Interstack Trade and the Inefficiency of Autarky

Question

Proposal: Economics

Are there any related stack exchanges we could establish mutually beneficial relationships with?

Or broadening the question, communities at large?

For other SE's, would a reciprocal goodwill campaign of having one of our members ask a "featured question" on their beta (i.e. one that we promote on our meta to our users) possibly incentivize them to support our beta?

I was thinking something along the lines of pairing with the History S.E. and asking a question about the historical significance of major economists or economic theories on their SE, in exchange, perhaps they could ask us something about the purchasing power parity of time separated currencies (i.e. 'Which would be more valuable, a Roman Denarius ca. 0 or an Italian Lira ca 1999 in terms of a standard basket of goods?' [though a redditor somewhere has probably already asked and answered that])

These certainly wouldn't be pushing the boundaries of modern economic science, though they would likely generate more views and members than 'purer' questions. Not wanting to debase the exchange too much, we could partner with one of the two Math exchanges, Cross Validated, or others for the more highly technical questions.

This definitely ties back to LateralFractal's answer on this question, but I wanted to narrow the focus to community relations.

We might also find other communities like Wikipedians or Redditors we could exchange imaginary internet popularity points with to benefit our respective communities. :)

(Sorry for the corny trade theory references, rereading Ricardo... :) Say what you will about factor inputs, dude could write. )

Answer 1

Here are some communities that we might be able to tap (although it is not obvious in every case that this would be a symbiotic relationship):

EJMR: I shudder at the thought, given that Economics Job Market Rumors is mostly a wretched cesspit of misogyny and trolling. However, it almost certainly has the single biggest concentration of young academic (i.e. PhD+) economists anyone on the web so it would be a great place to find experts. Here on the SE network, we have the advantage that we can carefully moderate and suppress any trolls who try to come over. This proposal has already been promoted there, but perhaps another push is in order once we go into beta.

urch.com: Has a lot of economics activity, mostly in this subforum.

Physics Forums: Has a social sciences sub-forum where most of the questions seem to be about economics. I already put up a thread there to point people to this proposal, but maybe there is a bigger opportunity to engage with them.

Reddit: I never used Reddit, and don't really understand it. However, it appears to have dedicated sections for economics, academic economics, etc. so there should be the opportunity to get some people over here. There is already a discussion of this proposal here.

Politics SE: The political economy literature has a wealth of formal results on voting mechanism design, manifesto design and electoral competition, media slant and politics, etc. Not to mention issues of wealth distribution, global trade and development that have both an economic and political/ideological dimension.

Mathematics SE: as you mention. I see questions that are essentially economics homework problems going up there. Presumably, they ought to come over to us in future.

Theoretical Computer Science SE: Potentially, there is overlap to explore here. Many problems in theoretical computer science boil down to issues of mechanism design, bargaining games, auction theory, etc. that are also within the domain of economics.