1. Goldman Sachs Bonuses. Goldman Sachs and other large financial institutions which received federal bailout money have returned to profitability and are again paying their senior executives large bonuses. In response, the government has ordered large reductions in the compensation paid to senior executives of financial institutions that received federal aid.
Question: Is it wrong (and wrong-headed) for the government to limit the compensation of executives in the financial services industry?
2. Hate Crimes Bill. The House and Senate have passed a new "hate crimes" bill that punishes violent crimes motivated by gender and gender orientation more severely than crimes not so motovated. See New York Times article here.
Some are arguing that the law is unconstitutional. See here. What is your position?
3. Allocation of Life-saving Resources. This is a question Greg Mankiw is posing to his freshman economics students at Harvard.
You are a utilitarian social planner. You have a limited number of H1N1 vaccines. How do you allocate them? Do you (A) give them to high-risk populations, or (B) sell them to the highest bidder and rebate the revenue lump-sum to everyone in the population? If you choose (A), do you allow those individuals allocated the vaccine to sell their dose to someone else? Be sure to specify the economic environment as carefully as possible. And remember: Your goal is to maximize total utility.
How would you answer this question?
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