Elaine Schwartz
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Elaine Schwartz has spent her career sharing the interesting side of economics. At the Kent Place School in Summit New Jersey, she was honored with an Endowed Chair in Economics. Just published, her newest book, Degree in a Book: Economics (Arcturus 2023), gives readers a lighthearted look at what definitely is not “the dismal science.” She has also written and updated Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins 1995) and Economics: Our American Economy (Addison Wesley 1994). In addition, Elaine has articles in the Encyclopedia of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press) and was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom.” Beyond the classroom, she has presented Econ 101 ½ talks and led workshops for the Foundation for Teaching Economics, the National Council on Economic Education and for the Concord Coalition. Online for more than a decade. econlife has had one million+ visits.

One Reason That $1.1 Trillion is Not So Much

The Congress just agreed on $1.1 trillion in federal spending. But let’s look a bit more closely… Each year, I give my class a federal budget graph and ask them to identify the relative size of 17 main spending categories.…

One Way That the “Poor Beat the Rich”

In just 8 minutes, Hans Rosling shows us that, with child mortality rates, the developing world is making more progress than we might expect. With his captivating “gapminder” approach, he creates a race between Sweden in 1900 and Bangladesh in…

The Trade-Offs of Prolonging Life

From guest blogger, Mariana Do Carmo, student at Yale University. What if prolonging life results in prolonging not only your suffering but also that of others? The recent development of universal health care in the United States will make it…

The Revolution That Grandma Started

The NYC Miss Subways competition was about a lot more than pretty “girls” (as they were called). To become Miss Subways for a month, applicants had to submit a picture to the John Robert Powers Agency. From perhaps 1000 applicants,…

Debating Paid Sick Leave Laws

I wonder if we could say that Mayor de Blasio’s sick leave proposal dates back to 1895.  119 years ago, concerned with the harm that a “biscuit, bread, cake bakery or confectionery establishment” could inflict on its employees, New York…

Does Your Barista Do a Repeatable Routine?

Starbucks calls it “transactions per hour” but from our perspective, it’s waiting in line. Researchers say that it takes only 3 minutes in a queue for us to become impatient. Hoping to show their shorter line time and higher sales,…

One Reason That We Have Nutella

Inside a jar of Nutella you might have a little bit of the Ivory Coast, Turkey, Malaysia, the EU and the US. Processed in the EU, Turkey, Russia, Australia, North or South America, the cocoa and hazelnut spread is then…

Connecting Abigail Adams to Janet Yellen

Reading about “touch generations” in Sam Arbesman’s Wired Magazine blog, I realized that Abigail Adams and Janet Yellen were connected. Different generations touch when one’s birth year coincides with someone else’s death. Born in 1744, Abigail Adams died in 1818, the year that Karl Marx was…

The Green Blog: Why Japan Might Face a Demographic Crisis

By Madeleine Vance, guest blogger and student at Kent Place School. As of late, younger Japanese citizens are choosing to live the single life rather than get married. But why? Seven years ago, Japan’s population climaxed at 128 million, but…

In West Virginia, Is Price Gouging a Problem or a Solution?

West Virginia’s Attorney General says it’s illegal and “just plain wrong” to inflate the price of water in times of emergency. In addition, he suggests that people keep an eye on what vendors charge for items like hand sanitizer and…