Whether someone believes in higher rates of tax or not can tell you a lot about their political views. As a general rule, conservative politicians - at least since the 80s - have favoured fewer tax brackets and relatively lower rates of tax. The argument goes that this encourages people to work harder because they keep more of their money, which means more money remains in the economy; eventually it will trickle down to those not so rich.

When you think business school, you probably think MBA. A Master’s of Business Administration has long been a coveted — and often essential — qualification for business professionals. In recent years, however, the tide has begun to quietly shift, with more business school students than ever pursuing master’s degrees in specialized fields such as accounting, economics and business analytics. There are several key differences between an MBA and M.S. degree. The one you choose depends on your career goals, experience, finances and more.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so the old proverb goes. And with coronavirus spreading through countries, deep economic recession clambering at its coattails, the collective need has rarely been higher. In just four months, almost 300,000 lives have been taken worldwide, and lockdown, in its various forms, is threatening untold livelihoods - as of May 9th, 33 million jobs have been lost in the US alone. True to the saying, some invention has been forthcoming as incumbents have scrambled to protect their citizens and economies.

Your phone is one of the most useful tools you’ve got, whether you’re studying or working in the field. Particularly in the current situation, using the technology many of us have all around us is a great way to stay on top of your economics research and remain knowledgeable while inside, staying safe during the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the apps listed below are also available on iPad, so you can download them on whichever device is more appropriate for you.

The ascension of the Chinese economy to global preeminence is not without precedent. China was, after all, one of the largest economies in the world from the Song Dynasty (c.900 CE) until the 19th century’s ‘Great Divergence’, when European industrialisation facilitated the long period of Western economic dominance that generations alive today know all too well.

12:00 5 May 2020 The UK government has refused to bail out universities which are suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic. Institutions will however be able to charge full tuition fees for the duration of lockdown, and £2.6 billion in tuition fees will be paid early. The government has also imposed a cap on the number of students which can enrol next academic year, and £100 million has been allocated in research funding.

In our current state of isolation, it’s important not to forget about some of the other issues which still beset the human race, not least climate change. Due to the fact that so fewer people are travelling both around the world and domestically each day, the levels of greenhouse gases being emitted are far lower than they have been in recent years. However, the problem is far from solved, and how to balance the economy with climate change policies is a question that still awaits an answer.

Despite the easing of Corona-induced restrictions in certain places around the world, many universities and centers of learning remain shut, and will likely stay so for some time. For the foreseeable future then online learning will fill the void and become the default means of study. Yes, these are strange times. If you aren't already incredibly familiar with Zoom/Whereby/Skype we advise you to download them all now!

Perfect competition describes a market structure in which many sellers and buyers exchange a homogeneous good and no individual can influence the market price, i.e., buyers and sellers are price takers. In a perfectly competitive market total welfare (that is, the sum of consumer and producer surplus) is maximal.

Now in their fourth year, the prestigious INOMICS Awards recognise the top career and study opportunities offered by INOMICS customers in 2019. Keeping with tradition, we divided the awards into categories to showcase exactly which opportunities were of greatest interest to INOMICS users. They include: Top Employers, Top Training Courses, Top Places to do a Master’s, Top Places to do a PhD, Top Conference Organizers and Top Summer School Organizers.

A price ceiling, also called price cap, is the maximum price that a seller is allowed to charge for a particular good or service by law. It is an instrument of market regulation that governments may use to ensure that firms do not abuse their market power by charging consumers excessively high prices. Particularly, for goods which are considered a necessity such as water, electricity, or food, the government may establish price ceilings to protect consumers.

As COVID-19 has spread globally, access to the outside world has shrunk, made increasingly off-limits by government lock-down, observable now only through glass. Our digital lives have expanded to fill the void, evenings previously spent with friends now passed plugged into laptops, obsessing over the latest figures, bailouts and newly-imposed restrictions - time blurs. Amid the chorus of leaders justifying ever more draconian measures, one thing has been hard to miss: the invocations of war.

Been meaning to brush up on your econometric skills, not got round to it, and now worried you won't be able to due to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic? No fear - there's plenty of studying you can do from the comfort of your own home online. While nothing beats face-to-face interaction between student and teacher, online courses have other advantages, not least being that you can study when you want and at your own pace.

Price discrimination is a pricing strategy in which firms charge different prices for different units of the same physical good or service, either to different consumers or to the same consumer. By doing so firms can increase their profits compared to selling each unit of the good at the same price. If and how a firm can successfully price discriminate depends crucially on the information that the firm has about its customers and on the possibilities of the consumers to engage in arbitrage.

As the world is ravaged by COVID-19, governments everywhere are enjoying burgeoning support. A glance at approval ratings finds presidents, prime ministers, even autocrats, overwhelmingly popular, in some instances irrespective of their actual performance. Of course, this is unsurprising: there’s long been a history of populations coalescing around established leaders in times of crisis. Amid uncertainty, we find their increased visibility reassuring. Speaking to the nation they look competent and confident; we feel inclined to trust them, and more often than not, we do.

In these weird times, many (though by no means all) of us find ourselves with a lot of time on our hands, stuck at home with not much to do. But actually, there are plenty of things you can get stuck into to keep you busy, and not all of them involve watching ten hours of Netflix a day. We here at INOMICS are big fans of convincing people to learn a language, because we think it's one of the best things you can do for your brain.

The list of reasons to learn a new language is endless. Not only does it open up a whole other world of culture and history for you, there's a growing body of research which suggests becoming multilingual can help stave off dementia, improve your memory, improve your cognitive control, and even make your happier and boost your pleasure levels. Employers also often say they value bilingual candidates more highly, and much research shows after learning one new language, learning others becomes easier.

An Edgeworth box (named after Irish philosopher and economist Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, 1881) is a two-dimensional representation of a simple, closed economy consisting of two individuals and two items (or resources) that are finite in supply. Any feasible allocation of the items between the individuals is included as a dot in the box; the individuals’ preferences over the items are represented through indifference curves.

If you’ve decided it’s time to take a break from all the hard studying you’re doing during this coronavirus isolation period, why not kill some hours playing a video game? Better yet, why not kill some hours playing a video game which will help you accrue business acumen and improve your real-world economics knowledge? Sound too good to be true? Thankfully, there are some games which offer just that.

A Cobb-Douglas production function models the relationship between production output and production inputs (factors). It is used to calculate ratios of inputs to one another for efficient production and to estimate technological change in production methods.

With university doors firmly shut, and no indication when they may reopen, educators are becoming increasingly creative with their methods of teaching. Necessity, as we know, breeds innovation. Of course, the shift toward online learning pre-dates the coronavirus, but its spread is speeding up the process. With each passing day, more and more courses can now be found on online, allowing students to continue with their studies, albeit from the comfort of their own home.

Technological advancement gives college kids an unprecedented medium for boosting their academic performance with just a few taps on their smartphones. Modernizing and optimizing the studying habits of today’s students, digitalization provides essential tools and techniques which, especially in the current isolated state of affairs, they may not be able to access. Mobile applications for studying are surely novel, but have the benefit of being innovative and finding new ways to help students learn, rather than simply repeating the old tired techniques.

With the coronavirus making studying from home the new norm, it’s imperative we look beyond the frustrations of no longer having face-to-face contact and find a routine to keep our brains alert, and educational progress on track. Yes, it’s a difficult time, but INOMICS is here to help. 

The emergence of Joe Biden as the unassailable front-runner in the Democratic Primary belies a contest that at various turns broke new ground. From its unprecedented field, larger and more representative than ever (save the brief participation of two billionaires), to the remarkable resuscitation of one moribund campaign, the departure from custom was clear. Nowhere was this more obvious than in policy, where the inclusion of senators, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, dragged the conversation leftwards into distinctly uncharted territory.

There are plenty of books which are important for economists to read in the non-fiction department, from the very popular to the extremely academic. But what of fiction books - novels, plays, and the like? It's important not to forget that even stories which aren't 'true' in the dictionary definition sense of the word can tell us a lot about the realities of the world.