Steve,
 Lately, these are issues that I wish more were written about, so I guess they stand out to me as unresolved problems:
1. How do asset bubbles distort investment into productive activity? 
2. Are strong anti-trust laws and regulation necessary to make a free market work? 
3. Why and how does a gold standard (or other international standard) impact aggregate demand in economies which do not have a high ratio of international trade to GDP? 
4. What caused inflation in the seventies? (Despite the ink spilled on this, I'm rarely satisfied with the answers). 
Marie 
 


Marie Christine Duggan
Professor of Economics
Keene State College
Keene, NH 03435-3400
https://industrialsurvival.wordpress.com
http://hidden.coplacdigital.org/ 


-----Original Message-----
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve Kates
Sent: Monday, March 25, 2019 12:15 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Unsolved problems in economics

I thought I 'd wait to see if anyone else had anything to add but since no one else has, let me note that there is at least one other unsolved problem in economics which is this: 

     Does public spending during recessions add to employment and hasten recovery?

I can think of a few others but will leave it at that.

--
Steven Kates
Associate Professor
School of Economics, Finance and Marketing RMIT University Building 88 - Level 3
480 Elizabeth Street
Melbourne Victoria
Australia 3000

Phone: +613 9925 5878
Mobile: +61 [0]42 7297 529

-----Original Message-----
From: Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Robert Cord
Sent: Wednesday, 20 March 2019 11:24 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SHOE] Unsolved problems in economics

Dear SHOE List

It is approaching 50 years since Morgenstern published his "Thirteen Critical Points in Contemporary Economic Theory". In that paper, he identified the following as being, in his view, amongst the most important extant problems in economics (in no particular order): 1) Control of economic variables; 2) Revealed preference theory; 3) Pareto optimum; 4) Tatonnement; 5) The Walras-Pareto fixation; 6) Allocation of resources; 7) Substitution; 8) Demand and supply; 9) Indifference curve analysis; 10) Theory of the firm; 11) Back to Cantillon; 12) Personal and functional distribution; and 13) Theory relevance.

A quick check of old friend Wikipedia has the following as being unsolved today, either on just the theoretical side or theory being unable to explain observed data: 1) Cambridge capital controversy; 2) Transformation problem; 3) Revealed preference; 4) Tatonnement; 5) Unified models of human biases; 6) Equity premium puzzle; 7) Dividend puzzle; 8) Improved Black-Scholes and binomial options pricing models; 9) Problems with the American option; 10) Home bias in trade puzzle; 11) Equity home bias puzzle; 12) Backus-Kehoe-Kydland puzzle; 13) Feldstein-Horioka puzzle; 14) PPP puzzle; and 15) The exchange rate disconnect puzzle.

My question: How accurate/inaccurate is the Wikipedia list?

Many thanks in advance

Bob Cord