You are the type of person who is often startled by loud noises and quick movements, and easily distracted from whatever you're doing. Family and friends often add sleeping pills, muscle relaxants, and other similar medications to your food and drink in hopeless attempt to reduce your activity level somewhere near normal. Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time waiting for visits from door-to-door solicitors seeking to buy either a wall poster commemorating the first day of winter or blue cotton balls. Be on the lookout for celebrities who speak directly to you through your television. You should consider shopping at stores or businesses beginning with the letter N, but do not buy any products with a serial number or product code containing the number 021110. Your preferred shopping venue is mail order catalogs. Your special symbol is the question mark (?).

As a Gray Skittery, you are ambivalent, indecisive, and uncertain. You are in a constant struggle between the forces of demand and supply, production and consumption, good and evil... and you're losing the battle. You have trouble making decisions and choosing from among the seemingly infinite number of options that you perpetually face. Your shopping experiences are inevitably confusing.

The macroeconomic study of Keynesian economics relies on three key assumptions--rigid prices, effective demand, and savings-investment determinants. First, rigid or inflexible prices prevent some markets from achieving equilibrium in the short run. Second, effective demand means that consumption expenditures are based on actual income, not full employment or equilibrium income. Lastly, important savings and investment determinants include income, expectations, and other influences beyond the interest rate. These three assumptions imply that the economy can achieve a short-run equilibrium at less than full-employment production.

Complete Entry | Visit the WEB*pedia

It's time for another one of our frequent stops at Mr. Market Super Food Discount Store, this time to check out the story behind retail prices. As consumers, we spend a large fraction of our nonworking, nonsleeping lives wandering grocery stores aisles, searching clothing store racks, and surveying department store displays for the right product at the right price. How do we know, like the name of the long-running game show, if "The Price is Right?" How are retail prices set and do they really tell us the value of a product?
Tell me more...

Visit the PEDestrian's Guide

-- William A. Ward

User Feedback