Jonathan Blow (Braid) and Markus “Notch” Persson (Minecraft) conspired to bring some game freakonomics to Twitter.

Take two hypothetical games. They’re identical except for how they’re supported. Game A doesn’t cost any money to play, and there’s nothing to buy within it either, but it includes ads. Game B has no ads, but you have to buy it to ( Read more... )

I live in the Seattle area, but my family is all on the East Coast. When I was home for Christmas, my ten year old niece waxed eloquent about the things her school was in the midst of teaching her about “the Western Region of the United States”. Or, rather, that’s what she did once she’d struggled to recall whether Washington State is in the “west ( Read more... )

This study continues.

Courses & Topics:

1. Get out of debt and stay out of debt. Children need to be taught how to manage their money and what they should expect to pay for various things like food, lodging, transportation, clothing, and supplies for work or home. They need to understand how debt reduces their mobility and makes it harder to build a ( Read more... )

Easy Politico-Economic Questions

Your personal expenses are $100/day. You have an assistant who costs you $200/day. Rent and utilities are $1,000/month. (Assume all months are 30 days.) If your product takes a year and a half to develop, how much money do you deserve to make by selling it?

Hard Politico-Economic Questions

If you give free food ( Read more... )

“What’s that you’re reading?”

“It’s an article by a guy named Michael Thomsen about the growing trend of free-to-play video games. It takes an angle I haven’t seen before.”

“And that angle is…?”

“It’s short enough that it doesn’t need a summary, but the author’s main thread of reasoning goes like this:”

• Capitalism, like gamification, causes ( Read more... )

About a year and a half ago, I moaned about how I couldn’t easily see the flaws in the studies underlying a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece titled “Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics.”

That article’s author has since conducted more surveys on the topic, and he hasn’t been able to repeat his earlier ( Read more... )

It is historic fact that you can take a ridiculous and crumbling imperium, with serfs and horse-drawn carts, managed by a tyrannical squabbling aristocracy, and bootstrap it - in a single generation, while it’s being invaded by an evil and genocidal empire - into a technologically sophisticated global power that can win the Space Race. The people ( Read more... )

A University of Chicago alum talks about the lessons he learned playing Monopoly with less-restrictive house rules inspired by the free-market-loving, Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman (coincidentally a professor there at the time, and who signed a copy of the game).
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/weekinreview/20monopoly.html

An episode ( Read more... )

I stumbled onto the Jump$tart Coalition’s Student Financial Literacy Survey today. I tried to take it but could not find the questions in their raw form, so I had to imagine that the correct answers weren’t marked. Frustratingly, I had trouble understanding a few of the answers. #4 didn’t make sense until I read the detailed coverage in the Survey ( Read more... )

I want a ham sandwich, but I'm only able to spend $3 on it. I walk down the street looking for someone willing to sell a sandwich to me for that price.

Jill sells ham sandwiches but wants $5.

Ben was selling them for $3 but is out now.

Sue sells watches.

Mitch is homeless and doesn't even have a store.

Which of these people - possibly more than one - is ( Read more... )