are a weak or even counterproductive tool, and that inflation should instead be managed through fiscal policy, raising taxes or cutting spending when the economy overheats, plus automatic stabilisers like a job guarantee.

My questions:

1. What’s the mainstream view of why monetary policy is usually preferred for inflation control? Is it mainly about speed and flexibility, the political difficulty of raising taxes quickly, or something more fundamental?
2. Is there empirical evidence on how effective discretionary fiscal tightening is at reducing inflation compared with rate rises?
3. Does the job guarantee actually work as an inflation anchor the way MMT proponents claim, or does it run into the same problems as other approaches?

Would really appreciate any help, papers or sources on this. Thank you in advance for any help.

I understand that free trade and working from one's comparative advantage is usually the optimal way to go about things.

But if Nation A has a comparative advantage in, say, primary commodities or low-skilled assembly, then specialising in those sectors would, I would guess, subject its economy to diminishing returns over time.

Meanwhile, Nation B has a comparative advantage in high-tech manufacturing or some other knowledge-intensive sector. These generate dynamic increasing returns and also soaring barriers to entry over time.

If a few nations capture the increasing-returns sectors while Nation A is relegated to low-value activities, isn't the result a highly asymmetric relationship (which becomes more asymmetric over time), assuming the disadvantaged nation operates strictly according to its comparative advantage? Wouldn't it make more sense for it to adopt some kind of industrial policy to reorient itself elsewhere?

It's common knowledge that the US funds the lion's share of pharmaceutical innovation thanks to their extremely high prices (largely a result of monopoly pricing power and weak national price negotiations). If the US government negotiated down drug prices, this would eat into the bottom line of pharmaceutical companies and they would undertake less risky drug development. But what exactly is the relationship between price negotiation and innovation? Is it a linear decline? Is there a lot of wasteful (not directly addressing public health needs) spending that can be cut? Could the US (substantially) negotiate down drug prices while protecting the valuable innovation?

How are healthcare costs measured for things like GDP or estimating US healthcare spending? I had to get a lab test recently for my physical. The lab billed insurance $120 for the test. Insurance said nope, the contracted price is $9. For measurement purposes, did this transaction add $9 or $120 to the GDP and US healthcare spending?

hello, trying to unserstand something :

Retirement systems like France are facing problems right now with the aging of the population. Young people are not enough to pay for old people.

Funded retirement like in US is often raised as a solution. But is it ?

I can see french system being more directly impacted by the problem and so being striked first. But funded retirement needs growth so that people can live from their pension later. And growth seems very linked in the long run to population growth too, at least it eases it a lot.

So wouldn’t that be the same problem but for later ? Isn’t one system just more resilient to this problem because more indirectly connected to it ?

What am I missing ? I suppose you will tell me that growth doesn’t need more population, if so please explain. Cause yes technology can make you produce more even alone but why would you if nobody is there to buy more ?

Thank you

A lot of countries impose high tariffs and restrict foreign enterprises from entering their markets to protect their domestic industries from foreign competion . Is it possible for a country that lacks infrastructure and has a closed economy to grow both its domestic industries and its economy without liberalizing and imposing high tariffs ?

This is my simplistic understanding:

Hungary’s recent growth strategy centered on foreign direct investment into low-cost, labor-intensive manufacturing. To avoid stagnation, there is a clear need to move up the value chain toward higher value-added industries.

​Given that several neighboring CEE economies have achieved faster GDP per capita growth and higher living standards recently:

​What concrete economic, educational, or institutional reforms must the government implement to make this shift effective?

How does high vs low pressure economy come into play?

​What realistic path exists for Hungary to catch up with its regional peers in terms of wage levels and quality of life?

Also with optimal growth how long would it take to catch up to the better off CEE countries? Decades?

Feel free to correct me, I'm just interested in what would an optimal future for the economy look like.

Thanks for the answers!

To my extremely limited understanding of economics, isn't it a net negative to abandon your own currency in favour of a united currency, without a unified fiscal policy? Doesn't it just make everyone more restricted for no benefit? What are upsides of the Euro?