ECONOMICS I
Candidates should answer THREE questions
1.
Is reference-dependence with loss aversion a mistake for a decision-maker?
2.
‘The inference from the unpredictability of stock prices to their rationality is a
remarkable error.’ Comment.
3.
Why did Google pay Apple $1 billion dollars in 2014 to be iOS’s default search
engine, when Apple users were free to switch manually to any other search engine?
4.
Does competition ensure that firms that innovate will do so in ways that increase
product value, rather than in ways that better enable them to exploit naïve consumers?
5.
Is there a way to make a currency like Bitcoin credible as a store of value or means of
payment, without impinging on the privacy of the currency creators or holders?
6.
Do markets make people behave more selfishly than they would in a non-market
setting?
7.
Do financial markets need more than the prevention of fraud to work well?
8.
Is pay discrimination a sign of a non-competitive labour market?
9.
Are repeated ‘black swan’ events more likely to be a sign of randomness than a sign
that the model is wrong?
10.
Can public policy serve freedom of choice better by compelling people to make some
choice, rather than by setting a default but allowing people to opt out?
September 2016
Fellowship Examination
All Souls College
ECONOMICS II
Candidates should answer THREE questions
1.
Is price stickiness the root of all macroeconomic evil?
2.
Given the difficulties experienced in financing infrastructural investment, is talk of a
global savings glut mistaken?
3.
Are negative interest rates the right way to tackle persistent unemployment and low
inflation?
4.
Under what conditions, if any, are capital controls desirable?
5.
Has economics become excessively empirical?
6.
Are the causes of economic growth, or its absence, really to be found in the distant
past?
7.
Is the General Theory the ultimate proof that economic theory needs maths?
8.
Economists teach their students that labour demand curves slope down. At the same
time, many economists deny that immigration lowers wages. Are they simply
confused?
9.
Is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership desirable?
10.
Is the Kaldor-Hicks welfare criterion defensible; and if not, do economists have
anything to say about welfare comparisons?
September 2016
Fellowship Examination
All Souls College
ECONOMICS I
Candidates should answer THREE questions
1.
Does the Nobel Prize for economics serve an economic purpose?
2.
Should usury laws be more common?
3.
Does myopia have its advantages?
4.
What’s wrong with health service providers being for-profit?
5.
Should high pay be regulated?
6.
Should tobacco companies be allowed to form a cartel?
7.
Are ‘nudges’ preferable to taxation as a means to influence consumer choice?
8.
Online retailing enables sellers to gather more information about consumers. Is this
likely to harm consumers?
9.
Do you expect family-run firms to be efficiently managed?
10. Are there natural experiments in economics?
October 2015
Fellowship Examination
All Souls College
ECONOMICS II
Candidates should answer THREE questions
1.
Do too many people get a university education?
2.
Do fiscal rules make economic sense?
3.
What if any conditions should be attached to foreign aid?
4.
Does corruption make less developed economies more efficient?
5.
How can we explain the lack of success in recent multilateral trade negotiations?
6.
How should we measure a nation’s well-being?
7.
Should poor countries be forced to respect intellectual property rights?
8.
How can one obtain a causal estimate of the effect of trade on economic growth?
9.
Why do countries strive to attract foreign direct investment?
10.
What should happen to all the money created by quantitative easing?
October 2015
Fellowship Examination
All Souls College
ECONOMICS I
Candidates should answer THREE questions
1.
Is there an economic case for limiting pay bonuses to twice annual salary?
2.
Is the concept of ‘equilibrium’ useful for understanding real-world economic behaviour?
3.
‘Gary Becker is the greatest social scientist who has lived and worked in the last half
century.’ [MILTON FRIEDMAN in 2001] Do you agree?
4.
What, if anything, can microfinance institutions achieve that other financial institutions
cannot?
5.
Assess the evidence that modern management techniques increase productivity.
6.
Is there an economic basis for conglomerate companies?
7.
When, if ever, should firms bear responsibility for their customers’ poor purchasing
decisions?
8.
Can a privately-supplied currency, such as Bitcoin, be viable in the long run?
9.
What economic issues have the potential to be resolved through the use of ‘Big Data’?
10.
Should the state restrict what people do with their pension savings?
September 2014
Examination Fellowship
All Souls College
ECONOMICS II
Candidates should answer THREE questions
1.
Is there a housing market bubble in the UK?
2.
What is a safe asset and do we have a shortage of them?
3.
Is inflation targeting dead?
4.
Are financial systems safer now after the crisis?
5.
Is there a case for a financial transactions tax?
6.
What have we learnt about growth theory from the rise of the BRICs?
7.
Is wealth inequality an economic problem?
8.
If experimental evidence is the way to resolve empirical issues can macroeconomics
ever be rigorously evidence based?
9.
Could the Eurozone function better without fiscal rules?
10. Does the ‘new institutional perspective’ provide any positive and implementable policy
recommendations for growth?
September 2014
Examination Fellowship
All Souls College
ECONOMICS I
Candidates should answer THREE questions
1.
How can applicants’ and colleges’ preferences be elicited and reconciled in assigning
applicants to university places?
2.
In 2009, former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker told an audience of
financiers that their industry’s single most important contribution in the last 25 years
had been automated teller machines. Comment.
3.
Is it wise to use price as an indicator of quality when choosing a bottle of wine?
4.
Is there a genuine ‘middle-income trap’ for developing economies?
5.
Why has UK productivity growth slumped?
6.
Are central banks stoking a bond market bubble?
7.
In 1999, the Chief Executive of ITV claimed: ‘Free school milk doesn’t work when the
kids go and buy Coca-Cola because it’s available and they prefer it and can afford it. So
public service broadcasting will soon be dead.’ Was he correct?
8.
Would a rational consumer ever be willing to pay to commit herself in advance to a
future decision?
9.
Is it a better assumption to suppose that firms maximize profits than to suppose that
consumers maximize utility?
10.
Can monetary incentives be de-motivating?
September 2013
Fellowship Examination
All Souls College
ECONOMICS II
Candidates should answer THREE questions
1.
Is the value of a reputation for veracity to a news outlet sufficient protection against
media bias?
2.
What would an economically optimal immigration policy look like?
3.
Should the European Union be concerned if the price of carbon allowances under its
emissions-trading system falls to zero?
4.
‘If the old-fashioned small shops were in their death throes, it was because they could
not keep up in the struggle to offer low prices, which had been set in motion by the
system of marking prices on goods’ [ÉMILE ZOLA, The Ladies’ Paradise]. Discuss.
5.
Is taxation the only way to finance a national health service with universal coverage?
6.
Why are banks so resistant to issuing more equity capital?
7.
Should high-street banks be forced to charge monthly fees for current accounts, on the
grounds that this would make them less inclined to exploit customers with hidden
overdraft charges and the like.
8.
‘Free trade in goods and services is desirable, but unrestricted capital mobility is not.’
Is this a coherent view?
9.
Is it plausible that fiscal stimulus can lower government indebtedness?
10.
Should rights to build (or not) on open land be auctioned by the state?
September 2013
Fellowship Examination
All Souls College
ECONOMICS I
Candidates should answer THREE questions
1.
Should we ban directors of failed banks from working in the sector ever again?
2.
Do social networks such as Facebook teach us anything about how information spreads
and opinions are formed?
3.
Do we need a theory of entrepreneurship?
4.
‘Individuals’ self-reported happiness depends heavily upon their expectations; policy
prescriptions designed to improve happiness therefore tend to overlook economic
exclusion and systemic discrimination.’ Do you agree?
5.
Is there an economic case for a government subsidised cap on the amount the elderly
pay for social care?
6.
Should we introduce a financial transactions tax?
7.
Is it ever reasonable to treat ‘the household’ as a single decision-maker?
8.
What ethical considerations determine whether an intergenerational distribution is just?
9.
Does it matter whether players really are as sophisticated as the Nash Equilibrium
concept implies?
10. ‘The most effective form of foreign aid would be free immigration.’ Do you agree?
11. It has been said that ‘if you torture your data long enough, they will tell you whatever
you want to hear.’ Have applied researchers paid too little attention to this warning?
September 2012
Fellowship Examination
All Souls College
ECONOMICS II
Candidates should answer THREE questions
1.
Can global imbalances really explain the financial crisis?
2.
What is the right level of government debt?
3.
Is monetary policy still effective in the West?
4.
Are oil prices an important macroeconomic variable?
5.
What can we learn abut the efficacy of fiscal policy from the recent experience of the
US and Euroland?
6.
Does the world need more reserve currencies?
7.
Are the errors in macroeconomic VARs simply residuals rather than shocks?
8.
‘A rule of thumb is that the more dynamic, uncertain and ambiguous is the economic
environment that you seek to model, the more you are going to have to roll up your
sleeves, and learn and use some math’ [TOM SARGENT]. Is this a good rule of thumb?
9.
Does China’s spectacular success since 1978 tell us anything about the usefulness of our
growth theories?
10. What will be the economic consequences of the worldwide increase in life expectancy?
11. ‘…no major famine has ever occurred in a functioning democracy with regular
elections, opposition parties, basic freedom of speech and a relatively free media…’
[AMARTYA SEN]. Should development economists be more vocal in prescribing
democratisation?
September 2012
Fellowship Examination
All Souls College