Called the Starbucks effect, current and future housing prices tend to rise when a Starbucks moves into the neighborhood.…
How Stock Markets Create Peace
Looking at voting preferences, researchers uncovered a surprising change in attitudes about Israeli/Palestinian conflict resolution from new investors.…
Why Night Owls and Early Birds Affect the GDP
Determined genetically, our sleep preferences as night owls, morning larks or neither could affect our productivity at work.…
Where Life Is Better
When approximately 43,000 people in 38 countries look back to 1967, some say life is better but others do not. The Pew Research Center gathered their answers last spring. The most positive response ca…
Two Amazon Stories (and More)
Sweden had unusually low Amazon numbers in the 2017 PwC global retail survey. In Sweden just 13% of all product searches start with Amazon. For the U.S. that number is 45%. Wondering about the differe…
The Messages That Satellite Images Send
By showing illuminated areas of the world, nighttime satellite images can tell economic stories that relate to growth and contraction.…
Connecting a Good Economy to Bad Health
It makes sense to assume that when the economy is better, we feel better, We should have less illness and live longer. Correspondingly, in a sick economy, we too feel sicker. Not necessarily. A Recess…
All You Never Knew About Sleep and Work
In Japan, you could be admired for taking a daytime snooze at work. Called inemuri, “sleeping while present,” lets you attend a meeting while displaying your diligence through your exhaust…
Can a Hurricane Help an Economy?
Before, during and after a natural disaster like Harvey, we have hurricane economics affecting gasoline markets and the GDP.…
A New Way To Take Our Economic Pulse
Economists become somewhat similar to weather men and women when their GDP monitor is a nowcast that forecasts the present.…