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The Economics Stack Exchange beta will be closed down next week along with a bunch of other quiescent beta sites. There's a movement building up (approved by the SE staff) to migrate as much of the content from these sites as possible to other, more active SE sites.

It seemed to me that some of the questions on Economics.SE might be on topic here, so I thought I'd ask for your opinions and help with getting these questions salvaged. If you feel that this would be a good idea, here's what you can do:

  • Express your support for migrating these questions here, so that the SE folks can tell that the community here is (as I hope, at least) in favor of it.
  • Go through the list of questions on Economics.SE and look for ones that would be on topic here.
  • Collect links to the questions here, so that we can point an Economics mod at them before the site closes (example of such a list at SF&F meta). Or you could just flag the questions for migration directly, but this way we avoid needless duplicate flags.

Note that we only have about a week to do this before the site will be closed. The SE folks have said that they may be willing to extend the deadline to let active migration finish, but that applies only if the process has at least been started well before the deadline.

Ps. I've also posted about this on the Math.SE, Stats.SE and Quant.SE metas, as the scope of all these sites overlaps at least somewhat with Economics.SE. There's also a central post on the Econ.SE meta listing potential migration targets.

(Personal disclaimer: I've never been active on either Economics.SE or here; indeed, I only found out about these sites recently. I just feel I should at least try to do something to help keep these questions alive and on the web, rather than just gathering digital dust in a compressed archive somewhere.)

UPDATE: Prior to closing, Economics SE sent us a handful of questions that were on-topic for Personal Finance & Money. Some that were migrated in error were sent back and/or closed.

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No, please. This is an applied site about "personal" finance and really shouldn't be accepting questions about academic or broader economic issues. From the faq:

Please note that the following subjects are considered off-topic here:

  • ...
  • Academic questions about economics or questions about economics that have no bearing on personal finance

I strongly urge you to resist the inclination that you have to save these questions because they have no where better to go. They are off topic here. If they've already been imported, please close them as off topic. These are broken windows, and you don't need pile on more cruft that will just have to be cleaned out later.

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    +1 Maybe you could flag the ones that most egregiously violate the off-topic rule so that the moderators can consider them for closure/deletion or vote to close (though maybe you don't have enough reputation for that?)
    – Dilip Sarwate
    Commented May 1, 2012 at 15:54
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    @DilipSarwate FYI, Robert Cartaino works for Stack Exchange -- i.e. he doesn't need reputation to do anything since he has Chuck Norris-like powers already. :-) Notice the diamond next to our names ... equals moderator capabilities.
    – Chris W. Rea
    Commented May 1, 2012 at 18:11
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    ...and besides, didn't intend to start combing through this site to pick out the problem spots with this. This was just a note caution that you shouldn't feel too much of a Mother Teressa complex when trying to "save" this content. If it's not a great question for this site, don't just take in the Econ stuff like you're adopting unwanted pets that no one else will take care of. If there's the occasional question that should have been on this site in the first place, great; otherwise, just let it go.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented May 1, 2012 at 19:04
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After reading many of the questions being migrated here from economics.SE, I urge the moderators of money.SE to take a firmer stance and close them as being way off-topic. Some of the questions are undoubtedly valuable information, but they are nonetheless not pertinent to money.SE. It is irritating to visit money.SE and find what seems like the vast majority of the top 30 questions to be migrants from economics.SE and of no relevance to money.SE. I would prefer that money.SE not close down as economics.SE did for lack of participation, but I fear that many participants may cut down their level of involvement given that the chaff seemingly outnumbers the wheat.

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    What are the egregious examples? Bear in mind that some questions could be basic economics questions and some could be related to personal finance. We did accept these before. Refer to meta.money.stackexchange.com/questions/148 and meta.money.stackexchange.com/questions/224 and meta.money.stackexchange.com/questions/392 .. we did start to steer most/all econ questions to the econ SE when it launched, but since it is going away, I think the prior policies are applicable: basic/layman or PF-related questions OK.
    – Chris W. Rea
    Commented May 1, 2012 at 0:49
  • For example, money.stackexchange.com/q/14823/5760 on Gresham's law seems to have little relevance to money.SE, and if you feel it is on-topic, it is still a very localized question and the answers are unlikely to be useful to most readers of money.SE
    – Dilip Sarwate
    Commented May 1, 2012 at 1:58
  • I agree with that one. I closed & deleted, now it's back at Econ SE.
    – Chris W. Rea
    Commented May 1, 2012 at 14:57
  • @ChrisW.Rea OK, here is another one: money.stackexchange.com/q/14831/5760 which is about general economics and not a "practical answerable question about an actual problem you face" if I have the quote from the FAQ right.
    – Dilip Sarwate
    Commented May 1, 2012 at 15:52
  • Agreed - that was even a homework question - I sent that one back too.
    – Chris W. Rea
    Commented May 1, 2012 at 18:13
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    That's fine - I don't expect them to be adopted like "homeless kittens" - but there are many useful ones. If the two mods on Econ didn't have full-time jobs and more than 4 days in which to sort this out, we'd take more care. At the moment we're firing them off and hoping they're a reasonable fit.
    – Turukawa
    Commented May 1, 2012 at 20:11
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I am going to start sending a few questions across (I'm a moderator on Economics.SE) so please let me know if any are inappropriate.

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    Hi Turukawa, I'd note from the money FAQ: "Academic questions about economics or questions about economics that have no bearing on personal finance" are off-topic
    – 410 gone
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 12:15
  • Do you think we should expand the scope of money.SE to allow some previously off-topic questions? Where would we draw such a line?
    – Chris W. Rea
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 13:55
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    @ChrisW.Rea I think it's a discussion worth having. I think that this site has a ton of great information, but the current scope is limiting.
    – duffbeer703
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 14:58
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    The two or three questions that I have seen migrated from quant.SE (or Economics.SE?) have little to do with the scope of personal finance, and I think expanding the scope to accommodate them will be detrimental to money.SE and the kinds of discussions that occur on it.
    – Dilip Sarwate
    Commented Apr 27, 2012 at 15:43
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    However, I think they're good questions/answers and it would be a pity to loose them from the network entirely. Prior to Economics.SE, many of these questions would have ended up here and now will migrate back (I remember these discussions from back before Economics.SE existed related to questions posted here)...
    – Turukawa
    Commented Apr 28, 2012 at 17:21
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    @Turukawa "Good", maybe. But are they on-topic here? Else they are candidates for closure & deletion. Perhaps you should initiate a new discussion on meta here about clarifying the scope for Econ questions? Many of the questions sent over have no bearing on personal finance. On what basis would we keep them and not delete them?
    – Chris W. Rea
    Commented Apr 29, 2012 at 12:53
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    I think that most of the questions migrated here over the past 24 hours are definitely not on-topic as per the current FAQ. Some of them are good questions and/or have good answers, but should they be saved on money.SE? If a stackexchange closes, is it possible in the stackexchange system to simply have the site available for reading, but no new answers or comments are permitted, and so there is no need for any active moderation?
    – Dilip Sarwate
    Commented Apr 29, 2012 at 13:33
  • Why is Economics SE closed? I kind of like that forum. Will all questions be deleted?
    – user4951
    Commented Apr 30, 2012 at 8:14
  • Insufficient activity. SE still has to pay the bills and there aren't enough economists in the world (believe it or not)...
    – Turukawa
    Commented Apr 30, 2012 at 9:41
  • Sigh... all my questions are deleted. I know you don't like my questions, but I love your answers. Also how come a site like this doesn't have enough income revenue? If only I know a sticky site, I will drive visitors to it.
    – user4951
    Commented May 2, 2012 at 4:15
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Does budget mean expenses and/or revenue? is one such question. Not migrated, but here because the other site is shut.

I'm not inclined to spend the time to answer such questions until their status is clear. Is the scope here expanding a bit or not?

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With the recent flurry of question that are either borderline or over the line of "economic" vs "personal finance" it may be time for the group here to finish this discussion and come to a conclusion.

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