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I too got 14/18 in the economics quiz. I have to wonder though, if labor productivity increases, how does that apply downward pressure on unemployment? As I see it, the higher productivity would mean companies would not need to add additional workers and so result in higher unemployment.

By Onkel Bob (not verified) on 22 Apr 2009 #permalink

I have to wonder though, if labor productivity increases, how does that apply downward pressure on unemployment? As I see it, the higher productivity would mean companies would not need to add additional workers and so result in higher unemployment.

That's one of the ones I missed, too, and I don't understand it, either. "Labor productivity" is presumably defined in some counter-intuitive way, and not the "amount of stuff made per worker" definition that the name suggests.

I was also puzzled by the last one, in which none of the quantities in the problem are even close to 12% of the correct answer. I'm sure there's some oddball definition at the heart of that one, too.

As I've said before, economics is not "the physics of the social sciences," as is sometimes claimed. Instead, it's the astronomy of the social sciences-- primarily observational rather than experimental, and all the quantities they measure turn out to be something like the negative logarithm of the properties that actually matter.