“There is an opinion that A quality guys will find B quality women, B quality guys will find C quality women, and C quality men will find D quality women…The people left are A quality women and D quality men.” Huang Yuanyuan, commenting on marriage in China…
Economic Ideas
Much more than money, economics is about tradeoffs. Thinking economically involves cost and benefit, marginal analysis and seeing that there is no free lunch. Econlife tries to convey these economic ideas, which serve as the foundation of economics and help people make decisions personally, professionally and as voters.
Which College Grads Have Unemployment Problems?
With a 6.7% unemployment rate and 74,000 jobs created for December, are you okay if you have a bachelor’s degree? I discovered some answers in a new paper from the NY Fed. Unemployment and underemployment for recent college graduates have been…
Happy Birthday to a Great Father (of our economy)
When you sing happy birthday to Alexander Hamilton today, please just think of this upward sloping (logarithmic) economic growth line: Today, 257–or maybe 259–years ago (no one is positive) on the Caribbean island of Nevis, Alexander Hamilton was born. Only…
Are You Buying Less Soup?
Canned food used to be aspirational. The ads in 1918 said that easy-to-use canned foods gave Mom more time to play with the kids. Canned Foods were healthy. They were versatile. You can see where we are going. A perfect…
An Unexpected Connection Between Bluefin Tuna and CO2
On the first Saturday in 2013, in Japan, at the Tsukiji auction, a 489 pound bluefin tuna was sold for $1.76 million. As a source of information, what does $1.76 million say to you? One journalist said it could mean:…
Do “Millionaires’ Taxes” Work?
I’ve been wondering about the impact of France’s “millionaires tax.” At first a 75% tax on individual incomes above €1 million ($1.37 million), the proposal had to be tweaked when France’s Constitutional Council said it was unfair. Returning to the…
The Invention That Started to Close the Gender Gap
Worrying that labor saving devices would replace her, Downton Abbey’s cook, Mrs. Patmore, was not pleased with the new electric mixer that arrived in her kitchen in 1922. By contrast, if Edith does move out of Downton Abbey into more…
One Reason That Geography Matters
Have you ever looked closely at Japan and the United Kingdom? Described by geographer Jared Diamond in a fascinating podcast, they look remarkably similar. Today Japan and the British Isles are modern industrial societies. Both are north/south archipelagos located in…
Do You Live in a Popular State?
Listening to Bloomberg news the other morning, I heard that Atlas Van Lines just came out with their annual migration study. The radio report said New Jersey had the most departures while Oregon had the arrivals. (No, people from NJ…
Income Inequality Questions
Seeing economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty’s favorite graph of the year at Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog, I thought of Benoit Mandelbrot. The father of fractal geometry, Dr. Mandelbrot told us that the closer you look, the more you see. From a…