Sooner or later humans will be travelling the universe writes The Economist. (And perhaps destroying parts of it). What does this mean for economics?

• Relativity is the conclusion that spacecrafts travelling very fast will experience time differently. Whereas decades might go by on a planet, those on the spacecraft would only experience the passing of a few years. This has economic implications.
• One could, for example, invest a million dollars into something that yields 3% a year. They could then hop on a spacecraft, zip around the galaxy very quickly for a couple years, and return to the home planet where many more years will have passed and the investment will have grown substantially.
• This would mean that interest rates would be determined primarily by the price of starship fuel.
• Relativity will also meant that the net present value of shipments will be hard to calculate.
• Since information couldn’t travel faster than the speed of light it would be impossible to arbitrage away the price difference between solar systems.

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Source: The Economist