A student challenged me over the weekend to draft a tentative list of some of the economic ideas that, if followed through with appropriate policies, can and might have a significant impact on people’s lives! This is all part of the early preparations for the Royal Economic Society’s Young Economist of the Year competition for 2008.
Over a coffee this afternoon I jotted down the following (rearranged into alphabetical order). I make no attempt to justify them at this point, some of them are classic ideas (comparative advantage) that seem to me to have stood the test of time, although the principals of comparative advantage seem to be under threat from a clutch of new trade theorists. Other ideas focus on pressing environmental concerns - a carbon tax or a properly constituted system of carbon trading. A further group link to theories of competition, innovation and sources of economic growth.
A plea! Please do take issue with my rough assembly of ideas, I am bound to have missed out a raft of them that are far better and might be great to research and consider in more depth as a contribution to the essay competition. In the spirit of wikinomics, I will update this list adding in fresh ideas in bold text as we go!
Auctions
Behavioural economics
Carbon tax
Carbon trading
Comparative advantage
Competition
Compound interest
Creative destruction from innovation
Division of labour
Flat rate taxation
Free movement of labour
Globalisation
Human capital
Libertarian paternalism
Micro finance
Open source
Opportunity cost
Price mechanism
Privatisation
Progressive taxation
Property rights
Rational expectations
Say’s Law
Social capital
Sustainable development
Tobin Tax
Voluntary exchange
Wikinomics
It’s a bit strange to have found “behavioural economics” and “competition” on the list, since their impact on our lives existed long before their notion. Neither were there any need to advocate for these ideas, contrary to creative destruction, nobody really doubted them (bar Hayek).
