Our Monday gender issue focus Married or single, weekends and weekdays, men have more leisure time than women. Imagine a typical weekend. Yes, mom might spend a bit less time watching the kids and dad does do more housework. However, when it…
An Amazing Story From a Graph
Sometimes one graph can tell a whole story: A 4-minute animation can also convey a much bigger story. Looking at the same time period as our graph, Hans Rosling connects national income and health. National income closely relates to GDP since people receive…
What Signals Does a College Degree Really Send?
Some economists have an unexpected reason for the college earnings premium. First, the premium… In 2011, a diploma from a 4-year college meant you would earn 83% more than your high school classmate who did not attend college. Looked at slightly differently (below), the…
When Does it Cost Too Much to Save a Human Life?
Is $1 a day for someone else’s pill too much to pay with your tax dollars? $10? $100? $1,000? Kaiser Health News recently reported that a new treatment for hepatitis C with a 90% success rate will cost $1,000 a pill. Lasting 12 weeks, the treatment…
Gender Issues: Literate Women
For millennia, men have tried to stop women from learning to read. Before we look back, I wanted to share these World Bank maps that let us see the status of female literacy, 2009-2013 Female Literacy in Developing Nations: Worldwide ratios of female…
The Monetary Policy Mistakes of a Babysitting Co-op
There once was a French economist whose name was Say. Proclaiming that “Supply Creates Its Own Demand,” Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) entered economic history with Say’s Law. All he meant was that workers are also consumers. The money you receive for producing a good or a service…
Energy Efficiency Surprises
Our Wednesday Environmental Issue: Trying to optimize energy efficiency, we might have unexpected results. First, where we live… Referring to an environmentally friendly community where he once lived, New Yorker writer David Owen described his 750 square foot dwelling. 77% of the households in his community did…
The Rotten Kid Theorem and Other Gary Becker Ideas
Gary Becker image courtesy of University of Chicago. All too often, if you say you are looking at the economics of the family, people assume you are talking about money. Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, who died this week (1930-2014), changed…
How To Divide the Rent, a Cake and a Country
Assume for a moment that you have just rented a 4th floor walk-up apartment for $3000 with 2 friends. One bedroom is mid-sized and near a fire escape, the second is rather large and has a view of a magnificent…
Why Do We Need More King Peggys?
Our Monday Gender Issue: Having a woman as the king of an African fishing village can make a big difference. During 2008, a secretary who works at Ghana’s Washington DC embassy got a middle of the night call at her…