The Dangerous Economist

There is no perfect man, a woman has to give up one quality if she wants more of another, just the kind of thing that economics would predic...

That is what a New York Times article called Carrots, Sticks and Lower Premiums suggests. The article says: "...the one thing that cou...

That was the idea in How Men’s Overconfidence Hurts Them as Investors , from the New York Times, 3-14-10. Here are some interesing exerpts: ...

Okay, it is not the book Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (this is a link to the entire book online). I will come back to this boo...

Last week I attended a lecture by Paul Zak, a neuro-economist from Claremont Graduate University, at the the Mind Science Foundation . He ha...

That is the title of an article that you can read by clicking here . The idea is that the listed price is very high by grants and scholarshi...

On the first day of each semester, I define a scarce good as one for which there is not enough to go around when it is given away for free. ...

So said an enthusiastic character in the 1934 movie Stand Up and Cheer! . We watched a video about the Great Depression in my macro classes....

After the last post, my students might wonder what "deadweight loss" is. It is the loss of social welfare caused by that dreaded d...

No, really, there is. My students will find this hard to believe after the groaners I tell in class. But Yoram Bauman, who has a Ph. D. in e...

This week in one of my classes we read a chapter titled ""Bye, Bye Bison" from the book The Economics of Public Issues . The ...

First, a note to my students. I added some links and informaton to the last post on religion and economics. This may not be as simple a ques...

The ancient Greeks sure thought you could. They had a god of commerce and a god of wealth. You can read about them at Britannica. Hermes (co...

In my macro classes this week, I talked about unemployment. Our policy goal is full-employment which means we want to have the lowest rate o...

We all know that the unemployment rate is high at 9.7%. The recession has been tough. But until the last couple of years, the long-term pict...

What can an economist say about love on this holiday? You'd be surprised. But first, here is a link to an interesting story in yesterday...

There was an article in the San Antonio Express-News last week called Recession enough to drive a liquor salesman to drink . Apparently peo...

In per capita GDP, that is. In my macro classes this week we started talking about GDP (gross domestic product or the value of all the goods...

That might sound sacrilegious, especially with Valentine's day coming up. But "Online dating is a $976 million annual industry in t...

It seems that previous estimates were wrong. That is the gist of a WSJ article titled What's a Degree Really Worth? An often cited figu...