How To Cope With (Water) Stress

Being water stressed means you are unusually vulnerable to a water shortage. Sort of like a household where one emergency can push it over the edge because it spends all it earns, so too with most water stressed nations. That one drought…

One Reason That Quitting is Good

I have read that Fed Chair Janet Yellen is particularly interested in JOLTS. Representing Job Openings and Labor market Turnover Survey, JOLTS data tell an interesting story. You can see how the trend in job openings parallels the Great Recession…

Why Would the Nigerian GDP Double Overnight?

We might have to say BRINC rather than BRICS. As a developing nation with the highest GDP in Africa, South Africa has been the “S” in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China). Now though, Nigeria has raced ahead. During one weekend…

Does It Matter That Men Boast?

Our Monday Gender Issue: Teaching at a girls’ school, I continually run into the problem of modesty. My women know the answers and yet go to the board saying they might not be right. Now, an academic study from researchers…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Feminism

Our Monday Gender Issue: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian writer, former MacArthur genius, National Book Critics Circle Award winner, author of the book, Half of a Yellow Sun on which a new movie is based, and the person who has given so many…

The One Big Reason We Can’t Really Cut the Federal Deficit

It is tough to be a deficit hawk.   Rather than our typical spike in wartime spending, we have a peacetime deficit. (Please note that the federal deficit is just how much spending exceeds revenue during one year.):   Spending for……

More Expensive Ice Cream?

Milk prices are going up. And yet, in the US, we are drinking less milk. According to Corey Geiger, managing editor of Hoard’s Dairyman magazine, one reason is oil. Countries in the Middle East with massive oil reserves have to import 90%…

Tall and Short Populations

Princeton economist Angus Deaton estimates that it will take 500 years for Indian women to reach the height of English women. In The Great Escape, Dr. Deaton explains that a population could be short because of nutrition or disease. When babies…

The Plight of the Night Owl

I must start with my bias. I am a night owl. So too were Winston Churchill and Charles Darwin, James Joyce and Glenn Gould. In one interview, Ann Beattie said, “I really think people’s bodies are on different clocks. I…

What Can We Learn From Downton Abbey Economics?

Downton Abbey can tell us a lot about the British economy…but not everything. We know the aristocracy is struggling. Many of the 700 families who had controlled 80% of all acreage during the 1870s faced financial collapse 50 years later.…