CAPITAL BRAINS

Finance and economics

1. From what language does the word economics derive?

2. Who coined the term “dismal science” to describe economics?

3. The award known as the Nobel prize for economics was first presented in 1969. What occasion prompted the creation of the prize?

4. Who was the first woman to be awarded the economics prize and when did this happen?

5. John Maynard Keynes didn’t get a degree in economics. What did he study as an undergraduate?

6. Link the quotes to the economists: a) “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone” b) “Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another” c) “Open immigration can’t exist with a strong social safety net; if you’re going to assure health care and a decent income to everyone, you can’t make that offer global” d) “Economics has never been a science—and it is even less now than a few years ago”

7. Where does the term “priming the pump” come from, as an economic adage?

8. Which people are associated with the following economic “laws”? a) bad money drives out good b) supply creates its own demand c) when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

9. What do these economic initials stand for? a) PPP b) FDI c) PMI

10. Which economists came up with the following concepts? a) the theory of comparative advantage b) countries will export products that use their abundant and cheap factors of production and import products that use their scarce factors c) theory of marginal utility

11. Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel prize in economics in 2002. But his academic background was not in economics. What was it?

12. Which economics professor had a cameo in the movie The Big Short, alongside Selena Gomez?

13. Which British economist, who died in 2010, devoted much of his work to establishing data on economic growth through history?

14. What do these acronyms stand for? a) EBITDA b) CAPE c) RMBS

15. Which countries, based on the World Bank report for 2015, had: a) the highest GDP per capita b) the lowest GDP per capita?

16. Which countries, based on the latest World Bank data, were: a) the most unequal and b) the least?

17. What proportion of US mutual funds investing in large-company shares outperformed their benchmark over the 15 years to end 2016, according to Standard & Poor’s? What about funds investing in small-company shares? (You can have 5% either side.)

18. What do the initials stand for in the following? a) JP Morgan b) ING c) BBVA

19. Which famous financier travelled under the pseudonym of Professor Clarence Skinner?

20. Which chairmen of the Federal Reserve said the following? a) “I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said” b) “The Federal Reserve, as one writer put it, is in the position of the chaperone who has ordered the punch bowl removed just when the party was really warming up” c) “The only useful thing banks have invented in 20 years is the ATM”

21. Which chairmen of the Federal Reserve had the following characteristics? a) a disciple of Ayn Rand who played the clarinet b) a cigar smoker who was 6ft 7in (2.01 metres) tall c) a president of the New York Stock Exchange at 31, dubbed “the boy wonder of Wall Street”

22. The book Barbarians at the Gate is about the takeover of which firm?

23. Warren Buffett, who runs the conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, is often regarded as the greatest investor of all time. But who was his investment guru?

24. What branch of finance is associated with head-and-shoulders patterns, Japanese candlesticks or Fibonacci numbers?

25. The Bank of England introduced new polymer £5 notes featuring a portrait of Winston Churchill in November 2016, but why did some individuals and organisations refuse to take the note?

26. Link the slogan to the financial services firm or brand: a) One client at a time b) It’s everywhere you want to be c) Don’t leave home without it

27. The post–second world war exchange rate system is often called the Bretton Woods system after a conference that agreed it. Where is Bretton Woods?

28. Who led the British and American delegations at Bretton Woods?

29. At Bretton Woods, the assembled countries agreed to set up two multinational institutions. What were they?

30. During the operation of Bretton Woods, economists Robert Mundell and Marcus Fleming came up with the idea of a trilemma, or impossible trinity, to explain the limits of currency systems. What are the three elements of the trilemma?

31. By an informal arrangement, the head of the World Bank has always come from which country?

32. Five out of the eleven directors-general of the International Monetary Fund have come from which nation?

33. Which countries have the following stock market indices? a) Sensex b) Ibex c) Kospi d) Bovespa

34. Which countries have the following currencies? a) togrog b) dong c) lempira d) guarani

35. Which civilisations had the following coins? a) solidus b) auksinas c) owl

36. What proportion of US dollars in circulation is in the form of $100 bills? (You can have 5% either side.)

37. What are the full names of these bank divisions? a) ECM b) DCM c) FICC

38. The Bank for International Settlements is often described as the “central bankers’ central bank”. Where is it based?

39. The World Trade Organization sets the rules for global trade and had 164 member countries at the time of writing. But in what year was it set up and where is it based?

40. What are contango and backwardation?

41. The Dodd-Frank Act was the attempt to reform America’s financial system after the credit crisis. In terms of pages, how long was it? (You can have 50 pages either side.)

42. By contrast, how many pages was the Glass-Steagall Act, passed during the Depression, that separated commercial and investment banking? (You can have five pages either side.)

43. In his bestselling economics book Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty linked rising inequality to the equation r > g. What do the letters stand for?

44. Which authors wrote the following classic financial books? a) Reminiscences of a Stock Operator b) Manias, Panics and Crashes c) Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?

45. Walter Bagehot was one of the first editors of The Economist. But what was the title of his book, still cited as a guideline for central banks facing financial crises?

46. Some investors like to buy the bonds of riskier companies known as speculative or junk bonds, because they offer higher yields. The top credit rating from Standard & Poor’s is AAA and from Moody’s AA1. At what level do bonds start getting rated as junk?

47. Fraudulent investment plans are named Ponzi schemes after Charles Ponzi, who operated in the early 1920s. What did he claim was the source of his profits (he promised to double investors’ money within 90 days)?

48. Many thriller plots have been based on an investment product called a tontine. How does it work?

49. Which two winners of the Nobel economics prize were directors of the failed hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management?

50. Which financial collapses were the subjects of the following books? a) When Genius Failed b) The Smartest Guys in the Room c) House of Cards