Economics
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Wednesday, August 20th, 2008Sports are fun, and awash in data. It shouldn’t be surprising then that economists love to study them. For example, the best-seller Freakonomics discussed cheating in sumo wrestling and academics recently examined point shaving in professional basketball. Blogs such as Sabernomics and The Sports Economist are devoted to the application of economics to sports. While […]
The Carbon Cutting Quandry
Monday, August 18th, 2008Jim Manzi at Cato makes some great insights into the global warming debate in this post (HT econlog). I particularly enjoyed his criticism on using a zero-discount rate to calculate the present value of the costs of global warming. He notes that 50% of the world’s 2008 GDP is equal to .1% of the world’s […]
Why do CEOs Make so Much Money?
Thursday, August 14th, 2008Fortune 500 CEOs are constantly criticized for their excessive salaries. Over the last few decades their wages have been rapidly rising while the median wages have been stagnating. See the graph that illustrates that: “In 1965, U.S. CEOs in major companies earned 24 times more than an average worker…Since then, however, CEO pay has exploded […]
Baggage Economics
Sunday, July 6th, 2008I just got back from a trip to Florida. On the trip back to Kansas, I flew on American Airlines which has recently started charging passengers to check luggage. It costs 15 dollars for the 1st bag and 25 dollars for the second bag. I’m normally in favor of such fees. Handling luggage costs the […]
Tornadoes and Chance
Thursday, June 12th, 2008I got the book Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the mail the other day. I happened to pick it up this evening as the Tornado sirens blared in Manhattan, KS. Taleb argues that often humans attribute skill to outcomes that are really the result of chance. Successful people may be playing games […]
Agricultural Inconsistencies: Senegal
Saturday, May 24th, 2008It seems like just the other day that Bono was vilifying developed countries for flooding the world markets with cheap food. Consider this excerpt from a news article leading up to the 2006 G8 summit: In Senegal, a resilient showcase of democracy in a continent otherwise pervaded by corrupt dictatorships and brutal wars, producers of […]
Guns
Saturday, May 17th, 2008In the wake of recent school shootings, a group on campus has been petitioning the university to allow students to conceal and carry hand guns on campus. I have never owned a gun but have shot guns with a number of friends. A fellow economics major at Idaho took me out one afternoon to shoot […]
It’s Been Awhile
Saturday, May 17th, 2008The end of the semester is always busy and I temporarily lost the urge to write. Hopefully, a few readers out there have weathered the lull and will keep checking back for content. While I’ve been a complacent writer, I haven’t been a complacent thinker. Now that finals are over, I’m looking forward to exploring a […]
Rational Gus Guzzling
Saturday, April 26th, 2008It infuriates me when Congress calls on the CEO’s of oil companies to justify their profits. Economists routinely study gasoline prices and find no evidence of price manipulation. Washington State recently commissioned a report on gas prices (HT Knowledge Problem: The report, written by University of Washington economist and petroleum expert Keith Leffler, didn’t find […]
Interesting Links
Monday, April 21st, 2008Why you should read Wikipedia articles with a grain of salt. The open source encyclopedia is controlled by a small group of editors. Protectionism in Ping-Pong (HT Ben Casnocha). My chances of representing the U.S. in the 2012 summer games increased dramatically.
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