New marriage markets involve couples with consumption complementarities and online dating that the work of Nobel Economics Laureate Al Roth is facilitating.…
Tradeoffs and Marriage: Like a Horse and Carriage
As the pill, education and employment opportunities changed the value of women as wives, the tradeoffs that relate to being married have also changed.…
Using Prediction Markets to Catch Match-Fixing at Wimbledon
When supply and demand in tennis match prediction markets created illogical prices, researchers said that 3 matches at Wimbledon might have been fixed.…
Surprising Hand-To-Mouth Households
Close to one third of all households (38 million) in the US live hand-to-mouth. Like me, perhaps you have always assumed that a hand-to-mouth (HtM) household is low income. Spending all disposable inc…
A New Reason to Marry
Traditionally, marriage has been about specialization and “production complementarities.” With the husband in the labor force and the wife at home, their division of labor resembled a smal…
Economic Humor: Economic Valentines
I discovered these wonderful economic Valentines at Freakonomics.com. They were created by Elisabeth Fosslien. This #FedValentine is from econlife: Roses are nice but mon…
Monkeys, Economics and Happiness
Behavioral economists might be able to explain our response to income inequality. In a paper on money and happiness, economist Richard Easterlin initially asks the reader how she feels if her income r…
Children and Wealth
More wealth seems to mean fewer children. Look at a graph of fertility in the U.S from 1800-1990. The birth line plunges. Consider India, China, South Korea, Singapore. As per capita GDP rises, births…
Which College Majors Earn More?
Although the unemployment rate is 9.2% for the entire labor force, it is 4.4% for college grads (and 10% for high school graduates, no college). But which college graduates earn more? It depends on yo…
Money and Happiness
It is possible, after all, that money can make us happy. A recent Brookings paper from 3 University of Pennsylvania researchers concluded that people experience greater “subjective well-being…