I tell my classes that to have a vibrant economy, people generally need to have the freedom to choose who to buy from and who to sell to. Taxes, subsidies, price controls, and other things of that nature ultimately discourage economic activity because at some point they each take away [...]
From a new book by Lynne Kiesling and Andrew Kleit entitled Electricity Restructuring: The Texas
Story.
In the early 1990s, the U.S. electricity industry was plagued by cost overruns and stagnant productivity. Many states turned to deregulation to promote innovation and cut costs, a strategy that had worked for the telecommunications, trucking, natural [...]
Joe Walljasper provides a voice of reason in the Big XII bowl selection process:
The Tigers — who are better than the Cyclones according to arcane measures such as records and head-to-head results — play the better opponent (Navy rather than Minnesota) and get better exposure (ESPN rather than The NFL Network) in [...]
Remember that the EPA has designated the gas that makes the beer all bubbly as a pollutant. Never mind the CO2 created during the brewing process. That's why brewers have these things installed on their fermentation tanks.
How long before the alcohol abstinence folks jump on this little fact?
[...]From the Wall Street Journal:
Be honest: What would you actually do if you didn't have the ludicrous college-bowl system to complain about?
Brian Burwell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch takes on the BCS does just that.
The nervous defenders of the Bowl Championship Series' bogus "national championship" think they have gotten [...]
We've got a doggie day care near my house here in the nort' lands, so this probably comes as no surprise to all y'all outside the sticks.
"She has always had an entrepreneurial spirit about her," says Ms. Nichols's husband, Mike Schlegel, who met her when they were both working in the' [...]
A buddy fight is just what the name implies: a fight between friends. Most buddy fights start out with a little pushing, a little shoving. It may come to blows, but if you know the type of fight I'm talking about, none of the punches seem to be thrown with' [...]
Southern Minnesota, and the entire upper midwest for that matter, is under one sort of winter weather advisory or another. We locally are under a blizzard warning for today and tonight. The current forecast calls for nearly a foot of snow, light and fluffy snow, with winds whupping up to [...]
Wikipedia was started by Jimbo Wales who was influenced by the writings of economist FA Hayek, specifically his paper "The Use of Knowledge in Society." Hayek noted that knowledge in a society is not held by a few chosen ones, but is instead dispersed throughout society. To solve [...]
My latest at The Sports Economist is up. In it I look at the Big XII's bowl selection process.
By the way, two years ago the Orange Bowl said it picked KU over MU even though Mizzou had beaten the Beakers head to head and even though Mizzou was ranked [...]
A scientist named Jim Fallon in researching traits of psychopathic killers found out that he himself has some of the traits.
Jim Fallon recently made a disquieting discovery: A member of his family has some of the biological traits of a psychopathic killer.
"These results will cause some problems at the next" [...]
From the Detroit Free Press:
You might not know the name Anthony Daniels, and you very likely have no clue what he looks like in real life -- but you certainly know his voice. The gold-plated robot of the "Star Wars" saga is taking on a new role as the [...]
Rather than let the market work its magic, Congress feels that it needs to craft legislation that supposedly will help increase the supply of primary care doctors.
A handful of Democratic senators are pushing to change pending health-care legislation so that it would help increase the country's stock of primary-care doctors, heeding' [...]
From the WSJ:
Canada's top court has ruled in favor of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Canadian unit regarding the closure of a unionized store in Quebec four years ago.
The Supreme Court of Canada, which heard the case in January, voted 6-3 for Wal-Mart Canada.
The store, located in the [...]
Professor Pigou: he isn't just for understanding (Pigovian) taxes and subsidies anymore.
The winner's name, however, turns out to be much less familiar: Arthur Cecil Pigou (pronounced "Arthur See-sil Pig-oo"). Stepping from the wings, a strapping Englishman with fair, wavy hair and a luxuriant moustache, smiles awkwardly and accepts his prize. A contemporary' [...]
From the Des Moines Register on Dec. 1, 2009:
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to rule this week whether more ethanol can go into the gasoline used for everything from automobiles to boats and snowblowers. But that doesn't mean higher-proof gasoline is headed for service stations any time soon.' [...]
From the New York Times:
The decline of the American dollar has led to a trade imbalance north of the border, on the rinks of the National Hockey League.
Over the past two decades, the Canadian teams in the N.H.L. were considered poor cousins of their colleagues in the United [...]
NBER paper by Bound, Lovenheim, and Turner (2009).
Partly as a consequence of the substantial increase in the college wage premium since 1980, a much higher fraction of high school graduates enter college today than they did a quarter century ago. However, the rise in the fraction of high school graduates attending college [...]
Are there enough white kids playing tailback in football?
USC vs. 'Bama: "The game that changed Alabama."
Who needs signals when you can communicate with your teammates in a language few other players understand? Haitian kids become big-time players in college football.
The American Football Coaches' Association has released its 2009 All American Team. The wide receivers on that team are Notre Dame's Golden Tate and the University of Cincinnati's Mardy Gilyard. Golden Tate has had a fine season, but how can the AFCA vote either one of these two players [...]
Craig Newmark links to this article about competition for SAS.
But that good life is under threat today as never before. SAS’s specialty, a lucrative niche called business intelligence software, is becoming mainstream. Free, open-source alternatives to some of the company’s products are increasingly popular. On the other end of the spectrum, the [...]
Williams-Sonoma, on the other hand, managed to lose my business. After suffering a catastropic coffeemaker failure last night, I had tasked the Insta-Daughter to buy a new one. She was snubbed by the salespeople, who skipped her to wait on someone older who was behind her in line. So she went to [...]
Yesterday I tweeted about how much I like the Missouri defensive linemen and linebackers. In the past two weeks, Mizzou has faced two of the best runners in the Big XII, both 1,000 yard rushers. Yesterday Mizzou held Iowa State's Alexander Robinson to 56 yards on 14 carries, a' [...]
USA Today is reporting that graduation levels are up in college athletics.
Nearly four of every five athletes — 79% — who entered Division I colleges and universities from 1999 to 2002 got their degrees within six years, according to an NCAA study released Wednesday. That's up a percentage point from a year' [...]
You've probably noticed that I've been writing more and more on college athletics in general and college football in particular. There's an app a reason for that. I have been reading up on the professional economic literature on college sports for a big project that I am working on. Whenever' [...]
Any construction contractor who would build a house by putting up the walls and ceilings before a solid foundation is constructed is asking for trouble.
Yet every semester I run across at least one student who wants to take classes concurrently although one is a prerequisite before the other. Prerequisites [...]
The consensus: examining a decision based solely on the outcome of the decision is not the best way to judge.
[...]The crisis has even reached into luxury suites, many of which have remained dark for months – either strapped buyers walked away from their deposits or they simply decided to cut their losses and save on finger food and drinks. But while the suites are dark, not all are unoccupied. [...]
The Pontiac Silverdome, built in 1975 at a cost of $56 million (over $200 million in today's dollars), was sold at auction yesterday for $583,000. Folks, houses in your neighborhoods sell for more than that!
The
city of Pontiac played host to the Detroit Lions in the Silverdome for
just shy of' [...]
Do you get a little testy when your team doesn't perform as well as you should? You are not alone:
Family violence is a pervasive and costly problem, yet there is no consensus on how to interpret the phenomenon of violence by one family member against another. Some analysts assume that violence' [...]
This is a common claim made by teams, but I'm skeptical.
According to economic theory, the value of any given player/coach/trainer on a profit-maximizing team is what that person contributes at the margin to the team and what fans are willing to pay for that marginal contribution. If, for example, Adrian Peterson contributes 1.5 wins [...]
This lasagna recipe went over well in our house last night. The kids even ate the mushrooms. It's based on this classic lasagna recipe from the always excellent Allrecipes.com and submitted by Allrecipes user Barb R. I changed the ingredients a little bit based upon my personal (and family's) [...]
How did former Kansas State Coach Ron Prince end up with a double-secret, super-stealthy $3.2 million buyout? The Shadow knows, but the KC Star examines the issue.
Steven Wieberg at USA Today describes the latest findings of an NCAA survey on athlete gambling.
More from USA Today: the good folks [...]
There's a bit of a flap in my state university system, the Minnesota State College and University system (MnSCU - pronounced "Min-skew"), over a news piece on sabbaticals in the system. The gist of the piece is that sabbaticals are paid vacations and faculty do little more than sit' [...]
Like the rest of the labor force, times have been awfully rough for teens. Almost 28% of the teen labor force is unemployed which puts a serious dent in not only their current prospects but their long term prospects. Ironman discusses recent statistics on this part of the labor [...]
In business, entrepreneurs look for opportunities. Whether the opportunities are in the form of creating new products, serving new customers, or cutting costs, entrepreneurs exploit them at the cost of the competition. But in the end the entrepreneur's customers and the entrepreneur himself gain. This is capitalism.
So it is in' [...]Prof. Whitehead notes a post that says that the claim that meat production generates 51% of greenhouse gas emissions is based on "addled" conclusions.
By the way, why does nobody mention beer (or any adult beverage, for that matter) along with greenhouse gasses? There's a reason they call those little' [...]
With all due respect to the Bears, the Mizzou loss to Baylor almost defies explanation. A 14-point underdog that had scored 34 points in 4 previous Big XII games, all loses, Baylor had only won one previous Big XII road game in the history of the league. After the stunning [...]
Fallacy of composition: whatever is true for the individual is also true for the whole. Example: if I stand at a football game, I get a better view if I'm the only one who stands up. If everyone stands up*, my view is probably no better or, quite possibly, worse. ' [...]
Mark Cuban was kept out of the running for the buying of the Chicago Cubs, but he's still interested in buying an MLB team. From the LA Times.
Mark Cuban, the high-profile owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, said
Monday he would consider adding the Dodgers to his portfolio.
As
the unusually public [...]
How does this happen?
Mizzou’s women’s soccer team became the first regular-season champion in the Big 12 Conference to be excluded from the NCAA Division I tournament.Mizzou failed to secure one of the 34 at-large bids in the 64-team field.
The Tigers (13-6-3, 7-1-2) won the regular-season title but missed out on the conference’s automatic [...]
Baylor beat Mizzou this weekend in a 40-32 punch in the teeth and kick in the mouth. Not only had the Bears only scored 34 points in their previous 4 Big XII games without star QB Robert Griffin, they had only won one other Big XII road game EVER. That [...]
Link here. Money Quote.
Most investing is done by active managers who don't believe markets are efficient. For example, despite my taunts of the last 45 years about the poor performance of active managers, about 80% of mutual fund wealth is actively managed. Hedge funds, private equity, and other alternative asset classes, which have' [...]
From David Meltzer and Zhuo Chen (HT Greg Mankiw):
Growing consumption of increasingly less expensive food, and especially “fast food”, has been cited as a potential cause of increasing rate of obesity in the United States over the past several decades. Because the real minimum wage in the United States has declined [...]
Harvard has one of the most reputable Economics departments in the nation and the world, so Dick Armey's comment about Harvard (and Larry Summers) is just plain ludicrous. Greg Mankiw:
Okay, this has got to be one of the goofiest comments from a major political figure in recent weeks:
"I
don’t consider'" [...]
Abraham Lincoln (August 24, 1855):
When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."
Full quote here (2nd gray block, 4th quote). Washington University, 2009.
The" [...]
Growing up in the potential firing line between the US and the USSR, the members of the metal band the Scorpions had special reason to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Here is a video of their classic ballad Winds of Change which is about this historical event.
Here is [...]
"You men will come to no Christian end!" Rutgers vs. Princeton 140 years ago on Nov. 6th 1869, Allen Barra lays out a nice story on the first college football game ever played.
Note how the rules of the game were set.
Here's something I didn't know. Mr. Magoo, in a [...]
Link here. The final paragraph:
Sportz is everywhere. There's so much of it that it's contributed to the inflation of all the numbers and values in the sports industry, and as a result we now have a Sports Bubble. It's up to each of us to stand up to the TV or the [...]
Charles Gasparino has an interesting column in the WSJ in which he details the bailout mania that seems to have gripped the Feds over the past 30 years. He argues that repeated past actions by the Feds since the 1980's have shown that the next time that large financial [...]
In game theory, a pure strategy is where a player does not randomize between options. For many game situations, this is not an optimal way to play the game. Would a prison guard want to always to do his rounds in exactly the same fashion time after time after time? [...]
It's well known in economics that when price ceilings are in effect, leading to shortages, other rationing systems come into place. Queues are one example. I ask my students if price ceilings help direct a good to people who can't afford it. My answer is no, not necessarily. I ask' [...]
Tyler Cowen:
I was reading an NYT account of its finances and came across the following:
More radical moves, like dropping the sports section, have been rejected because they would undermine the quality of The Times or would not save much money, Keller said.
"Or"? Which is it? It would not undermine the quality of [...]
Consider the following data:
Six year graduation rates in percentage terms over the past 12 years: 12, 15, 22, 12, 16, 18, 15, 14, 16, 18, 16, and 13.
Where is this from? A Bob Huggins coached team? The University of Kansas' football team, the Fighting Manginos? Some other rogue athletic' [...]
Don Boudreaux on what ails public education in the US:
Suppose that newspapers were run by government and funded by taxpayers, and that each American was assigned to read only the newspaper published in his or her local area. Clearly, the resulting quality of journalism would be atrocious.
Would anyone seriously suggest that this [...]
OK, so the 9 jobs were given because, well, some number had to be entered into a government web form. Story here. Via Greg Mankiw.
My question is this: what is the value of resources wasted in answering questionnaires to be used for propaganda purposes?
[...]Congratulations to the Yankees and their fans for the Yankees' victory over the Philly Phil's in the 2009 World Series. Now that that's over, I predict we'll hear more calls for salary restrictions in the name of competitive balance now that the big, bad Yanks have returned to the throne. [...]
From the Orlando Sentinel:
The economic model for major college
athletics is collapsing like an overmatched offensive line under a
relentless blitz. That's the unmistakable message from a recent survey
of university presidents.
The survey for the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics found
that less than a quarter of 95 presidents at universities with the
largest' [...]
that is to places with the most economic freedom and more limited government.
More important, the key group leaving New York and other so-called "youth-magnets" comprises the middle class, particularly families, critical to any long-term urban revival. This year's Census shows that the number of single households in New York has reached record' [...]
President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.
The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to' [...]
People respond to incentives. When a product is profitable, that gives people an incentive to develop substitutes. These developments do not magically come about. They are the result of hard work, luck, and opportunity, and sometimes it takes awhile. From the Wall Street Journal:
From the time of the California [...]
The University of North Texas is going to build a new 30,000 seat stadium with luxury suites (of course). It's scheduled to open in 2011.
"If you look at America's great universities, you'll see that they all have the three A's in common: great academics, great arts and great athletics," said UNT [...]
It is hypothesized that college athletics bring interest from potential students. Some of the research I have been reviewing on sabbatical provides empirical support to this. If true, we should find a price effect (second paper). Donald Alexander and William Kern in the International Journal of Sports Finance.
This [...]
Ever wonder what happens under the pile during football games? This video ain't got nuthin'.
"It just depends on what team you’re playing, but some guys are dirty out there," Weatherspoon said of the action that unfolds under the pile. "I won’t say any names, but some guys, when you’re just standing around the" [...]
From Yahoo! News:
A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.
The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not [...]
From Capital Ideas comes this discussion of Emily Oster's research with Robert Jensen on the status of women in India. (HT JC Bradbury):
Jensen and Oster found large effects of cable on both of these variables. Women who live in villages that introduce cable see large declines in both the number of' [...]
King:
Health insurance is a basic human right ... which is why Congress proposes to leave 18 million people still uninsured in the year 2019 (source). I’m getting more and more confused by our politicians. A lot of them have offered beautiful speeches about how it is both a tragedy and [...]From the New York Times:
Just as Le Corbusier's white cruciform towers once excited visions of the industrial-age city of the future, so Vélib', Paris's bicycle rental system, inspired a new urban ethos for the era of climate change.
Residents here can rent a sturdy bicycle from hundreds of public stations' [...]
