Limiting potential economic growth, the myth of innate talent in disciplines like philosophy diminishes the pool of female and Afro-American human capital.
Microeconomics
The Reason It Can Be Tough to Cross the Street
Called the American Dream, the income mobility that lifts a child beyond a parent’s poverty can depend on a community’s characteristics.
Can Economists See the Hot Hand?
With implications that extend beyond sports, believers in classical economics and in behavioral economics are debating whether players can have streaks.
How Chocolate Chip Cookies Explain Why We Save Less
Explained by behavioral economics, we save relatively little for retirement because of intertemporal selfishness and seeing our future selves as strangers.
A Mystery: Trying to Find the Middle Class
While everyone refers to the middle class and most of us say we are in the middle class, few know the characteristics of the group to which they refer.
How Men Act When They Outnumber Women
How gender ratios in the U.S. and China affect men’s financial behavior can be explained with supply and demand and behavioral economics from Gary Becker.
Understanding a New Tax Issue
With the House requiring dynamic scoring of tax legislation from the CBO, the bigger tax debate resurfaces on how much redistribution and spending.
What a Blind Taste Test Showed About Beer
Behavioral economic ideas show that product differentiation and consumer preference are more from branding than the taste of colas or beers.
Alcohol, Marijuana or Tobacco: Which is Most Harmful?
When government miscalculates the negative externalities of substances like marijuana and alcohol, they waste land, labor, capital, time and money.
Why the Metric Switch is so Tough
The expense and complexities of switching to the metric system have prevented the change, and have affected how standard weights and measures help globalization.