Inflation is a general rise in the overall price level, usually tracked by comparing the cost of a fixed basket of goods across time using a price index such as the CPI.
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A central bank sets a target for a short-term rate, then uses administered rates and securities purchases or sales to steer market rates toward it. The US Fed is the best-documented example here.
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The gold standard fixed currencies to a set amount of gold. Countries left it in stages: war finance ended the classical version, and the Depression and the Bretton Woods strain ended the rest.
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A housing boom and bust, risky mortgage lending, complex securities, heavy borrowing and weak regulation combined; experts still debate how much each factor mattered.
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A 1720 British stock mania and crash centered on the South Sea Company, which was set up to refinance government debt and to trade with Spanish America.
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The Great Depression is usually dated to the 1929 US stock market crash, but historians stress the crash exposed deeper weaknesses in banking, debt, trade and income distribution.
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It is the conflict that arises when someone acts on another's behalf, has different interests, and knows more than the person they act for, so cannot be fully checked.
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Mechanism design starts from a desired outcome and designs the rules of a strategic setting so that participants' self-interested choices produce it. Kidney exchanges and auctions are two major applications.
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Braess's paradox is the finding that adding a road to a network of self-interested drivers can raise travel times for everyone, because the resulting equilibrium is worse than before.
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Comparative advantage means producing something at a lower opportunity cost than others can. It explains why trade can benefit everyone, even a party that is better at making everything.
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Containers cut shipping costs and lifted trade, but they favored ports with deep water and open land, so older city-center ports declined while newer ones rose.
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GDP is the total market value of final goods and services produced in a country in a year. It omits unpaid work, illegal activity, environmental damage, inequality and much of what makes up well-being.
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Goodhart's Law says a measure stops being reliable once it becomes a target. Metrics distort reality because pressure changes behavior and breaks the link between measure and goal.
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The most widely accepted explanation is that $ evolved from handwritten abbreviations for the Spanish peso, with the S written over the P. Other theories exist but have weaker support.
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Bretton Woods fixed currencies to the US dollar, which was tied to gold at $35 an ounce. Persistent US deficits and inflation left more dollars abroad than gold to back them, and the system ended in 1971–1973.
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Ostrom compared many real cases of shared resources and found that users often create and enforce their own rules. She also identified design features common to the successful ones.
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This article presents an approximate composite ranking of 50 countries with high standards of living in 2026, based on income, healthcare, education, safety, life expectancy, infrastructure, economic stability and overall quality of life. It is not an official ranking from a single organization.
Not factually verified
