User:Nick Gardner
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Biography:
Nick Gardner is retired after successive careers as a flight test observer, as a professional engineer, and as an economist. He has worked in two industrial companies, a research establishment and four government departments; and served as economic adviser to four cabinet ministers. As an engineer he was engaged in aeronautical research and development including the development of new manufacturing processes, he took part in the Concorde project and he visited the Apollo project. As an economist he evaluated numerous aerospace projects, he played a part in the development of UK competition policy and he managed a major statistical series. During his working life he contributed to several professional journals and symposiums on subjects including spotwelding, launching aid and project management, and since retirement he has written a book on contemporary economic history and another on competition policy that was published in three editions. His latest book is Mistakes – how they have happened and how some might be avoided, an interactive summary of which is available online at http://www.tinyurl.com/3b227b.
Nick is mainly interested in what people believe and how they make decisions. Pursuit of that interest has led him to explore published work in the fields of philosophy, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, genetics, economics, politics, media studies, religion and decision theory. His principal CZ objective is to attract constructive criticism from fellow-economists and, with their help, to develop articles that provide a wide range of readers with a clearer perception of economic issues than can be gained from other sources.
Contributions
Nick has made substantial contributions to CZ articles on:-
antitrust: a policy to limit or prevent the creation of monopoly power and to preserve competition by regulating business conduct. [e]
balance of payments: an accounting statement for the transactions of a country with the rest of the world. [e]- banking: the system of financial intermediation that provides the principle source of credit to individuals and companies. [e]
- bank failures and rescues: an account of the occurrence , causes and consequences of bank failures, and of methods of dealing with them [e]
- Bank for International Settlements: A forum of central bank governors and senior executives for the discussion and policy analysis whose standing committees include the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. [e]
- crash of 1929: the sharp fall in prices on the New York Stock Exchange that contributed to the severity of the Great Depression [e]
- crash of 2008: the international banking crisis that followed the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007. [e]
- deflation: a persistent sequence of reductions in the general level of prices. [e]
discount rate: (i) The percentage by which current value exceeds value in a year's time. (ii) The rate at which banks may borrow at their central bank's discount window. [e]- comparative advantage: The motive for trade that arises from the fact that for each trader there are things that he does best, and things that he can better obtain by trading. [e]
- competition: The activity or condition of competing against others. Ecologically, the interaction between species or organisms which share a limited environmental resource. [e]
competition policy: Legislation which regulates business practices that restrict competition, and limits the ability of firms to combine in such a way as to enable them to restrict competition. [e]- economics: The analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. [e]
- economic efficiency: Ratio of the quantity of some measure of output to the quantity of input required to bring it about. [e]
- Elasticity (economics): The ratio of the percent change in one variable to the percent change in another variable. [e]
- EU competition policy: A policy intended to ensure undistorted competition within the EU market, by increasing economic efficiency in member states and to remove barriers to trade between member states. [e]
- financial economics: the economics of investment choices made by individuals and corporations, and their consequences for the economy, . [e]
- Financial Stability Forum: An international economic group consisting of representatives of national financial authorities including finance ministers, central bankers, and senior members of other financial organisations. [e]
- Financial system: The interactive system of organisations that serve as intermediaries between lenders and borrowers. [e]
- Gold standard: a currency system in which a country's central bank is required to exchange, on demand, any currency unit for a stipulated quantity of gold. [e]
- Government Sponsored Enterprises: Legal entity created by the United States Congress to assist certain groups of borrowers such as homeowners, farmers, ranchers, and mortgage lenders gain access to capital markets. [e]
- Great Depression: the severe downturn in economic activity that started in 1929 in Germany and the United States and affected many other countries. [e]
- Great Depression in Britain: The Depression as it affected the United Kingdom. [e]
- Great Depression in the United States: an account of the origins of the Great Depression of 1929 - 1937. [e]
- gross domestic product: The total of the outputs recorded in a country’s national income accounts. [e]
- G20 summit: A meeting of the leaders of the twenty countries that are the largest in terms of economic output. [e]
- history of economic thought: the historical development of economic thinking. [e]
- inflation: An increase in the general level of the prices of goods and services. [e]
- international economics: The study of the patterns and consequences of transactions and interactions between the inhabitants of different countries, including trade, investment and migration. [e]
- International Monetary Fund: International organization that oversees the global financial system by stabilizing international exchange rates and facilitating development, and offering highly leveraged loans mainly to poorer countries. [e]
- macroeconomics: The study of the behaviour of the principal economic aggregates, treating the national economy as an open system. [e]
- microeconomics: A branch of economics that deals with transactions between suppliers and consumers, acting individually or in groups. [e]
- National Debt: the accumulated net borrowings of a country's government, or of its public sector. [e]
- New Deal: The name President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave to the series of programs between 1933–1938 with the goal of relief, recovery and reform of the United States economy during the Great Depression. [e]
- politics: The process by which human beings living in communities make decisions and establish obligatory values for their members. [e]
- political party: An organization that seeks to advance the interests of its members by obtaining political power [e]
- philosophy of economics: an account of the logical processes by which the intellectual discipline of economics has been constructed. [e]
- price index: Normalised average (typically a weighted average) of prices for a given class of goods or services in a given region, during a given interval of time. [e]
- production function: A mathematical representation of the relation between inputs and outputs in a production process. The special case of diminishing returns forms an essential part of equilibrium theory. [e]
- recession (economics): Conventionally defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth of gross domestic product (except in the United States). [e]
- recession of 2008: the international recession that was triggered by the Crash of 2008. [e]
- social capital: Productive assets arising out of social relations, such as trust, cooperation, solidarity, social networks of relations and those beliefs, ideologies and institutions that contribute to production of goods. [e]
- Subprime mortgages crisis: financial crisis arising from defaults on the United States mortgage markets. [e]
- supply and demand: The explanation in economic theory of the factors that influence the supply of, and the demand for, goods and services; and of the market mechanisms by which they are reconciled. [e]
- terms of trade: The ratio of the index of a country's export prices to the index of its import prices. [e]
- Washington Consensus: An interpretation of the conditions required by the International Monetary Fund for financial assistance to developing countries. [e]
- welfare economics: The study of the social desireability of alternative arrangements of economic activity and alternative allocations of resources. [e]
- World Bank: Add brief definition or description
