Question A: Most college professors who assign textbooks would not be able to guess, within 10% of the actual figure, the retail price that their students pay for new copies of those books.

Question B: Since students can resell college textbooks or rent electronic versions, the net burden on students is substantially lower than retail prices for new textbook purchases would suggest.

Question C:

Even though the professors who select textbooks are different form the people who pay for them, the price of new edition college textbooks reflect classic forces of supply and demand.

The recent decline in oil prices will promote higher real GDP in the US over the next couple of years.

A US city hosting a big convention will enjoy a higher boost to incremental spending — holding the number of visitors and their average incomes fixed — if those visitors are auto dealers rather than economists.

A typical country can increase its citizens’ welfare by enacting policies that would increase its trade surplus (or decrease its trade deficit).

Question A: Lowering the effective marginal tax rate on US corporations’ repatriated profits for a year would boost US capital investment significantly.

Question B: Permanently lowering the effective marginal tax rate on US corporations’ repatriated profits, such as by moving to a territorial-based tax system, would boost US capital investment significantly.

Question A: By lowering bargaining costs, fast-track negotiating authority for the president makes it more likely that the U.S. can conclude major trade deals.

Question B: Past major trade deals have benefited most Americans.

Question A: Amazon has monopsony power in the market for books that is significantly reducing the supply of books.

Question B:

Amazon has sufficient monopsony power that regulatory intervention is likely to make consumers of books better off, taking into account implementation costs and the effect of intervention on incentives.

The most powerful force pushing towards greater wealth inequality in the US since the 1970s is the gap between the after-tax return on capital and the economic growth rate.

Letting car services such as Uber or Lyft compete with taxi firms on equal footing regarding genuine safety and insurance requirements, but without restrictions on prices or routes, raises consumer welfare.

Although there are many issues for Scotland’s voters to consider, one consequence of separating from the rest of the UK would be greater macroeconomic instability for Scotland for many years.

Question A: Because the US has underspent on new projects, maintenance, or both, the federal government has an opportunity to increase average incomes by spending more on roads, railways, bridges and airports. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on May 23, 2013. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Question B: Past experience of public spending and political economy suggests that if the government spent more on roads, railways, bridges and airports, many of the projects would have low or negative returns. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on May 23, 2013. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Question A: By discounting pension liabilities at high interest rates under government accounting standards, many U.S. state and local governments understate their pension liabilities and the costs of providing pensions to public-sector workers. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on October 1, 2012. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Question B: During the next two decades some U.S. states, unless they substantially increase taxes, cut spending, and/or change public-sector pensions, will require a combination of severe austerity budgets, a federal bailout, and/or default. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on October 1, 2012. Those earlier results can be found here.)

New technology for fracking natural gas, by lowering energy costs in the United States, will make US industrial firms more cost competitive and thus significantly stimulate the growth of US merchandise exports. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on May 23, 2012. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Question A: Because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus bill. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on February 15, 2012. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Question B: Taking into account all of the ARRA’s economic consequences — including the economic costs of raising taxes to pay for the spending, its effects on future spending, and any other likely future effects — the benefits of the stimulus will end up exceeding its costs. (The experts panel previously voted on this question on February 15, 2012. Those earlier results can be found here.)

Legislation introduced in Congress would require the Federal Reserve to "submit to the appropriate congressional committees…a Directive Policy Rule", which shall "describe the strategy or rule of the Federal Open Market Committee for the systematic quantitative adjustment of the Policy Instrument Target to respond to a change in the Intermediate Policy Inputs." Should the Fed deviate from the rule, the Fed Chair would have to "testify before the appropriate congressional committees as to why the [rule]…is not in compliance." Enacting this provision would improve monetary policy outcomes in the U.S.

Question A: All else equal, Patent Assertion Entities — which specialize in acquiring and asserting patents and are popularly known as “patent trolls" — promote innovation in the U.S.

Question B: Within the software industry, the US patent system makes consumers better off than they would be in the absence of patents.

There is a social value to having institutions that issue liquid liabilities that are backed by illiquid assets.

Question A: Employers that discriminate in hiring will be at a competitive disadvantage, if their customers do not care about their mix of employees, compared with firms that do not discriminate.

Question B: Rising market wages are an important reason — over and above any changes in medical technology, social norms or preferences — why family sizes have fallen over the past century in rich countries.

Considering both distributional effects and changes in efficiency, it is a good idea to let companies that send video or other content to consumers pay more to Internet service providers for the right to send that traffic using faster or higher quality service.

The recent oversubscribed debt issues of Greece and Portugal suggest that sovereign default by any euro area country is unlikely in the foreseeable future.

If the NCAA let colleges pay athletes with more than scholarships (which currently may cover tuition, books, room and board), then top colleges in men’s basketball and football would pay most athletes substantial sums beyond full scholarships.

Past experience suggests that economic sanctions do little to deter the target countries from their course of action.

A market that allows payment for human kidneys should be established on a trial basis to help extend the lives of patients with kidney disease.

Question A: Advancing automation has not historically reduced employment in the United States.

Question B: Information technology and automation are a central reason why median wages have been stagnant in the US over the past decade, despite rising productivity.

Future innovations worldwide will not be transformational enough to promote sustained per-capita economic growth rates in the U.S. and western Europe over the next century as high as those over the past 150 years.

Informed postmortems of Ben Bernanke’s Fed chairmanship will judge favorably the Fed's creative and aggressive policy initiatives from autumn 2008 through early 2009.

Using surge pricing to allocate transportation services — such as Uber does with its cars — raises consumer welfare through various potential channels, such as increasing the supply of those services, allocating them to people who desire them the most, and reducing search and queuing costs.

Giving specific presents as holiday gifts is inefficient, because recipients could satisfy their preferences much better with cash.

Question A: The average US citizen would be better off if a larger number of low-skilled foreign workers were legally allowed to enter the US each year.

Question B: Unless they were compensated by others, many low-skilled American workers would be substantially worse off if a larger number of low-skilled foreign workers were legally allowed to enter the US each year.

In general, absent any inside information, an equity investor can expect to do better by choosing a well-diversified, low-cost index fund than by picking a few stocks.

Question A: Enactment of the Senate bill to subject the Federal Reserve's monetary policy and discount window decisions to an audit by the Comptroller General of the U.S. would improve the Fed's legitimacy without hurting its decision making.

Question B: The Fed should not reduce its purchases of mortgage-backed securities and treasurys until there is clearer evidence of strong and sustained employment growth.

Allowing Internet service providers to charge content companies for access to the ISPs' customers would provide net benefits to consumers.

Question A: If the United States fails to make scheduled interest or principal payments on government debt securities, even as an unintended consequence of political brinksmanship, US families and businesses are likely to suffer severe economic harm.

Question B: With or without a default, current uncertainty over future taxing and spending policies of the US government is likely to depress private investment and hiring by enough to reduce GDP growth by at least a quarter of a percentage point over the next 12 months.

Experience over the past 30 years shows that for the typical emerging market nation facing rapid capital outflows, spending foreign currency reserves to defend its currency is a better policy for its citizens than not doing so.

If regulators had not approved mergers in the past decade between major networked airlines, travelers would be better off today.

Conventional economic reasoning suggests that it would be a good policy to enact the recent Senate bill that would let undergraduate students borrow through the government Stafford program at interest rates equivalent to the primary credit rates offered to banks through the Federal Reserve's discount window.

An effective way to increase savings rates of employees whose firms have defined contribution plans is to combine automatic enrollment in those plans and periodic automatic increases in their contributions (with the ability to opt out of either).

Sustained tax and spending policies that boost consumption in ways that reduce the saving rate are likely to lower long-run living standards.

Slavery in the United States was eradicated because of social and political events, not because it was an unprofitable institution for slaveholders.

Restricting US exports of liquefied natural gas would have adverse effects on the US economy.

Question A: Because the US has underspent on new projects, maintenance, or both, the federal government has an opportunity to increase average incomes by spending more on roads, railways, bridges and airports.

Question B: Past experience of public spending and political economy suggests that if the government spent more on roads, railways, bridges and airports, many of the projects would have low or negative returns.

Reducing the income-tax deductibility of charitable gifts is a less distortionary way to raise new revenue than raising the same amount of revenue through a proportional increase in all marginal tax rates.

A bitcoin's value derives solely from the belief that others will want to use it for trade, which implies that its purchasing power is likely to fluctuate over time to a degree that will limit its usefulness.

Countries that let their debt loads get high risk losing control of their own fiscal sustainability, through an adverse feedback loop in which doubts by lenders lead to higher government bond rates, which in turn make debt problems more severe.

Refusing to liberalize trade unless partner countries adopt new labor or environmental rules is a bad policy, because even if the new standards would reduce distortions on some dimensions, such a policy involves threatening to maintain large distortions in the form of restricted trade.

Using government funds to guarantee preschool education for four-year olds would yield a much lower social return than the ones achieved by the most highly touted targeted preschool initiatives.

Question A:

Raising the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour would make it noticeably harder for low-skilled workers to find employment.

Question B:

The distortionary costs of raising the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour and indexing it to inflation are sufficiently small compared with the benefits to low-skilled workers who can find employment that this would be a desirable policy.

The average US citizen would be better off if a larger number of highly educated foreign workers were legally allowed to immigrate to the US each year.

The persistent deflation in Japan since 1997 could have been avoided had the Bank of Japan followed different monetary policies.

Because all federal spending and taxes must be approved by both houses of Congress and the executive branch, a separate debt ceiling that has to be increased periodically creates unneeded uncertainty and can potentially lead to worse fiscal outcomes.

The federal government would make the average U.S. citizen better off by using policies that directly focus more on increasing small business growth than growth of economic output overall.

The annual indexing of Social Security benefits to increases in the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (the CPI-W) leads to higher benefits than would be required to compensate recipients for genuine cost-of-living increases.

The Brookings Institution recently described a US carbon tax of $20 per ton, increasing at 4% per year, which would raise an estimated $150 billion per year in federal revenues over the next decade. Given the negative externalities created by carbon dioxide emissions, a federal carbon tax at this rate would involve fewer harmful net distortions to the US economy than a tax increase that generated the same revenue by raising marginal tax rates on labor income across the board.

Question A: Because federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid will continue to grow under current policy beyond the 10-year window of most political budget debates, it is easy for a politician to devise a budget plan that would reduce federal deficits over the next decade without really making the U.S. fiscally sustainable.

Question B: Comparing two plans that would reduce federal budget deficits by identical amounts in each of the next 10 years, one that did so partly by reducing significantly the long-term growth rate of Medicare and Medicaid spending would do more to make the U.S. budget fiscally sustainable than one that did not lower the growth of these spending programs.

Question A: Taking into account all of the economic consequences — including the incentives of banks to ensure their own liquidity and solvency in the future — the benefits of bailing out U.S. banks in 2008 will end up exceeding the costs.

Question B: Because GM and Chrysler were bailed out in 2008-09, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would it have been if Congress and the executive branch had not intervened.

Question C: Taking into account all of the economic consequences — including effects on corporate managers' incentives and on creditors' expectations of how their claims will be treated in future bankruptcies — the benefits of bailing out GM and Chrysler will end up exceeding the costs.

Question A: The U.S government should make further efforts to shrink the size of the country's largest banks — such as by capping the size of their liabilities or penalizing large banks more heavily through taxes or other means — because the existing regulations do not require the biggest banks to internalize enough of the "too-big-to-fail" risks that they pose.

Question B:

The economic benefits to the U.S. of having a handful of banks with balance sheets greater than $1 trillion are small.

Question A: The federal government would make the average U.S. citizen better off by using policies that directly focus more on increasing manufacturing employment than employment in other sectors.

Question B: Because firms and inventors do not capture the full returns from research and development, the government would increase the average well-being of Americans (and potentially of others too) by favoring R&D using the tax code.

Question A: Consider one of two proposals for restraining future Medicare spending, each by the same amount: The method that President Obama enacted in the Affordable Care Act — reducing Medicare-related payments to private insurers and altering the payment system for doctors and hospitals — imposes risks on future Medicare patients because over time the supply of doctors, hospitals and insurers willing to offer them health services may decline in response to restrained payments.

Question B: Consider the other of two proposals for restraining future Medicare spending, each by the same amount: The method that Governor Romney advocates — giving future seniors a fixed payment for premiums and letting private insurers compete with Medicare — imposes risks on future Medicare patients because competition may not be powerful to enough to offer future seniors the same quality of care that is currently promised without supplementing their premium support.

Claims by incumbent presidents and challengers about how many private-sector jobs can be created in a four-year period by sector-level or other targeted policies should be viewed as rough guesses, because overall macroeconomic conditions drive aggregate employment in ways that dominate any net effects of polices that focus on specific industries or households.

Question A: One drawback of taxing capital income at a lower rate than labor income is that it gives people incentives to relabel income that policymakers find hard to categorize as "capital" rather than labor".

Question B: Despite relabeling concerns, taxing capital income at a permanently lower rate than labor income would result in higher average long-term prosperity, relative to an alternative that generated the same amount of tax revenue by permanently taxing capital and labor income at equal rates instead.

Question C: Although they do not always agree about the precise likely effects of different tax policies, another reason why economists often give disparate advice on tax policy is because they hold differing views about choices between raising average prosperity and redistributing income.

Question A: By discounting pension liabilities at high interest rates under government accounting standards, many U.S. state and local governments understate their pension liabilities and the costs of providing pensions to public-sector workers.

Question B: During the next two decades some U.S. states, unless they substantially increase taxes, cut spending, and/or change public-sector pensions, will require a combination of severe austerity budgets, a federal bailout, and/or default.

Question A: Even if the third round of quantitative easing that the Fed recently announced increases real GDP growth over the next two years, the increase will be inconsequential.

Question B: Even if the third round of quantitative easing that the Fed recently announced increases annual consumer price inflation over the next five years, the increase will be inconsequential.

Question C:

Even if inflationary pressures rise substantially as a result of quantitative easing and low interest rates, the Federal Reserve has ample tools to rein inflation back in if it chooses to do so.

Question A: Ethanol content requirements and protectionism against imported ethanol (which includes fuel from sugarcane) raise food prices without significantly reducing carbon-dioxide emissions.

Question B: A direct disincentive to emit carbon-dioxide, for example through a carbon tax or an emissions permit market, is more efficient than requiring the use of corn-based ethanol fuels.

Question A: Even if all the official-sector funding that Greece received from 2010 through August 2012 is written off, propping up Greece to buy time for the rest of Europe to prepare for Greek default has been better for citizens of the Eurozone outside of Greece than a policy that would have cut off funding sooner.

Question B: A substantial sovereign-debt default by some combination of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain is a necessary condition for the euro area as a whole to grow at its pre-crisis trend rate over the next three years.

Question C: Unless there is a substantial default by some combination of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain on their sovereign debt and commercial bank debt, plus credible reforms to prevent excessive borrowing in the future, the euro area is headed for a costly financial meltdown and a prolonged recession.

The current trade barriers in the U.S. sugar industry raise the profits of sugar producers and make the typical U.S. consumer pay more for sugar and goods that use sugar as an input.

Question A: Loans to students attending for-profit colleges are especially risky because students attending them have had default rates that greatly exceed those for comparable students attending public and non-profit private institutions.

Question B: Rules that tie each college's eligibility for federal student loans to its students' graduation rates and post-schooling employment outcomes would better protect taxpayers from losses on student loans.

Question A: The way in which money market funds normally trade – at one dollar per share, even though the per-share value of the assets backing them varies over time – made them vulnerable to a run in 2008 before they received taxpayer guarantees.

Question B: Taxpayers would be better protected if each money market fund in the U.S. were instead required to trade at its floating net asset value.

Question C: In the absence of floating net asset values, taxpayers would be better protected if each money market fund in the U.S. were required to set aside capital to protect against losses while holding back a portion of shareholders' cash for a time when they seek to withdraw all of their money.

Taxes or bans on large bottles of soft drinks containing sugar are not likely to have a significant effect on obesity rates because people will substitute towards consuming excessive calories in other ways.

Subjecting online sales from out-of-state vendors to the same retail sales taxes imposed on in-state sales would raise more tax revenue in the states making this change while reducing the pro-online bias of current policy.

Consumers would not necessarily be better off if cable and satellite TV firms were required to offer a la carte pricing for individual channels, because the networks' programming charges and the satellite-and-cable fees could adjust in response to this rule.

Long run fiscal sustainability in the U.S. will require cuts in currently promised Medicare and Medicaid benefits and/or tax increases that include higher taxes on households with incomes below $250,000.

Question A:

Assuming that Germany eventually agrees to backstop the debt of southern European countries, the eurozone as a whole will be better off if that bailout is unconditional, rather than accompanied by the labor market reforms and future budget controls that Germany is demanding of countries in return.

Question B: If Germany fails to bail out the southern tier of Europe, its own economy will be hurt more — because of output and asset losses — than it would be by an unconditional bailout.

Question C: The main reason other eurozone countries need to worry about Greek banks losing access to ECB support is because the ensuing chaos in Greece could trigger bank runs in peripheral countries.

Question A: A cut in federal income tax rates in the US right now would lead to higher GDP within five years than without the tax cut.

Question B: A cut in federal income tax rates in the US right now would raise taxable income enough so that the annual total tax revenue would be higher within five years than without the tax cut.

Question A: Trade with China makes most Americans better off because, among other advantages, they can buy goods that are made or assembled more cheaply in China.

Question B: Some Americans who work in the production of competing goods, such as clothing and furniture, are made worse off by trade with China.

An important reason why private college and university tuition has risen faster than the CPI during the past few decades is because competition for faculty members — whose potential earnings in other sectors have steadily improved — has driven up their pay faster than their productivity.

If the fiscal changes that are planned under current US law take place next year — including Bush era tax cuts expiring, Medicare payment rates to doctors being cut, the AMT applying to many more taxpayers, and automatic cuts in defense and non-defense discretionary spending kicking in — then US real GDP growth in 2013 will be lower than it would be under the CBO's alternative fiscal scenario, in which the above changes do not occur.

New technology for fracking natural gas, by lowering energy costs in the United States, will make US industrial firms more cost competitive and thus significantly stimulate the growth of US merchandise exports.

Cuba’s low per-capita income growth — 1.2 percent per year since 1960 —has more to do with Cuba’s own economic policies than with the U.S. embargo on trade and tourism.

Question A: Reducing the minimum retirement age in France from 62 back to age 60, permanently, would reduce long-term French economic growth and substantially raise French debt relative to GDP over time.

Question B: France’s overall employment is higher today because of the 35 hour work week than it would be without a limit on weekly hours.

Connecticut should pass its Senate Bill 60, which states that during a “severe weather event emergency, no person within the chain of distribution of consumer goods and services shall sell or offer to sell consumer goods or services for a price that is unconscionably excessive.”

The former head of the Transportation Security Administration is correct in arguing that randomizing airport “security procedures encountered by passengers (additional upper-torso pat-downs, a thorough bag search, a swab test of carry-ons, etc.), while not subjecting everyone to the full gamut" would make it "much harder for terrorists to learn how to evade security procedures."

Laws that limit the resale of tickets for entertainment and sports events make potential audience members for those events worse off on average.

Prior to the crisis, the benefits from the funding advantage that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had by virtue of perceived government support mostly went to their shareholders, rather than into substantially lower interest rates on residential mortgages.

Question A: If public school students had the option of taking the government money (local, state, federal) currently being spent on their own education and turning that money into vouchers that they could use towards covering the costs of any private school or public school of their choice (e.g. charter schools), most would be better off.

Question B: The main drawback to allowing all public school students to take the government money (local, state, federal) currently being spent on their own education and turning that money into vouchers that they could use towards covering the costs of any private school or public school of their choice (e.g. charter schools) would be that some students would not make an active choice and would be left with much worse peers and a weaker school.