Terms that you really ought to know...

Flamed Diving

I was giving a tutorial this morning and I ran into the term 'structural deficit'.

I never in my life seen that before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_deficit


Any elementary gaffes for you lately?

BESman

Was in a meeting recently with the term "impairment of assets" thrown around frequently. I smiled and nodded, not a clue to its precise meaning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revaluation_of_fixed_assets

gerry87

Happens me so often it's worrying.

Daithio2

I got done by discretionary fiscal spending, in an interview .

So straightforward conceptually, I'd just never heard of it.

cavedave

Not exactly economics but some words that get you much better customer service are merchantable, fungible and iatragenic. That last one in particular.

digme

Do you know the one called moral hazard?

Flamed Diving

digme wrote: »

Do you know the one called moral hazard?

A bloke gets health insurance and then starts living an unhealthy life, as a consequence. Same can be applied to legal issues, where we force people to wear seatbelts, crash helmets, etc.

Joe1919

digme wrote: »

Do you know the one called moral hazard?

Financial institutions take risks knowing the government will bail them out?

People stop paying their debts knowing the government will bail them out?

silverharp

one of my collegues kept using the term "fiscal neutral" so often when taking about running a particular project at breakeven that I started using it myself.

nesf

digme wrote: »

Do you know the one called moral hazard?

It's where someone's attitude towards risk changes because they've taken out insurance (or there's implicit insurance such as publicly funded healthcare and similar).

Being more likely to park your car in a dodgy spot after getting Fire & Theft insurace etc. Can also be stretched to cover building in a known floodplain because you assume you'll be able to get flood insurance for your house and similar.

Time Magazine

My confidence interval is typically after a few pints on a Friday night.

Time Magazine

Time Magazine wrote: »

My confidence interval is typically after a few pints on a Friday night.

...but contrary to the standard theoretical predictions, my robust errors tend to shorten said interval :pac:

Ostrom

Time Magazine wrote: »

...but contrary to the standard theoretical predictions, my robust errors tend to shorten said interval :pac:

You could go for a larger sample....

noodler

In my spare time I like to run regressions and jump to conclusions!

Aha, stole that one from a book co-written by Professor Markusen.

StupidLikeAFox

Im doing a dissertation on the banking industry (see sig) and Im sad to say I had to look up what "systemic" meant because it kept poppin up. Never felt so stupid, its fairly obvious what it means really!