I’m a big fan of Bethesda’s open world games. But one thing that has always been lacking in my opinion is an decent economic system. Being an economics student I thought: why not try to improve it? One problem though, I don’t know much about modding and probably won’t have the time to learn it in the year to come. So I’ll explain here what I have in mind, and see if someone with the required modding skills is willing and/or able to implement (and perhaps help develop) it.

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• Basic idea

The basic idea is only meant to get rid of static prices by making supply and demand more dynamic. Except for seeing a different price, it shouldn’t be very visible ingame.

Every hold can be considered a country, with its own economic attributes such as resource availability(mainly mines, hunting and ingredient gathering), workforce, guilds, farms, … .
Based on those things they will specialize in mining, farming, .. and produce certain goods. These variables influence the price. Because they specialize they will need to trade with other holds. Politics (stormcloaks vs imperials) and distance/transportation can be used to calculate the prices in other holds.
Example: A hold with a lot farms, but few mines will have cheap food prices, but high armor/weaponry prices.

I want to emphasize that I’d like this to go very deep: number of acres to farm(food), number of trees(wood), numbers of animals(hides, meat, ..), number of ore veins, etc. .

In order to keep it dynamic, the economic attributes should be subject to change. I was thinking of macro economic variables such as dragon attacks, population (disease outbreaks and famine), quest events, war, … .

• Extended idea

Implementing this will be more intrusive and time consuming than 1). I would like to nerf/balance some things, introduce a stock market and make guilds economically more relevant.

The nerfing should be pretty obvious: Alchemy and loot like armor/weapons will make you rich in no time. Messing with the numbers of prices, spawn rate, drop chance, … should do the trick here.

The stock market could basically be the spreadsheet of I what explained in 1). One could talk to an NPC and see the buying/selling prices for each hold. It would take some time for items to be delivered. You could speculate on price drops/rises. Because distance will weigh a lot on prices, I am thinking of taxing fast travel when using it to go to another hold.

As for the guilds: The thieves guild could have a black market trader which sells rare(hard to find ingredients, ores, … ) and perhaps illegal items (filled black soul gems, blood vials for vampires, …) at very high prices. The companions can have a trader who sells the best armor and weaponry and also go up to legendary refinement(cfr skyforge). The Mages can offer enchanting services. Everything at a steep rate off course.
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Some things will need some further tweaking, but I’m not going to invest time into it if this mod has no chance of seeing daylight. I’m willing to do the research and the math, I just won’t be able to implement it into the game. I also have some other ideas such as building/managing your own hold, but let’s start with this for now and see how it goes =).

I don't mean to burst your bubble, but have a look at "Economics of Skyrim".
Of course it lacks certain elements you're talking about, but it's a good start.

Ugh .. I should've browsed the nexus first.

Economics of Skyrim looks like a fun mod, i'll definitly try it out =)