Wholly Bagels in Wellington has this great student special which I often take advantage of: in the last hour before closing they charge 30% less to students. Much as I love the special, I can’t figure out why they run it that way. I can think of three reasons they might price discriminate in this […]
Eric Crampton points to an example of offsetting behaviour in driving reported by Popular Mechanics: …modifying roads and intersections so drivers are less comfortable—by making driving, in some ways, more dangerous—forces people to slow down and pay attention, producing a change in behavior that, paradoxically, results in more safety. This is also true for pedestrians, […]
Matt asks me to elaborate on an email exchange we had about the incentives that face economists. In particular, how could we explain smart macroeconomists parroting the value-laden, overtly political rhetoric of Krugman or Mankiw during the current crisis. Sure, Mankiw and Krugman have a stellar publication record and can afford to rest on their […]
I just watched the Jim Cramer vs Jon Stewart showdown on The Daily Show and I’m just not as impressed as some others. Stewart’s real problem with Cramer seems to be that he should have known that the meltdown was coming and told his viewers. By advising them to buy stock that he should have […]
Ezra Klein reports that A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies were published. Of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that implied a positive outcome. … To a doctor reading the published literature, 94% of the trials conducted were […]
There’s an interesting post at the NYT’s economics blog about the environmental cost of living in a city: In almost every metropolitan area, we found the central city residents emitted less carbon than the suburban counterparts. … cars represent … one-third of the gap in carbon emissions between New Yorkers and their suburbanites. The gap […]