Our story starts in 1926, the year the SAT was born. Designed to measure aptitude, it was supposed to let colleges assess applicants who did not have an elite background. Jumping ahead to now, our story ends with schools making…
GameStop describes itself as a chain of 5,000+ stores that sells video games and entertainment products at malls and online. Rather than a retailer, though, GameStop will probably be remembered as a financial bubble. During 2020 when the stock was…
At 114 per 100,000 people, Vermont had the highest per capita concentration of EV chargers (plugs, not necessarily charging stations) in the U.S. Below, Washington D.C. at 81 and California, 72, are a distant second and third: However, a…
At highly selective schools, 2019 college admission rates were pretty low: Harvard: 4.5% Yale: 5.91% Stanford: 4.3% in 2018 (They are no longer releasing the number.) But we are looking at a tiny proportion of the higher education population. At…
It’s almost like 1-click and the barcode had a child. 1-click diminished the friction of an online purchase. Described in The Everything Store, it let Jeff Bezos increase revenue by making the purchase process easier. And, once Bezos got his…
Which friction minimizing invention received a patent in 1999? Amazon 1-Click. Described by Amazon in their application for patent 5,960,411, the purchaser just hits a button that activates the movement of payment information from “the client system” to the”server system.”…
econlife®
Connecting economics with everyday life.
Located at the intersection of current events, history, and economics, econlife® slices away all of the layers that make economics boring and complex. We like economics and we would like for you to like it too.
