How do you think the economy has been going the past couple of years? David Brooks and Marginal Revolution note that despite the fact that US economic growth has been fairly strong in recent years (ignoring the current credit market crisis) and that US income inequality is not only comparable to the reputedly more egalitarian [...]
File this under the list of things which are probably practical but also somewhat offensive and not easily implementable but fun to discuss anyways — marriage futures. Prediction markets allow the application of market forces to make general predictions. Take the example of the Bush v. Kerry election — InTrade allowed individuals to buy and [...]
They laughed when I said sex and basic finance/economics could be merged (maybe we should call it sexonomics? sexynomics? econosexia?), now others have caught on! From an email forwarded by my co-worker S. Friedman comes the first part, a young, misguided damsel in distress asking Craigslist for some help: What am I doing wrong? Okay, I’m tired of [...]
If you were to ask a Democrat about the success of President Bush’s “surge” in US troops, (s)he’d (probably) tell you the Surge is a failure. If you ask a Republican, (s)he’ll (probably) tell you the Surge has made progress. Both sides can cite valid statistics which seem to tell contradictory messages. Yes, civilian casualties are down without [...]
I’m someone who thinks that economics and markets are more than just ways to make money. I find them interesting in and of themselves. Sadly, not too many people feel that way. So, on one of my interminable commutes home, I came up with a (what I think is a) brilliant idea to make markets [...]
How should a company choose what to invest in? The most logical means of evaluating an investment would be to perform a basic cost-benefit analysis on each investment relative to the others. This is no small task, as with each investment, there is always an element of risk that is difficult to gauge (i.e. maybe sales will jump [...]
Signaling is a concept from economics which makes the vast majority of higher schooling seem irrelevant. Why else do financial services firms oftentimes seek physics and math students (often with negligible background in business or finance)? Why else are pre-medical students required to endure class after class of essentially zero relevance to their profession of [...]
This is absolutely amazing: [Tencent is] a genuine concern for the Chinese government, which now fears that the QQ is deflating the official yuan. “QQ” is the virtual currency created by Tencent, China’s largest instant messaging platform based in Shenzen. Originally, Tencent sold QQ as a fun way for customers to purchase online games, greeting [...]
The White Sox are changing their game times from 7:05 to 7:11. Why? Because Seven-Eleven paid them $500,000.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading of Allie’s recent posts on healthcare since she’s now in what looks like a very interesting class on public health policy. In her first post, she responds to the question of whether or not health care is a right or a commodity and answers that it ought to [...]