Do the citizens actually buy stuff from shop owners? For example (and I'll use simple numbers here), if I go to a shop and the owner has 100 gold available. Will citizens attempt to buy things from him? If so will his amount of gold change if I go up to him right after seeing said citizen leave?

They said there was, they said you could hurt the eceonmy of towns. Unless there are quest to do this, I haven't figured it out. As far as gold, it looks like more gold just appears on them after a couple days. But I have no idea... Anyone have any further insight into this?

I doubt it; the store system is so flawed you'll have your vendors running out of gold almost constantly unless you get Speech Craft perks?

I dont see how hurting the economy would even benefit you if it is possible. Materials don't seem to come back gold does not either in my experience I should wait a few weeks to see.

That is to bad. Seems like this is one, among other things they could have improved on during the several years of development. Not saying I don't enjoy the game, in fact I love it.

as ar as i can tell, the "economy" is near-identical to FA3/oblivion/morrowind
i.e. shopkeepers restock their purse every 24hrs with a set amount
the only difference is that now you can't sell weapons to a barkeeper (unless you have the right late game perk) - which i found refreshingly nice

so chalk this up as another system that they put out there as a big feature and then never actually implemented (along with "arrows are going to be more powerful but a lot harder to get hold of'" - i generally end up with +100 more arrows after your average dungeon or bandit fort and i'm playing an archer character)



in answer to the question of why you'd want to sabotage economy: well personally i wouldn't do such a thing as a blanket policy, but the fact is that this is an open world game. so the best answer is "because you can", because you want to poke the anthill and see what happens.


edit:
don't get me wrong though. i'm enjoying skyrim, and never really had a problem with this feature in previous games, it'sj ust that when you get promised ice-cream with chocolate sprinkles and instead you got ice-cream without chocolate sprinkles, the ice cream suddenly feels a lil under-par even if it's just as tasty as it usedt o be

So, regarding the economy: will the selling price of, let's say, a iron sword, be the same regardless of whom I'm selling it to? (general trader, blacksmith, weapon dealer)

- Will the selling price of (for example) a weapon stay the same even after I sell 9-10 of them in the same session to the same dealer?

Thanks!

As far as I've seen. Yes, and yes.