The realities of interstellar trade: calculating interest charges at light speed

[jeffreyab]

Via edg_traveller

A paper apparently written in 1978, by a Paul Krugman of Yale University, about the difficulties of calculating shipping costs when you are travelling interstellar distance at an assumed speed that is faster than light or with travel times that could number in the hundreds of years. This is also complicated by the fact for a person on a ship time passes slower than the people left behind or at the ship's destination if the ship travels at any great speed.

The author describes it as a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, the opposite of the usual economics paper.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf

Paul Krugman's bio here: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/KRUGMAN-BIO.html

And a talk by him on Income Inequality and the Middle Class

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kwA-CwFK5A

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Krugman once said that he got into economics because it was the nearest existing subject area to Asimov's psychohistory.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Have you met him then?

Is he a SF fan?

[supergee.livejournal.com]

No, and I don't know. I read it in a biographical article.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

That's fantastic. I have new respect for him.