I just read a fascinating study on aging and social security that proposes basing the age when people start getting benefits not on their "nominal age" (years since birth) but on their "real age" (mortality risk or percentage of lifespan completed). People are living much longer and healthier lives than they were in 1935 when social security began ( Read more... )

I'm supposed to write one page on my views on the policy issue underlying the Fannie/Freddie bailout. I wanted to turn it in today, but no such luck. I've spent at least three hours reading up on it and probably the same amount of time actually writing the thing. I've got 3/4 of a page, after lots and lots and lots of trimming, but now I'm stuck. I ( Read more... )

Via Freakonomics: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore's law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that ( Read more... )

Between the cheap dollar, high oil prices, rising food costs and the subprime lending crisis, some fear a recession is on the horizon. Do your part for the U.S. economy this holiday season: give cash for Christmas. In his 1993 study The Deadweight Loss of Christmas economist Joel Waldfogel finds that items lose anywhere from one tenth to one third ( Read more... )

Now that Thanksgiving's over Christmas can begin. Never mind that the retail behemoth started it without my consent weeks ago. Christmas means lights and tinsel, peppermint and clementines, and my favorite economic indicator, even better than the Big Mac Index - The Twelve Days of Christmas ( Read more... )

Economics is taking over my life. Some people (chiefly economists) would think this is wonderful, as economics permeates the modern world and a thorough knowledge of it will make me a more successful operator therein. I think it's a pain in the ass. It's not mainly the hours of econ reading, studying and classtime that bothers me but the sneaky and ( Read more... )

The EU needs work. I'm not talking about reformed decision-making policies, a clearer chain of command and accountability, more uniform external policies or any of those other things in the now-defunct constitution. I'm talking about failure to achieve even its most basic goal, the unrestricted movement of product throughout Europe. But Meredith, ( Read more... )

"By comparing wages in risky and less risky occupations, controlling for education, experience, and other determinants of wages, economists can get some sense about what value people put on their own lives. Studies using this approach conclude that the value of a human life is about $10 million."
--- N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Microeconomics