Whether it’s the paper in your copier machine or the goods and services in a market economy, flows and jams can be rather similar.…
Weekly Roundup: From Coffee Hype to Cell Phone Insight
Our weekly roundup includes why coffee leads to creativity, how Uber impacts more than we realize and where, even with grades, inflation changes behavior.…
Weekly Roundup: From Fed Humor to the Wisdom of Warren Buffett
Our Posts Roundup Sunday 3.01.15 Handy notes from Warren Buffett…more Monday 3.02.15 The basics of Greek tax evasion…more Tuesday 3.03.15 Insight about airline queues…more Wednesday …
Weekly Roundup: From Marijuana to the Metric System
Our everyday economics include globalization, opportunity cost, inflation, employment, monetary policy, negative externalities, recession, business cycle.…
The Reason That Recession Dates Matter
Asked to define a recession, you can give the mechanical answer. It is 2 or more adjacent quarters of a real GDP decline. So, if Q1 GDP grows by 3%, Q2 by 2% and then Q3 by 1%, is that a recession? (I…
One Reason to Quit A Job
Have you ever gone through a series of phone messages that finally take you to the department you need? Then, after 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15, no one picks up and you start to wonder if you should han…
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 …
Humor in Fed Transcripts
Below, just a reminder of one piece of the Great Recession before looking at the Fed transcripts. Lehman Brothers is the orange line. With a typical 5-year lag, the transcripts of the 2008 Fede…
Why Do Young Adults Live With Their Parents?
In Slovakia, Bulgaria, Greece, Malta and Italy, young people, age 25-34, live with their parents. But not in Denmark, Finland Sweden, and Norway. Below you can see the country stats: The Reasons Pew R…
Which College Grads Have Unemployment Problems?
With a 6.7% unemployment rate and 74,000 jobs created for December, are you okay if you have a bachelor’s degree? I discovered some answers in a new paper from the NY Fed. Unemployment and under…