Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics/Archive 1

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March 2007

First! Seriously, I think it would be good to have a discussion on priorities for WikiProject Economics, and to separate this from the Business and Economics page

Where to Start

A good start might be to start tagging any economics related page with the tag "Economics." A lot of the pages in the economics "category" on the project page are not really about economics. The first listing is Accounting. Then we can start sorting them from there into subcategories, "Macroeconomics," "Microeconomics," etc. Also, there is a WikiProject for Game Theory WikiProject Game theory. We may want to see what collaboration efforts those folks would like to have with this WikiProject. Muchris 14:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Userbox

Hi, I made a userbox for the project. Please review with comments before I post on the project page. Muchris 13:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

{{User WikiProject Economics}}

This user is a participant in WikiProject Economics.

I noticed more of the members are using the userbox, so I'm going to put the information on the project page. Any thoughts, please let me know. Muchris 17:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Categorising Game Theory articles

I've created categories that match the main ones in JEL classification codes, namely Category:Cooperative game, Category:Non-cooperative games,Category:Evolutionary game theory and Category:Bargaining theory. It would be great if someone could take an hour or two to categorize the large number of articles currently under Category:Game theory into these subcategories. PS, I don't know how to get a line break after the userbox. Help appreciated!JQ 06:28, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I mentioned this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Game theory (as well as working through letters T-Z). Smmurphy^(Talk) 19:57, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks JQ 20:14, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I've created a Template for the talk pages of Economics articles. Please let me know if you have a better picture before I post on the project page:Muchris 18:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The Stern Review of global warming costs

The Stern Review has been critiqued because it uses a very low discount rate. Stern defends his reasoning in Section 8 of this FAQ. If you are able to formulate an opinion on this question, please do so at Talk:Stern Review. Thank you. James S. 21:29, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

John Quiggen has a review (in draft form) linked from his blog. I don't know if he's interested in the page, global warming articles have a pretty bad conflict to progress ratio on WP, so many good people avoid them. In any case, both his and and Marty Weitzman's reviews (pdf link dead, link is to blog about Weitzman's paper) were excellent, and both discussed the question of the discount rate quite a bit. Smmurphy^(Talk) 05:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words,Smmurphy. I've started some work on this. More when I get a bit of free time.JQ 03:37, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Next Steps Discussion

Hi Everyone! It seems we are starting to get some new members - welcome! I wanted to start a discussion on what some group projects could be. Things like categorizing articles, picking focus articles that the group works to bring to featured article status, etc. Any ideas? Muchris 12:30, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I've done a fair bit on categorization, and it would be great if some others wanted to help on this. The article JEL classification codes is a good place to start. I also like the idea of working on a featured article. I will take a look at what we have and see if I can find a promising candidate.JQ 23:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello everyone! I have been labeling some articles (nearly 150 so far). Some of them are also within the range of other projects such as finance, biographies, numismatics, taxation and game theory. Perhaps we should get in touch with the people in those projects.
In the field of economics, I feel, there are too many articles repeating information; for example: There are 4 Articles about marshallian curves and they all could be merged into one good article. I think we should take this in account so we don't work twice. I would also love a Featured article (the one about economics is close to FA standards, also both ones on central banking and monetary policy are in good stages). Furthermore, (and this could be too geeky) I would be very interested in enhancing the mathematical aspects specially in articles about Economic Models.
I hope I didn't label too many articles. Dryfee 00:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I've labeled and assessed the pages for Noble prize winners. You certainly didn't label to many articles - I'm guessing probably thousands of articles fall under the wikiproject :) As an important step, maybe we should discuss some general guidelines for a good article AdamSmithee 12:27, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

That's awesome Dryfee! I've been trying to do a little labeling at a time, but that's a huge step. I've noticed that a lot of the articles overlap with other disciplines too, and I think this is a good thing because they have already started work on important economics topics. What does everyone think of coming up with a list of core economics topics, like a top 100, e.g. supply and demand, utility, ISLM, Adam Smith, etc. that we could post on the project page so if anyone is looking for an "important" page to to work on, they don't have to hunt them down, and we would have a list of pages to try to bring to FA status. It would also make it easier picking FA projects in the future too. If we do something like this, it should be a collaborative effort, may a couple of us could come up with an initial list, and then everyone vote on inclusions and exclusions. Thanks! Muchris 14:12, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I've also labelled a couple of pages although I'm never quite clear on what to do with the importance scale. I've also started to expand some econometrics articles but most of them (that I've come across) are stubs and there is lots of work to do! Karina.l.k 17:28, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey! I'm a big fan of Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics. I think their templates and project page are an excellent starting point for us to follow. I like the idea of a collaboration article of the week/month. :) Leigao84 21:11, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I just added this project to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Science page. I noticed that we don't have a portal though. Volunteers?--Asdirk 13:35, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Assessment update

I noticed that Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Economics articles by quality was not updated on the 24th. Any idea why/how to solve it? AdamSmithee 07:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Done, now. Nevermind AdamSmithee 08:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed style guide

I propose we agree on a style guide for all articles falling within the scope of Economics. Instead of reinventing the wheel in this respect, I suggest we use the WikiProject Philosophy style guide as a template and proceed to customize it as appropriate for this project.

What are the thoughts on this? Cenobite 15:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. Karina.l.k 16:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Because of our closeness to Mathematics, I think a better step is to use Wikipedia:Manual of Style (mathematics). Just my $.02 Leigao84 20:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Assessment Scale

Is it possible to link the assessment scale in the talk page template to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment? Karina.l.k 16:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes - See Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot Morphh ^(talk) 13:39, 03 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Business and Economics

I joined this group but I'm also a member of WikiProject Business and Economics. Was the purpose of this group to narrow the focus of the other group? Should the other project be renamed to focus more on Business matters. Just a little curious about the overlap and wanted to hear some thoughts on the matter. Morphh ^(talk) 13:39, 03 May 2007 (UTC)

The way I understand the distinction is that this group is going to focus on economics from more of a academic perspective. It seems that B&E is more focused on the corporate world. There are some articles that both groups could contribute to and some articles that may do better to be treated from a purely academics perspective.Muchris 18:15, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Exactly what I was gonna write. There are a lot of articles out there about economics (as a science) without any academic input. Therefore I think this project can contribute loads. Unfortunately in my experience econonmics related articles are often POV. For example at the moment I'm watching market failure and someone keeps putting the word allegedly in the sentence 'Market failure is a term used to describe a situation in which markets do not efficiently allocate goods and services.' which I think totally inappropriate as the first sentence is the economics definition. Any ideas on this? Because I encounter this problem all the time (look also e.g. at articles like perfect competition- which to me purely is a theoretical concept in economics but there is lots of this rightie/leftie stuff in there)Karina.l.k 06:22, 4 May 2007 (UTC).

Yep, I know your problem. The thing is, IMO, that some people just do not accept mainstream econoomics (in my experience, this people also generally don't know much about it). My solution would be to attribute carefully the disputed facts by citing some well known source (academic textbook which is used in significant universities or peer-reviewed papers). Than, you can go on deleting the nonsense while discussing it on the talk page and, if the wrong version is still pushed, you could even go for a request for comment, even blocking etc. Also, this is a good place to ask for help in discussing things on particular articles. AdamSmithee 10:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

While it's true that many or most who reject mainstream economics usually don't understand it, in fairness, I would note that those who do not accept theory out of the mainstream don't know much about that. Most of the discourse all-around is a rampage of ignorance and misconception. —SlamDiego_←T 06:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Underground economy

I have finnished merging black market and underground economy, into underground economy. The article is in need of re-assessment and copy edit. Best regards Mads Angelbo ^{Talk / Contribs} 14:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Money is this week's WP:GACo - your help is needed!

I am here to inform you that the article on money has just been selected as the Good Article Collaboration of the week. This is one of the most important articles in Wikipedia, and certainly of utmost importance within the topical scope of this WikiProject, but unfortunately it is in a very poor state as of now. The selection for COTW makes for a good occassion for a concerted effort to improve it, and I am really counting on the members of WikiProject Economics, with your knowledge and expertise in the field, to help other users involved bring it at least to Good Article standards. In particular, I hope you could provide some gravely needed sources, as well as help make the article covers all the economic aspects of money and conveys the importance of it in economics. PrinceGloria 18:43, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Econometrics

I've just read over Econometrics and it's abysmal. If we have some experts on the subject it'd be a great place to start. Leigao84 21:08, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Economic miracle

In doing research on the Japanese economic miracle, I typed in that term, and was amazed to find it to be a redirect to the Austrian/German term, as if that were the most common case in which the term comes up. In any case, I decided to be bold and turn it instead into a disambig page. Thought you all might be interested to know. Take a look at Economic miracle, fix it if you think I missed any. Thanks. LordAmeth 14:43, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Nice - thanks. Morphh ^(talk) 14:58, 09 May 2007 (UTC)

Right. Disambig not Redirect. Typo. LordAmeth 15:39, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

High importance articles

Looking at the articles that have been rated as Top importance, I think there may be some that could possibly be demoted to High. In particular:

• Friedman's k-percent rule
• Ragnar Anton Kittil Frisch
• Robert Lucas, Jr.

Comments? Ronnotel 00:43, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Assessment

Hi - I recently re-wrote market failure, but noticed that it hasn't been assessed at all - which odd, because it's a high importance article. How do I request such an assessment? --Haemo 08:40, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Simply paste the following in the discussion page and change the values accordingly:

{{WikiProject Economics|class=B|importance=High}}

--Asdirk 12:40, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Rating

I noticed that an editor who is not part of the Project rated an article qua WikiProject Economics focus. I think that it would be useful if the template were amended so that ascriptions of importance and of quality were (separately) signed. —SlamDiego_←T 06:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Project Overlap

I think we may all be aware of wikiprofject business and economics - and that there may be a bit of an overlap there. How are the projects co-ordinated so that they dont overlap too much etc. Savin Me 06:54, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Project merger suggestion

Based on the issues that have been mentioned above I think it would be a good idea to separate WikiProject Business and Economics into two parts. The Economics section should be merged with this project while the Business section should perhaps be renamed Finance to more closely reflect what the other project is related to. WikiProject Finance could then properly focus on things like company articles and business leaders. Honestly some of the company articles are in bad shape. A company as big as General Electric should have featured article status.

By having two such projects editors who are experts in these two related but nevertheless different fields could more appropriately focus their expertise. With only 13 participants in the other projects some of the articles are not receiving proper attention and the task is too huge for just a few editors to handle.

I'd like to know what the members of this project think about the idea before anything is done but it seems to me like what I've outlined could be a starting point to a more efficient distribution of duties between the projects. JRWalko 22:58, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the decision to separate 'Business and Economics' into, maybe, 'Business and the Corporate World' and 'Economomics', which would then be merged with this group, comes down to the question how easily topics from economics as an academic field are separated from business-related stuff. For my academic life so far, I found this very easy by the following rule of thumb: Everything that primarily aims at creating more profit is business, everything that primarily aims at creating welfare is economics. So my stance is that the other group should be splitted. But that's just me... --Asdirk 21:10, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Companies

Hello, can you help me to complete the companies portal ? Thanks, Jamcib 08:13, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Merger: Expected utility and related topics

Hi,

I would like to notify you about this merger proposal regarding the expected utility hypothesis. Expert opinions welcome. --B. Wolterding 11:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Merger: many pages on national accounting

There are many overlapping pages on national accounting. National accounts is an especially poor stub. National income and product accounts, which is where you arrive from NIPA, is better. Measures of national income and output provides some good information on measures not mentioned in the NIPA page, but is very messy. (More information on alternative "social accounts" would be useful too.) United Nations System of National Accounts is much better and more specific, but overlaps a lot with the NIPA page.

Therefore, I would at least suggest merging National accounts into National income and product accounts. The other two pages are probably useful separately, but need links to the others (I'll do that). --Rinconsoleao 14:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

There's also the accounting identity sections too. --Haemo 00:20, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Require Insta-assistance with Monetary Theory

Hi there. I'm not a economist per-se (Chemist/Mathematician by qualification) , but i have started to develop an interest in Monetary theory particularly, but have found the wiki article to be woefully lacking and have started to update the information based upon books on-campus. If there are any graduates or those specializing in the field that would be interested to point me in the right direction or help expand the article over the next few hours, i'd be happy to collaborate. ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ ^{slurp me!} 17:55, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I have some experience in the area, and I'd be happy to help you. Just leave some question on my talk page, or whatever, and I'll do my best to help you out. --Haemo 01:31, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Assessment scale

Okay, it's time to get this project together to do something. Currently, we have 204 assessed articles which have been tagged as being within the purview of this project; that's a little under half of all economics articles. So, I offer you all a challenge - let's try and clear this before the start of the next school year, when all the new economics students will be heading to Wikipedia to look for information. --Haemo 03:09, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. I suspect 500 is a bad underestimate of the number of economics articles, though. Also, the template doesn't appear to update immediately when you do an assessment, so don't be discouraged by this. JQ 04:10, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with that assessment; but, all of those are uncategorized by default I guess! It looks like this is proceeding apace - we can probably eliminate this by August if we keep at it. --Haemo 04:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Information economics needs urgent attention

The page on Information economics needs much expansion and additional references, both with respect to old classic ideas about information as a public good, and with respect to all the modern work on asymmetric information (the page is more complete in its treatment of adverse selection than in its discussion of moral hazard, though both lack definitions or even clear discussions).

It's especially important to document the fact that this is a central topic in contemporary microeconomics, because apparently the term Information economics has several unrelated meanings to management theorists (especially management theorists who study information technology). A user on the Talk:Information economics page has listed some of the alternative uses of the term. A disambiguation page might be justified. It would be especially helpful if someone who is an expert in both the literature on microeconomic theory and the management literature (yes, such people exist) could document the relative importance of Information economics as it is understood in those distinct fields. --Rinconsoleao 09:27, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Strongly agreed there's a problem here. I'm addressing it by replacing most of the links to the information economics page with links to asymmetric information or contract theory instead. Contract theory is the modern term encompassing most of this material. Then information economics can be reserved mostly for the management theorists, though it needs an explanatory tag at the top. Jeremy Tobacman 21:32, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for helping, but I'm concerned we are only confusing things further. Do you know for a fact that 'information economics' is a standard field of management theory? I have found a couple of references with names like that, but I'm not convinced it's any more of a standard usage than in economics. So maybe we are grossly misleading people by calling it a field of management theory. --Rinconsoleao 14:50, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

It seems the real source of the problem is that information-related issues have gradually become extremely important in economics, but that during this time no completely standard and general field name has arisen. 'Information economics', 'economics of information', and 'contract theory' are often used roughly interchangeably, though I am not sure they are synonyms, and I'm certainly not convinced 'contract theory' is more standard than the others. All of those terms include to the study of asymmetric information, but it seems that a Wiki page on those fields also ought to make reference to older work on the nature of information as a public good and its implications for buying and selling information. It would be helpful if we could make a list of main textbooks and other summaries of the field, and see which names are used. We could then work on a disambiguation page as well as a page on theories about information in economics. --Rinconsoleao 14:50, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Rinconsoleao that turning information economics into a disambiguation page would probably be best. (I don't know that 'information economics' is standard in management theory.) Three excellent graduate-level contract theory textbooks are listed here. Please see my additional comments at Talk:Information_economics#Contract_theory.2C_asymmetric_information.2C_and_this_article. Jeremy Tobacman 21:57, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

We've had a lengthy discussion about this at Talk:Information economics. Input from others would be very helpful at this point. Thanks! Jeremy Tobacman 18:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Technical analysis

The gold as an investment, technical analysis and related pages need attention from a financial economist who has the patience of a saint to scrub the pages of the POV-pushing by snake oil salesmen and other astrologers. THF 03:14, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I welcome the involvement of editors from WikiProject Economics in the technical analysis article. Earlier this week a member of your group gave a "B-Class" rating to Elliott wave principle, an article I've worked to improve -- I was encouraged by this rating, and have since tried to make it better still. Yesterday, THF put a tag on Elliott wave principle which suggests it has a POV; he did so while in a POV dispute with me and another editor regarding the technical analysis article.

The "POV-pushing," "snake oil salesman" and "astrologers" accusations are consistent with other uncivil and bad-faith remarks THF has posted in several other places on Wikipedia during our dispute. He has even suggested that another editor in the dispute is my sock or meat puppet, even though that editor is a published author and recognized expert in the field of technical analysis.

I regret that this dispute spilled into WikiProject Economics, which is otherwise dedicated to improving Wikipedia. Thanks for all your time and efforts. --Rgfolsom 13:13, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Case in point. THF 18:58, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Economic Growth

I have suggested merging Economic growth with Growth theory. I have always used the terms interchangeably but some people here tell me they could not disagree more... again I have only learned economics at one institution so maybe around the world there is a distinction. On the other hand, the articles are the same almost on a word for word basis, so, what do you think? Brusegadi 20:13, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Just be bold and merge them; they're very similar and the difference is only a functional one -- economic growth is the phenomenon, while growth theory is the body which studies economic growth. The two are, in economics, almost inseparable since virtually all study requires a theory. --Haemo 21:09, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I was going to do that but someone objected. I will copy your comment to the merge page. Thanks! Brusegadi 21:14, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Done. Brusegadi 01:30, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Discounting articles

The articles on discounting of cash flows and utility are now a bit of a mess. Present value, net present value, discount, time value of money, and discounted cash flow cover overlapping ground. In addition, those articles focus on the discounting of money, ie, business and finance applications, when we can more generally discuss the discounting of utility (which for firms generally equals profits), as in time preference and discount function. Proposals for reorganization? Jeremy Tobacman 15:00, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I think we should generalize to discounting of utility. This can be done in one article (a rewrite of one of the existing ones?) and then have the rest of the articles be more specific child articles. I have a feeling this topic will become popular. Brusegadi 16:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

History of economics / History of economic thought

If there is a legitimate distinction between these two articles, it escapes me. (The history of economics piece is explicitly described in terms of economic thought.) Some sort of merger seems appropriate. THF 17:51, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. They are both trying to do the same thing. The surprising thing is that two such high-quality articles can have been written in ignorance of each other. History of economics focuses somewhat more on time periods, and History of economic thought more on individual thinkers, so it should not be impossible to merge them while maintaining much of the material from each page. --Rinconsoleao 19:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed with caveat. Of the two History of economic thought seems to have better reference structure and the title reflects the proper name for the academic discipline (at least in the US). Thus I would want to see History of economics merged into History of economic thought rather than the other way around. While the American organization is called the History of Economics Society -- its journal is the Journal of the History of Economic Thought -- most non American Societies use the term "History of Thought" in there organizational names. See http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/ for more details (Web links section). Cheers Corebreeches 16:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Binary economics (merge proposal)

I have proposed that Binary economics be merged into Participatory economics. --Childhood's End 18:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

In order to centralize editor's comments, please discuss HERE. Thanks, Brusegadi 19:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC) As requested by a user. Brusegadi 02:07, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Plea for help concerning Chicago School

Could anyone with any knowledge take a look at Chicago School (economics) and Competition Law#Chicago School and edit them accordingly? I have serious reservations about the quality of them as they currently stand. Most notably, the main article doesn't even really state what the theory was! If someone could edit the main article, I can do the latter if they don't wish to summarise. Sephui 20:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

A-Class Economics articles

I'm curious what criteria are being used to assess articles as A-Class Economics articles. For example, what is it about Marshallian surplus that led it to be assessed this way? (sdsds - talk) 15:26, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Article improvement: Free trade

This is cross posted from an RfC

The "Free trade" article's history section is dominated by the history of the anti-free trade movement in the United States. We need to create a more balanced history that includes the pro-free trade movement, and non-U.S. economists and trade policies. Comments or help would be appreciated. Talk:Free trade#RfC: Free trade history. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 08:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

'New economics'?

Both 'New classical economics' and 'New Classical Macroeconomics' were recently redirecting to a page entitled 'New Economics'. I have never heard of 'New economics' (has anyone here?) Moreover, the 'New economics' page and its discussion page were filled with references to 'New classical (macro)economics', but never used the term 'New economics'.

So it looks like this was either a mistake, or vandalism. I have moved the main text to 'New classical macroeconomics'. I propose that we should delete 'New economics' since otherwise we will confuse people with a nonexistent or at least nonstandard term. --Rinconsoleao 14:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Rinconsoleao did a copy-paste move from New Economics to New Classical Macroeconomics, and then WP:PRODed New Economics. I have since deprodded the prodded page and requested a WP:SPLICE to merge the history back to its current page, and it has subsequently been performed. Moving pages around should be done using the WP:RM process and not via copy-paste-ing pages, and then prodding the page with the history. I have no issues with the naming of the page, only the process used in renaming the page and getting rid of the redirect, as it was all improperly done. 132.205.44.5 22:13, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! The New Classical Macroeconomics page looks good now. --Rinconsoleao 07:30, 27 September 2007 (UTC). But I still think 'New economics' should be entirely deleted, instead of remaining as a redirect to 'New Classical Macroeconomics', because the two are not synonyms. In fact, I have still not heard any comment to suggest that 'New economics' is a standard economic term of any kind. We should remove it entirely, so as not to mislead people. Therefore, following your comments on my talk page, I have just proposed deletion using WP:RFD. --Rinconsoleao 08:01, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Marketization up for deletion

If anyone can help explain Marketization and express the notability aspect your assistance would be much appreciated. Benjiboi 17:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Leonid Hurwicz

The award of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson, has prompted a nomination for Did You Know?, on the basis of the award to Hurwucz as the oldest recipient of any Nobel Prize in any category. The article on Leonid Hurwicz could use the attention of an expert-- especially one who can explain the significance of his work to lay people. Thank you. Kablammo 22:17, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

ECB

Hi, I am hoping someone will be able to help with European Central Bank. I have been trying to get EU topics up to GA at least but I don't have the economic knowledge to do this one properly. If you can help, it would be most welcome. - J Logan ^t: 19:30, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Thermoeconomics

Hi everybody, due to the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Sadi_Carnot and the indefinite block of this user for pushing fringe theories, could somebody with some expertise of economics have a look at this page he wrote and see if the content is genuine? Thanks Tim Vickers 19:49, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines for "Economy of XXX"-type articles?

Hi, just stumbled here looking for some advise on how to go about creating a new "Economy of XXX" article. Any advice? Kevlar67 21:43, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

The top category to look at is Category:Economies by country. This contains a list of categories, one for each country. The "Economy of XXX" will be the main article for its category. Use an existing article as a model (after checking that XXX doesn't have an article already, possibly under a slightly different designation.JQ (talk) 23:03, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Need to work on the basics

Some of the most basic and important topics in economics have pretty terrible articles. For example Economic efficiency, Consumption (economics), and Market structure. I think we need to concentrate more on improving the basics, and less on polishing more obscure articles (which I confess to doing). Can we make a list of High importance articles that are less than B quality? --lk (talk) 10:33, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

This would be a good plan.JQ (talk) 10:55, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm pretty sure I can improved the "good" and "budget constraint", "competition" and "economic problem" articles — but it will take a while. --Haemo (talk) 20:51, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Types of subcategories of 'Economists'

In 2005 there were some suggestions about how to organize 'Category:Economists', but not much was done. I made some more suggestions here: Category talk:Economists#Types of subcategories --Rinconsoleao (talk) 12:19, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Following my earlier suggestions, I have done some reorganizing of the category. At this point, all the subcategories would fit on the first page, but they aren't on that page, which makes the category hard to navigate. Does anyone know how to force all the subcategories to appear on the first page? --Rinconsoleao 18:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Jevons paradox

The article Jevons paradox has undergone some changes over the last few days and I'd like a few more eyes on the article. Anyone up for the task?

CRGreathouse (t | c) 04:21, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Consumer_surplus_for_software_products

I found this lonely little page while on WP:CLEANUP duty. Looks a little superfluous to me, but you guys/gals seem better equipped to judge that. Manning (talk) 12:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

At best, it's badly explained, at worst, it's pseudo-economic mambo-jumbo and should be deleted, IMHO. AdamSmithee (talk) 10:12, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Comments please, possible merge of Currency correlation

A debate is in progress about what to do with article Currency correlation and one of the proposals is to merge it into either Currency pair, Technical analysis or Exchange rate. We'd appreciate any suggestions of where the best place for it is. To keep the conversation in one place, please respond in Talk:Currency_correlation#Fallout_of_Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion.2FCurrency_correlation. Thanks -- John (Daytona2 · talk) 20:02, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Comments please, debt-based monetary system

I would appreciate if other editors would look at Debt-based monetary system. There is considerable dispute. The main issues are:

1. I do not see nor can find any reliable sources that show this term in use.
2. Article is currently mostly unreferenced, and (IMHO) of very low quality - lots of jargon, repetition, and highly emotive language inappropriate for an encyclopedic article.
3. What references have been provided are frequently dubious (would not meet standards of reliable sources.
4. References used seem to bear little relationship to the text - see the Talk:Debt-based monetary system page. They purport to support rather extreme conclusions, where frequently the text cited (when it is from a reliable source) only tangentially relates to the conclusions.
5. There has been an AfD. This did not go anywhere, but I think it should be reconsidered, or the article massively trimmed, until some substantial sources can be found to support at least the existence of this term and related theories.

Other editors have been disputing my approach to this, and I would greatly appreciate more eyeballs.--Gregalton (talk) 17:49, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Free market economics subproject

Would anyone be interested in a free market economics subproject to this wikiproject? I was thinking it could encompass topics like separation of school and state, private highway, free market environmentalism, criticism of the Food and Drug Administration, etc. There are hundreds of possible topics, since government has taken over many services that used to be provided by the market. Another possibility is starting a libertarianism subproject to the politics wikiproject, but libertarianism also encompasses socially liberal policies. We may want to focus more on the economic aspects. Admittedly, there is some overlap (e.g. drug prohibition, open borders, etc.) Sarsaparilla (talk) 22:21, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd be interested, though I'm not sure there would be enough interest to support the project. CRGreathouse (t | c) 23:58, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Economics of Global Warming

I feel slightly intimidated posting this here (like most hippy liberal scientist types I assume economists to be a load of NeoCons who seek nothing more than money - no offence intended) - but I recently came across the article Economics of Global Warming which for such an important topic was in a dire state (consisting of a tirade against the existence of Global Warming, rather than any actual content on the economics of the situation).

I'd appreciate if anyone from this project could contribute something to this page (or redirect it to another appropriate page which might be out there) - at the very least there are a few housekeeping tasks (stub notice, adding box on talk page (if you chaps do that)... still it strikes me as being a potentially very interesting article. --Neo (talk) 23:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

The issue has now been resolved with a redirect. --Neo (talk) 11:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

A proposal

I notice that a lot of economics articles here give greater weight to heterodox views than a good encyclopedia should. Mostly, it seems to me like there are a lot of Austrian Libertarians citing Mises.org all over the place.

I have two proposals for improving the content of economics articles on Wikipedia:

• Articles should first reflect the view of the mainstream Neo-classical synthesis, with heterodox views (if relevant) being included at the bottom
• Sources espousing heterodox economics (i.e., Mises.org) are to be treated as unreliable sources (see WP:RS), except when being used as sources on what heterodox views are. For example, "Some economists have argued against the Federal Reserve, because..." could not be sourced in Mises.org. "Some heterodox economists have argued against the Federal Reserve," could, provided that it's a citation of heterodox opinion, not a citation of fact.

The reason for this should be clear: No credible encyclopedia would give credence to heterodox theories to the extent that Wikipedia does. My two-inch thick Econ 101 textbook doesn't even mention Austrian economics. In fact, overall there's a very stark contrast in terms of the tone in my textbook, when it comes to things like market failure, monopolies, etc, and what's on Wikipedia.

69.138.16.202 (talk) 09:23, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

To be fair, a lot of theories and material has roots in heterodox theory or debates. Most economic textbooks gloss over, or ignore this, because they are not interested in the history, or background, of a theory, but rather in conveying analytic results, frameworks, or theories. --Haemo (talk) 18:17, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Austrian school is partly within, and partly outside of the mainstream economics. -- Vision Thing -- 18:32, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

That's true, Haemo, but Austrian economics isn't invoked merely to give a greater history or background of any theory. It's invoked as an alternative but valid means of analysis. I.E., from market failure:

However, not all economists believe that market failures occur, or that they are compelling arguments for government intervention, due to government failure.

That sentence is followed by a citation in Mises.org. Also, Vision Thing, Austrian economics is "partly within" mainstream economics in as much as Marxism and Classical economics is. They're recognized as a historical school that influenced the development of economics. Their modern school's analysis, though, is totally ignored and so shouldn't be in an encyclopedia on economics anymore than creationism should be in an encyclopedia on biology, except as Haemo noted above. 69.138.16.202 (talk) 16:46, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

No, Marxism is totally out of mainstream while Austrian economics is partly within. If you need some sources for that, I will be happy to provide them for you. -- Vision Thing -- 20:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree with Haemo and Vision Thing. I will concede OP that the use of just one electronic site may be backed up with more material. But to be honest, it is weird to hear of the Austrian School as a sheer "heterodox view". Pallida  Mors 21:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Part of the issue that needs to be presented in economics arguments, is that relatively unpopular economic opinions which are not widely accepted often have much wider political ramifications. Market failure (which, incidentally, I re-wrote) is a good example of this — much of the economic discussion of market follows the article. However, important and influential minority views exist, and need to be taken into account. For instance, although Marxian theory is not "mainstream", it would be totally remiss to avoid mentioning it when talking about commodities, or the factors of production — both of which are fundamentally Marxian principles which have been captured by the mainstream. Economic imperialism, in a sense. --Haemo (talk) 22:03, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree entirely that too much weight is given to fringe (bordering on lunatic fringe) theories and schools. While these can of course be mentioned (although this is often met with cries of oppression/suppression of alternative thought), these should be addressed in separate articles. As a few examples I have been struggling with, please see debt-based monetary system, debt money, and some of the parts of fractional reserve banking (why does an article on fractional reserve banking need a whole section devoted to libertarian criticisms?). I would appreciate some help in bringing these to balance.

Another point: it's not just the amount of weight that is given, but the sheer gross exaggeration and hyperbole that is inserted - and in a few cases, massive misuse of sources (see the talk page for debt based monetary system). The sources used are frequently and overwhelmingly blogs, and even when these are used, the sources are completely misused - overstating what the originals say to come to extreme and bizarre conclusions, and papering over any consideration of or burden of proof for causality. As noted above, even if certain schools are cited, the articles should not degenerate into blathering on about inevitable monetary collapse leading to anarchy, prostitution, and (I'm not making this up - although I believe I deleted it) homosexuality. Oh yes, and imminent and inevitable collapse of agriculture leading to mass starvation. It reads like a bunch of survivalist screeds, not an encyclopedia.--Gregalton (talk) 22:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

This is mostly a problem with economics articles on Wikipedia — i.e. they suck. The best way to "fix" them is with a total rewrite, and a focus on broad or central criticisms. --Haemo (talk) 22:27, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

While I can't speak for all of them, for some it is certainly true. Unfortunately, requires fighting a war against fanboyz of one school or another. Grateful assistance.--Gregalton (talk) 22:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Laissez-faire

I created this article on the application of capitalism to Wikipedia. Sarsaparilla (talk) 17:04, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Hilarious! --Haemo (talk) 18:16, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Free market environmentalism

Would anyone be interested in collaborating on the FME article? I think it would be good to get it to FA status in time to get it posted to the Main Page as TFA on April 22, 2008 (Earth Day). I know the basic principles of FME but will have to do some more research to become the mini-expert on the subject needed to bring it to FA status. If you want to learn more, a good starting point is http://www.perc.org/ . I just got done writing another FA almost singlehandedly and it was a rather arduous experience; I decided it's probably much more fun to have a co-author(s) to bounce ideas off of, share the gruntwork with, etc. If I hear nothing, I may delay it till Earth Day 2009; we'll see. Sarsaparilla (talk) 14:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Criticisms of Socialism -- Needs serious help.

Criticisms of Socialism needs serious help. The article looks terrible, because of Socialists and Austrians fighting over which side should be able to use the article as propaganda. The lead needs to be cut down, made NPOV, and the Austrian school and Socialism alike must be identified as heterodox. Zenwhat (talk) 21:53, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I was afraid even to click the subject. Yeah, that looks bad. I'll have to see if I can find any survey articles on the subject to get sound non-ideological grounding. --Haemo (talk) 08:03, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Industrial district

I thought you might like to add the above article to your project. It needs some attention. Piore and Sabel's The Second Industrial Divide would be one relevant source. Also, there seems to be no article on clustering in economics. Thanks. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:27, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Found Business cluster, another article that needs more work. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:31, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Need a template to link to currencies rate sources page

I made this :

• [{{Currency value|YYYY=2002|MM=01|DD=01|MONEYCODE1=USD|MONEYCODE2=EUR}} Rate USD/EUR as of 2002/01/01]
• [{{Currency value|YYYY=2002|MM=01|DD=01|MONEYCODE1=USD|MONEYCODE2=EUR}} Rate USD/EUR as of 2002/01/01]

For Talk:Oil_price_increases_since_2003#World_view. But the website that I use lack of some currencies (Chinese RMB), the site have some bug to display result, and the site doesn't look really professional.

Have you a template for such use ?

Please answer here and on Talk:Oil_price_increases_since_2003. Yug (talk) 14:49, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

can someone add to Coase Conjecture. thanks

--Greg.loutsenko (talk) 02:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

May I humbly request help?

Hey, I just wrote a brief Wiki article called List of American Entrepreneurs (I was inspired to write it because of the existence of the Japanese article). Wiki Administrators have tagged my article for deletion--but I nevertheless believe it to be a good and useful article. Can any of you help me to save this article from deletion? Please? I teach Macroeconomics and Microeconomics at a community college in Oklahoma. Thank you in advance. ProfessorPaul ProfessorPaul (talk) 04:03, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I sympathise with those proposing deletion. There must be millions of people who could go on such a list, and quite possibly thousands sufficiently notable to have a Wikipedia article. Categories are a more useful way of handling this kind of collection. I'd suggest creating a category of American entrepeneurs as a subcategory of Category:Entrepreneurship and including the members of your list in that category. JQ (talk) 06:31, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Stagflation

I present to you, stagflation, which wins my prize for most-"importance inversely proportional to quality"-article. I don't know what to do about this article; it's a mess. Poorly cited, way too lengthy, etc., etc., and it could use some help, imo. I've been going through it with fact and or templates, but I can't summarize economics :p. I'd appreciate any help, thank you! Xavexgoem (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Article request

I'd like to request an article on Fiscal gap. Thanks Morphh ^(talk) 14:15, 06 February 2008 (UTC)

I've added a section on the fiscal gap to the article on the government deficit. --Rinconsoleao (talk) 15:12, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Excellent - Thank you Morphh ^(talk) 16:21, 06 February 2008 (UTC)

Game theory FAR

Game theory has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Gary King (talk • contribs)

Cleanup

I have substantially cleaned up main WikiProject Economics page and I hope to contribute a great deal to this project. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns regarding the project. I hope to spearhead efforts with this project; my ultimate goal is to greatly increase the number of Featured Articles that belong to this project. Gary King (talk) 04:20, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Gary.. Sorry I voted oppose on the Milton Friedman FAC. I really wanted to support it but we need to address some of the issues brought up first. If we accomplish it before the end of the FAC, I'll change my vote. Morphh ^(talk) 14:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

No problem, I'm going to try my best to improve the article. This is my first WP:FAC, so on one hand I am trying to get a new FAC into this project, and on the other I am also testing the waters so I am much better prepared for next time. Gary King (talk) 16:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Currently assessing unassessed articles

Please help by assessing the articles in this Category:Unassessed Economics articles. Thanks! Gary King (talk) 05:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Economy of Ohio

I've nominated the Economy of Ohio article at featured article candidates. Feedback is appreciated. Regards, Jd027^chat 23:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

A good project to base Economics on

I was browsing through existing WikiProjects, and came upon Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan. I think the layout that they have for the main project page is really well done and well organized, and I would love to some day reach that level of organization (once we reach that level of complexity, that is). For now, we don't need that because I am trying to keep the project page as simple as possible, as it has been for a while now, until this thing really starts moving along again. Gary King (talk) 04:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

List of autonomous areas by country is up as a Featured List!

The article, List of autonomous areas by country, is currently up for nomination as a Featured List at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of autonomous areas by country. If you have the time, please vote on the article so that it can be improved if necessarily or promoted if it deserves it. Thanks! Gary King (talk) 16:21, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Recession needs update

Recession needs update: refers to "a possible recession starting in late 2007". -- 201.37.229.117 (talk) 12:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Featured list candidate: List of financial crises in the United States

The article List of financial crises in the United States is being considered for featured list status at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of financial crises in the United States. Comments and advice from people knowledgeable in the area of recession, bank runs, stock market crashes, etc., could be helpful. --Orlady (talk) 03:24, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Economics of language

FYI, I put up a stub on Economics of language. --A12n (talk) 22:02, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Alexander Hamilton page request for help

There is a debate among two editors over whether Hamilton deserves the title "political economist" on the discussion page here: Talk:Alexander_Hamilton#Political_economist. Some other opinions from those with better subject matter expertise would be enormously helpful, and I personnally would be grateful. Shoreranger (talk) 13:09, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

More stuff on the front page

We should list new articles on the front page, and have a deletion tracker. What do you guys think about this WikiProject Academic Journals page? It's neatly organized. I'd like to copy it over. OptimistBen (talk) 06:28, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

It does look good, and this page could certainly do with improvement.JQ (talk) 07:14, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Energy accounting falls under economics?

I like anyone opinion on whether Energy Accounting does or should fall within the area of the economics project

by the definition "Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." at the top of the Economics article I think it should, but id like some other people opinion

(Firebladed (talk) 18:14, 20 April 2008 (UTC))

It's currently under Heterodox economics and I think that's appropriate. OptimistBen | talk - contribs 19:18, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

ok, but where does that fall in terms of wikiprojects ? and how does Energy economics tie in ? (Firebladed (talk) 20:04, 20 April 2008 (UTC))

I don't think it falls into economics. It seems more at home in politics -- it's a radical, unworkable socialist utopia. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:33, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions from the Talk page archive

• Categorize un-categorized economics articles. Accounting and pure business should not be in economics.
• Think about using the JEL classification codes in our organization of economics.
• Merge the Economics part of WP:WikiProject Business and Economics with us?
• Change layout to be similar to WP:WikiProject Japan or WP:WikiProject Academic Journals.
• Style guide: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Philosophy/style_guide or Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(mathematics)?

ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 16:40, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Talk page archival

I'm new to this Wikiproject, and this talk page is rather long. I think it could benefit from automatic archival from MiszaBot. I'll set it up if I don't hear any objections in a day or two. Of course, if you agree that would be nice to hear also :-). -FrankTobia (talk) 19:48, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Go ahead. Be bold and everything. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 08:43, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I object. I prefer manual archiving on principle. I'll archive it real quick? ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 16:23, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

May I enquire as to the nature of this principle? Zain Ebrahim (talk) 16:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

When things are automatically archived, summaries don't get made and important points get forgotten and re-hashed. Plus, archiving is an art; some things should be taken out, some things shouldn't. Since I feel I've summarized the most major topics, I took out everything. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 16:50, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Whoa! Some things should be taken out? Now, for the record, I'm also opposed to bot archiving, and also, in principle, favor manual archiving. However, I would strenuously object to the archives being abridged in any way. That is the historical record—good, bad, and ugly—and the r'aison d'etre of archives is to preserve that.

I prefer manual archiving because bots sometimes fail to preserve the continuity of a discussion. Anyone with much wikexperience knows that discussions are often linked even though they may be in different sections. Indeed, sometimes a new section is created simply because a discussion has gotten so long that it's clumsy editing it, and a new section helps. Yet that new section needs, when archiving occurs, to be included in with the previous discussion, something that a bot can't recognize. Botarchiving on one's talk page is fine, because a) it is, after all, yours to do with as you'd like, and b)discussions tend to be brief, rarely more than two or three exchanges. But on article talk pages and project pages, I prefer manual archiving. Just don't pull any 1984 stuff when doing it. Unschool (talk) 17:15, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

By 'some things should be taken out' I mean that some things should be kept on the page rather than archived. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 17:33, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Good thing I wasn't bold :-). Thanks for taking care of things. -FrankTobia (talk) 18:27, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for clarifying that, Imp Inf. You had me a bit nervous there, as I'm sure you could tell. Looks like your username is especially appropriate. :-) Unschool (talk) 20:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions for the disambiguation page quasilinear?

Hello economics folk,

I'm working on cleaning up the disambiguation page Quasilinear. My ultimate goal is to find the most appropriate article for each entry to direct to. With some help from the editors at Wikiproject Mathematics, I've been able to find good articles for the first two entries. As the third entry seems to be economics related, I was wondering if any of you might have any ideas of what the best article would be to link to to discuss "quasilinear" in the economic sense described there. Any help you might have would be much appreciated! -- Natalya 18:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

On first inspection I couldn't find any existing page that would be suitable to link to. A candidate that doesn't yet exist is Quasilinear utility, which is kind of alluded to here, where Exponential utility and Homothetic utility have their own pages while Quasilinear utility doesn't. As it stands, I think the write-up on the disambiguation page would make for a decent stub, but I don't know how comfortable everyone is with moving it to its own article. -FrankTobia (talk) 19:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Stubbing it was actually something I meant to ask about, so I'm glad you thought of it. If the information could make an okay stub, that would easily be the clearest solution. But that depends on if it can, I guess. -- Natalya 20:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I think I'm going to go ahead and make a stub out of it, if no one objects. -- Natalya 11:18, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

No objections here - sounds like a good idea. If Homothetic and Exponential Utility have their own articles, there's no reason for this not to. Be bold and go ahead. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 14:19, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Inactive WikiProject

Hey all. I see that this project is rather inactive. I'm completely new, but I'm interested in taking an active role getting WikiProject Economics up and humming once again. I'm thinking we should start with a list of open tasks, and getting Assessment more organized. If anyone's interested in helping lead, feel free to list your support here or just pitch in. Thanks :) -FrankTobia (talk) 19:14, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I signed up for this long time ago, as the first Wikiproject I was interested in. In signing up, I indicated that I didn't really know what to do, but never got any guidance. So the long and short of it is this: I don't feel qualified to lead, as I don't really understand what we are to do. But I have a few ounces more knowledge regarding economics than the average bear, and so I'm willing to contribute if someone merely points the way. Unschool (talk) 20:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

If you ask me, I think that this project would work best if we grouped people together and worked on building Featured Articles out of articles that are under the WikiProject Economics umbrella. I find it fruitless to continue assessing new articles under the umbrella if we don't do anything about them. This was the first WikiProject I joined, and as you can see, I cleaned it up a lot but nothing came from that. If you look at my Successful Nominations, you'll also see that I'm no expert in Economics, but have always been interested in. I'd like to volunteer my skills as a article-fixer and less of a person who adds content; I'll let the experts do that. Gary King (talk) 20:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that getting a (relatively) massive collaboration going to get an article to FA is the best way to jumpstart this project. I worry about assessment only in deciding the importance of various articles, which should indirectly dictate what gets worked on first. For instance, Ben Bernanke is currently rated top-importance, and Adam Smith is high-importance, which doesn't feel right. Deciding on importance criteria isn't urgent, but I plan on addressing it as time allows. And in the meanwhile we'll get an article featured :) -FrankTobia (talk) 02:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Featured Article

I guess, looking at the project page, that one thing that we are supposed to do is to get articles up to Featured Article status. I see that Milton Friedman failed. That's a shame; I propose that we make that a goal, to get an article on arguably the most influential economist of the 20th century listed as an FA. And really, though I think he's largely been eclipsed, Keynes deserves an FA quality article as well—for better or worse he dominated economic thought for at least four decades.Unschool (talk) 20:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I was the one that submitted Milton Friedman. It was my first nomination, so I was a total newbie at the time. My last two FAC nominations have been successful, though, so I can help out with that now. Gary King (talk) 20:10, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

So how do I change this? Why did the nom fail? Unschool (talk) 20:18, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

The article was insufficiently comprehensive. To be honest, I didn't know, and still don't know much about him so in retrospect, of course the article should have failed at the time. Gary King (talk) 20:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so the problem was insufficient material. Right now we need some high-protein content, and we can trim body fat later. That make sense? Unschool (talk) 20:24, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. It would help if some participants have references immediately available (books are probably better than web in this case since tons have been written offline about him). I can get some from the library. Gary King (talk) 20:26, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Uncle Miltie

Okay, well when I looked at it just now, the article was longer than I expected it to be. But it's been over two months since it was rejected for FA status, so I thought maybe a lot has been added since then. But here are the diffs between the discussion and today, and while there are additions, they're not all that huge. I think I'll have to study this more, including the FAC discussion, but I definately want to see this happen. Unschool (talk) 20:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Gary, the main thing that I'm reading from that FAC discussion is that there were POV concerns. That will be a real chore to recify (though, of course, its entirely doable), if for no other reason than MF realigned the mindset of economics in his time; as such, the majority of economists today agree with probably most of Uncle Miltie's ideas. We do need to be balanced, but the article will probably never be 50/50 pro-MF and anti-MF. Unschool (talk) 20:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Some criticism needs to be added to the article at the very least. We should first focus on the voting, since I'd like to be certain that more people are interested in the article. If we have, say, five people working on one article, that would be amazing and we could definitely give life to this project again. Gary King (talk) 20:44, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

• Some criticism needs to be added to the article at the very least. Naturally. I'm just saying it's not necessarily going to be one critical source for every supportive source.
• We should first focus on the voting What do you mean? Unschool (talk) 20:49, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm saying that there's no need to discuss the article now, since that can be done if and when we choose to collaborate on that article. Gary King (talk) 20:52, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

How do we pump life back into this WikiProject?

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/Featured Article drive

I don't think that forever assessing articles under the WikiProject Economics banner will do this project any good in the long run, nor will it help improve economics articles on Wikipedia. I suggest we start writing Featured Articles to get some participation going among WikiProject Economics members. So, here's what I want to do. I've created Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/Featured Article drive - go there to propose articles that we should bring to Featured Article status and people can Support or Oppose them, then we can begin working. Sound good? Gary King (talk) 20:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm on board. Unschool (talk) 20:39, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I have contacted ever WP Economics member that has registered in 2008, so hopefully that will bring some attention to the page. I will probably close it in a few days since the project has very few participants and so activity is expected to be very low. Gary King (talk) 21:01, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm getting my B.A. in Economics in a week or so. I'm not quite qualified to write on the technical aspects of economics, but I can certainly help with biographies and the broad conceptual underpinnings. Incidentally, tags are evil; I don't think this project needs to be tagged as inactive, nor does it need to be tagged as a WikiProject. Leave these for other people to judge, most are obvious. Nor do I like the assessing so much; that distracts people from real work by making them think others will do it. Anyway, I think it'd be good if we focused on one really important article a week or something, or maybe just put a few articles on priority. I don't think we necessarily need to focus on doing FAR, although we can do that. I'm not experienced with FAR, but I'm worried that these could be distracting in their bureaucraticness. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 21:28, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

FAR as in Featured Article Review? Because no one mentioned that. My suggestion is we focus on choosing, by consensus, an article to build to FA then build it to FA until that is done. When it is done, repeat the cycle. The ideal end game will be every article that we tagged is featured, before we go on and tag even more articles. Gary King (talk) 21:31, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that Gary has the right idea. If we just do one article a month, it will be more than this project has ever done. I have started to really examine Milton Friedman, and have placed a copy of it here for editing purposes. I don't know if this is an acceptable way to do business or not, but I'm cool with anyone working on my Sandboxed version of it and getting it ready there. Sometimes when you have to make big changes, it seems hard to get it done on the mainspace with everyone changing your changes before you get it where you want it to be. Unschool (talk) 21:40, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer editing the article itself because it will be a pain when you have to move your sandboxed version to the article AND incorporate all changes made to the article. Gary King (talk) 21:48, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay by me. Unschool (talk) 23:32, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm definitely on board. I feel that assessment is important, but there are few enough articles that it won't take too much effort or be a full-fledged task force in itself. Everyone already knows what the most important topics are, and you're absolutely right that we need to bring them up to snuff. I nominate myself to tie up assessment loose ends so no one else has to. Also I agree with Gary's plan to build one article to FA at a time, and get everybody collaborating on one at once. -FrankTobia (talk) 01:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)