Question

1. What were some of the key issues for 20th-century economists?   Who were some of the important contributors to these issues? What were there contributions and how did they impact economics?

Answer 1

The fundamental economic problem is the issue of scarcity but unlimited wants.scarcity implies therre is only a limited quantitiy of resources,e.g finite fossil fuels.because of scarcity there is a constant opportunity cost.the other economic issues include how to deal with external cost//pollution e.g. pollution from production,how to redistribute income to reduce poverty without causing loss of economic incentives,how to provide public goods which are usually not provided in a free market,how should we measure economic welfare?is it wrong to focus on output and income-new measures of economic welfare try to include broader range of factors such as enviornment,education,health care1)the problem of externalities-one of the most frequent problems is that economic decisions can have external effects on other people not involved in the transaction and it need some kind of government intervention2)monopoly-for various reasons firms can gain monopoly power and therefore the ability to set high price to consumers causing inequality within society3)poverty-measures to reduce poverty may cause unintended consequences