CPI Lower Than A Year Ago

See Gas’s Drop Drives U.S. Into Deflation Territory: Consumer-price gauge shows 0.1% year-over-year decline in January, first since October 2009, amid sharp fall in gas costs from the WSJ.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has records going back to 1913. See CPI Detailed Report: Data for January 2015. It is a PDF file and you need to find Table 24.

It might be easier to see all the data at this site.

The base year (or period) is 1982-84. The Consumer Price Index was closest to 100 in 1983 when it was 99.6. For all of 2014 it was 236.736. That means it took $236.736 to buy what cost $100 in 1983.

The CPI in January 2014 was 233.916. The CPI in January 2015 was 233.707. So that was down. Prices rose 0.8% from December 2013 to December 2014, though.

Excerpt from the WSJ article:

"Driven by a tumble in oil prices since mid-2014, the consumer-price index fell 0.1% in January from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the first year-over-year decrease since October 2009. Prices fell 0.7% from December.

While the reading indicates little upward price pressure across the U.S. economy, it’s different from the downward forces plaguing other major economies.

“We haven’t suddenly become the eurozone or Japan,” said Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial Corp. The dip in overall prices doesn’t reflect the “underlying health of the U.S. economy.”

In Japan and parts of Europe, negative forces such as weak demand and constrained credit caused a drop in prices for a broad swath of goods and services.

In the U.S., falling consumer prices can be pinpointed to a single sector: energy. Energy costs fell almost 20% over the past year, and gasoline prices alone fell by more than a third.

Consumer prices outside of energy advanced a healthy 1.9% in January from a year earlier. Prices for many staples are growing even faster. Food costs are up 3.2% from a year earlier, shelter costs rose 2.9% and medical care advanced 2.3%.

Removing both food and energy costs, consumer prices rose 0.2% last month and are up 1.6% from January 2014. The year-over-year change in so-called core prices held steady in January from December, after trending down from a recent peak of 2% last May."

All is not well (financially) in the world of college football

See Time for a Presidential Panel to Investigate College Sports by Andrew Zimbalist in The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is a professor of economics at Smith College who specializes in the economics of sports. Excerpts:

"The median revenue of athletic programs within the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of Division I grew to $61.9-million in 2012-13 from 28.2-million in 2003-4—an inflation-adjusted increase of 76 percent. And it continues to grow. College football’s new playoff system, which held its national championship game last night, yielded a 12-year contract with ESPN worth $7.3-billion."

"only a couple dozen universities that are pulling in the big bucks. According to the NCAA’s most recent figures, out of 128 schools in FBS, only 20 athletic programs have an operating surplus."

"Overall, the median operating deficit in FBS athletic departments is approximately $12-million."

"So, what’s going on—how can losses be piling up as revenues soar? First, costs are growing faster than revenues. There are no stockholders in Division I athletics. That is, athletic departments do not have to answer to a board of directors or company owners who are looking for profits to go up each quarter so the company’s stock price will rise.

Athletic departments are not profit maximizers. They are win maximizers."

"Without pressure to maximize profits, when revenues rise, the athletic directors find ways to spend it in pursuit of winning."

"the top athletes at FBS schools produce a value well in excess of $1-million. The surplus produced by these players goes in part to the coaches who recruit them and in part to support the "nonrevenue" sports at the school."

"The NCAA now allows colleges to provide four-year scholarships to players, to increase the value of a full-ride scholarship by several thousand dollars to cover the full cost of attendance, and to provide better benefits."

"these additional costs of $1-million-plus will (a) make it more difficult for the vast majority of colleges—unable to afford the financial burden—to compete effectively on the playing field, (b) force these colleges into larger athletic deficits, robbing funds from the academic budget, or (c) impel some colleges to follow the lead of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and end their football program."

"college sports is faced with increased inequality and greater insolvency. Every extra dollar going to intercollegiate athletics is a dollar lost to academic programming. At the top 24 spenders in college sports between 2005 and 2012, football coaches’ salaries calculated on a per-player basis rose more than 60 percent (several now exceed $5-million and in 41 of 50 states a head coach is the highest-paid public official in the state), while academic spending per student dropped 2 percent."

"The NCAA functions as a trade association of the athletic directors, conference commissioners, and coaches, especially those from the big five conferences, and has proven time after time that it is incapable of constructively reforming itself."

"Congress can stand idly by, as it is wont to do, and refuse to get involved in the business of college sports. Or, it can recognize that it is already involved in that business—via an elaborate network of tax preferences and subsidies"

Study Finds Wealth Gap in Graduation Rates

By Melissa Korn of the Wall Street Journal. Excerpts:

"In 2013, 77% of adults from families in the top income quartile earned at least a bachelor’s degree by the time they turned 24, up from 40% in 1970"

"In the lowest income quartile, 9% of people earned a bachelor’s degree by age 24 in 2013, up from 6% in 1970."

"Forty-five percent of dependent 18- to 24-year-olds from the lowest income quartile—with family income of $34,160 or less—enrolled in 2012, up from 28% in 1970. The enrollment rate of the highest-income students—with family income of $108,650 or more—also rose, to 81% from 74%, so the gap in enrollment between the two groups shrank.

Still, most low-income students who pursue degrees fail to make it to graduation. About one in five students from the lowest income bracket completed a bachelor’s degree by age 24 in 2013, about flat with the 1970 figure. Among students from top-earning families, meanwhile, 99% of students who enrolled completed their degrees, up from 55% in 1970, the report said."

So the college graduation rate for the upper quartile is 8.5 times higher than for the bottom quartile (because 77/9 is about 8.5).

A Special Valentine's Message On Romantic Love

Below is a repeat of last year's Valentine's day post. I am not sure if the links are still working:

The first one is Researchers at AAAS Annual Meeting Explore the Science of Kissing . The following quote gives you an idea of what it is all about: "Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women." I guess economists call this "interdependent utility functions." Meaning that what brings one person pleasure brings brings the other person pleasure, and vice-versa.

The other is Cocoa Prices Create Chocolate Dilemma. The article opens with "Soaring cocoa prices are creating a Valentine's Day dilemma for chocolate makers. They don't want to raise retail prices when recession-weary consumers are trying to limit their spending." The problem is crop diseases in Ivory Coast and Ghana. You might need to be a WSJ subscriber to read the whole article.

Here is a new article from yesterday's San Antonio Express-News (2-13-2011). Romance in bloom at workplace: Survey indicates 59% have taken the risk-filled leap. It seems like many people admit to having a romance at work and/or meeting their spouse at work. So what starts out as economic activity leads to some other needs being met.

Now the economic definition of romantic love.

 Abstract: "Romantic love is characterized by a preoccupation with a deliberately restricted set of perceived characteristics in the love object which are viewed as means to some ideal ends. In the process of selecting the set of perceived characteristics and the process of determining the ideal ends, there is also a systematic failure to assess the accuracy of the perceived characteristics and the feasibility of achieving the ideal ends given the selected set of means and other pre-existing ends.

The study of romantic love can provide insight into the general process of introducing novelty into a system of interacting variables. Novelty, however, is functional only in an open system characterized by uncertainty where the variables have not all been functionally looped and system slacks are readily available to accommodate new things. In a closed system where all the objective functions and variables must be compatible to achieve stability and viability, adjustments in the value of some variables through romantic idealization may be dysfunctional if they represent merely residual responses to the creative combination of the variables in the open sub-system."

The author was K. K. Fung of the Department of Economics, Memphis State University, Memphis. It was from a journal article in 1979. More info on it is at this link. The entire article, which is not too long, can be found at this link.

Then there was this related article: Love really is blind, U.S. study finds. Here is an exerpt:

"Love really is blind, at least when it comes to looking at others, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

College students who reported they were in love were less likely to take careful notice of other attractive men or women, the team at the University of California Los Angeles and dating Web site eHarmony found.

"Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to work in very specific ways in enabling you to push thoughts of that tempting other out of your mind," said Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony, whose study is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

"It's almost like love puts blinders on people," added Martie Haselton, an associate professor of psychology and communication studies at UCLA."

More links:

How to Be a Better Valentine, Through Economics by economist Paul Oyer.

Can Giving Up Money And Material Things Lead To More Love?

What Do Men In China Need To Get A Bride?

Adam Smith, Marriage Counselor

A Special Valentine's Message On Romantic Love

Can You Put A Price Tag On Love?

Do Opposites Attract? Not Usually, Except Maybe When It Comes To Money

Return of the Love Headhunters

eHarmony To Provide Personal Counselors To Help You Find Mr. Or Ms. Right

Economist Paul Zak, aka Dr. Love (he studies the brain with "neuroeconomics")

This is your brain on love   (brain scans and biology seem to confirm the economic definition given above)

Dollars & Sex: The Blog of Marina Adshade

A Special Valentine's Message On Romantic Love

Below is a repeat of last year's Valentine's day post. I am not sure if the links are still working:

The first one is Researchers at AAAS Annual Meeting Explore the Science of Kissing . The following quote gives you an idea of what it is all about: "Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women." I guess economists call this "interdependent utility functions." Meaning that what brings one person pleasure brings brings the other person pleasure, and vice-versa.

The other is Cocoa Prices Create Chocolate Dilemma. The article opens with "Soaring cocoa prices are creating a Valentine's Day dilemma for chocolate makers. They don't want to raise retail prices when recession-weary consumers are trying to limit their spending." The problem is crop diseases in Ivory Coast and Ghana. You might need to be a WSJ subscriber to read the whole article.

Here is a new article from yesterday's San Antonio Express-News (2-13-2011). Romance in bloom at workplace: Survey indicates 59% have taken the risk-filled leap. It seems like many people admit to having a romance at work and/or meeting their spouse at work. So what starts out as economic activity leads to some other needs being met.

Now the economic definition of romantic love.

 Abstract: "Romantic love is characterized by a preoccupation with a deliberately restricted set of perceived characteristics in the love object which are viewed as means to some ideal ends. In the process of selecting the set of perceived characteristics and the process of determining the ideal ends, there is also a systematic failure to assess the accuracy of the perceived characteristics and the feasibility of achieving the ideal ends given the selected set of means and other pre-existing ends.

The study of romantic love can provide insight into the general process of introducing novelty into a system of interacting variables. Novelty, however, is functional only in an open system characterized by uncertainty where the variables have not all been functionally looped and system slacks are readily available to accommodate new things. In a closed system where all the objective functions and variables must be compatible to achieve stability and viability, adjustments in the value of some variables through romantic idealization may be dysfunctional if they represent merely residual responses to the creative combination of the variables in the open sub-system."

The author was K. K. Fung of the Department of Economics, Memphis State University, Memphis. It was from a journal article in 1979. More info on it is at this link. The entire article, which is not too long, can be found at this link.

Then there was this related article: Love really is blind, U.S. study finds. Here is an exerpt:

"Love really is blind, at least when it comes to looking at others, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

College students who reported they were in love were less likely to take careful notice of other attractive men or women, the team at the University of California Los Angeles and dating Web site eHarmony found.

"Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to work in very specific ways in enabling you to push thoughts of that tempting other out of your mind," said Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony, whose study is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

"It's almost like love puts blinders on people," added Martie Haselton, an associate professor of psychology and communication studies at UCLA."

More links:

How to Be a Better Valentine, Through Economics by economist Paul Oyer.

Can Giving Up Money And Material Things Lead To More Love?

What Do Men In China Need To Get A Bride?

Adam Smith, Marriage Counselor

A Special Valentine's Message On Romantic Love

Can You Put A Price Tag On Love?

Do Opposites Attract? Not Usually, Except Maybe When It Comes To Money

Return of the Love Headhunters

eHarmony To Provide Personal Counselors To Help You Find Mr. Or Ms. Right

Economist Paul Zak, aka Dr. Love (he studies the brain with "neuroeconomics")

This is your brain on love   (brain scans and biology seem to confirm the economic definition given above)

Dollars & Sex: The Blog of Marina Adshade

Trees Are Scarce In San Antonio!

See Hundreds dodge rain for tree giveaway by Elda Silva, San Antonio Express-News.

A good is scarce if there is not enough to go around when it is given away free of charge. Something like this happened with the tree giveaway. Excerpts from the article:

"Neither gray skies nor drizzle were enough to keep away the crowd that lined up for free fruit and nut trees Saturday morning at the Pearl.

More than an hour before the Jammin’ Jams Fruit and Nut Tree Adoption began, people began gathering in the parking lot of La Gloria restaurant, where organizers set up tents to give away about 900 young trees planted in black plastic pots."

"“We probably already had a couple of hundred people here well before 8 o’clock,” said Ross Hosea, city forester.

By 9:30 a.m., the line stretched beyond the parking lot and around the Koehler Garage and the Culinary Institute of America-San Antonio. The varieties of trees available included pecan, apple, apricot, fig, peach, pear, plum, pomegranate, Fuyu persimmon, improved Meyer lemon, orange and tangerine."

"Last year, about 750 trees were given away at the event. While there were more trees this year, there were also more people. Rough estimates put the number of would-be adopters at 2,000."

"Typically the most popular, the citrus trees were the first to go. As the morning went on, organizers kept the crowd informed about what trees remained available.

Adriana Segundo waited about an hour for her turn to select a tree. She didn’t get the orange tree she had hoped for, but she was pleased with a pecan." 

Can The Way You Tell A Story Affect How Willing People Will Be To Donate Money To Charity?

See Why Inspiring Stories Make Us React: The Neuroscience of Narrative by Paul Zak. Zak is an economist who uses neuroscience in his research. In fact, he coined the term "neuroeconomics." Excerpts from his article:

"My lab was the first to discover that the neurochemical oxytocin is synthesized in the human brain when one is trusted and that the molecule motivates reciprocation. We found that the human oxytocin response was similar to that found in social rodents,  signaling that another person (or rodent) is safe and familiar. Perhaps most surprising, we found that in humans, this “you seem trustworthy” signal occurs even between strangers without face-to-face interactions."

"After years of experiments, I now consider oxytocin the neurologic substrate for the Golden Rule: If you treat me well, in most cases my brain will synthesize oxytocin and this will motivate me to treat you well in return. This is how social creatures such as humans maintain themselves as part of social groups"

He had subjects watch different short videos. One told an emotional story, the other lacked strong emotions.

"We found that the narrative with the dramatic arc caused an increase in cortisol and oxytocin. Tellingly, the change in oxytocin had a positive correlation with participants’ feeling of empathy"

"Heightened empathy motivated participants to offer money to a stranger who was in the experiment."

"emotionally engaging narratives inspire post-narrative actions—in this case, sending money to a stranger."

Then he gave oxytocin to subjects who watched short Public Service Announcements (PSAs).

"We found that those who received oxytocin donated, on average, 56 percent more money to charity compared with participants who received the placebo. This confirmed the causal role of oxytocin on post-narrative prosocial behavior. But why did this happen? We discovered that participants who were given oxytocin showed substantially more concern for the characters in the PSAs. This increased concern motivated them to want to help by donating money to a charity that could alleviate the suffering these stories depicted."

"stories that sustain attention and generate emotional resonance produce post-narrative donations—even stories on difficult topics. To the brain, good stories are good stories, whether first-person or third-person, on topics happy or sad, as long as they get us to care about their characters. 

Psycholinguists have shown that effective stories induce “transportation” into the narrative. Transportation happens when one loses oneself in the flow of the story"

"Both narrative transportation and concern predicted post-story donations. This shows why stories affect behavior after the story has ended: we have put ourselves into the narrative. Even a week after the experiment, accurate story recall was predicted by a single measure: narrative transportation."

The article is long so I have just given the highlights. But it is all very interesting.

My lab was the first to discover that the neurochemical oxytocin is synthesized in the human brain when one is trusted and that the molecule motivates reciprocation. ^{1 2 3} We found that the human oxytocin response was similar to that found in social rodents, ⁴ signaling that another person (or rodent) is safe and familiar. Perhaps most surprising, we found that in humans, this “you seem trustworthy” signal occurs even between strangers without face-to-face interactions.   - See more at: http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/2015/Why_Inspiring_Stories_Make_Us_React__The_Neuroscience_of_Narrative/#sthash.9gpX7ps9.dpuf

My lab was the first to discover that the neurochemical oxytocin is synthesized in the human brain when one is trusted and that the molecule motivates reciprocation. ^{1 2 3} We found that the human oxytocin response was similar to that found in social rodents, ⁴ signaling that another person (or rodent) is safe and familiar. Perhaps most surprising, we found that in humans, this “you seem trustworthy” signal occurs even between strangers without face-to-face interactions.   - See more at: http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/2015/Why_Inspiring_Stories_Make_Us_React__The_Neuroscience_of_Narrative/#sthash.9gpX7ps9.dpuf

My lab was the first to discover that the neurochemical oxytocin is synthesized in the human brain when one is trusted and that the molecule motivates reciprocation. ^{1 2 3} We found that the human oxytocin response was similar to that found in social rodents, ⁴ signaling that another person (or rodent) is safe and familiar. Perhaps most surprising, we found that in humans, this “you seem trustworthy” signal occurs even between strangers without face-to-face interactions.   - See more at: http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/2015/Why_Inspiring_Stories_Make_Us_React__The_Neuroscience_of_Narrative/#sthash.9gpX7ps9.dpuf

Here are two articles about professor Zak's 2010 Mind Science Foundation lecture from the San Antonio Express-News:

Emerging field offers insight into human virtues

Humans release ‘niceness' chemical

More information about neuroeconomics can be found at (these are two short articles by Zak that give you some idea of what he does in his experiments):

Neuroeconomics Explained, Part One

Neuroeconomics Explained, Part Two

Adam Smith vs. Bart Simpson. (A post of mine from last year and it also has a link to a video of Zak lecturing on all of this)

A fake job reference can be just a few clicks away

In economics, signaling theory says that we send out signals to convince people we have certain traits. For example, a college degree is a signal to employers that you might be smarter and more hard working than the average person.

But sometimes people try to fake the signal. Click here to read the article by L.M. Sixel of the Houston Chronicle. Here is an excerpt:

"Did I ever mention that I used to be the CEO of a fast-food operation based in San Francisco? And before that I boosted burger sales 100 percent in just one year when I was vice president of a growing but small fast-food chain on the East Coast?

None of it's true, but it would be really easy to fabricate that story by hiring a company that will design fake websites of my "companies," provide folks to verify my credentials and write dazzling letters I could show potential employers about my amazing on-the-job successes.

I know there are plenty of examples of people embellishing their resumes by adding degrees they never received or job titles they never had. But fabricating companies, supervisors, co-workers - essentially creating a whole new work history - takes the fakery to a whole different level.

At CareerExcuse the motto is, "You fake it, we make it!"

Among the services it advertises is "Eliminate Gaps in Resume." The company's "blue collar plan" will establish a five-page company website along with a "professionally located street address," local phone number, corporate voicemail greeting and one live reference provider acting as "your supervisor."

That basic plan, which is designed for those who don't make more than $20 an hour, costs $100 followed by a $25 monthly subscription.

Optional upgrades include a reference letter from your supervisor for $50, a real company office that will receive mail monthly for $150 and registering the company in your state for $150.

A more expanded white-collar version that includes more live references, including "co-workers," and more elaborate website design is $195, followed by a $50 monthly subscription fee."

There is much more to this interesting article.