When we think about the study of economics, we usually think of the mathematical models we were taught in high school and college. The entire corpus of economic studies has been founded on the notion of people as predictable, “rational” actors. Neuroeconomics, a relatively new field that is acquiring more and more intellectual currency, closely studies human behavior and its influences, based largely on stunning advances made in neuroscience over the past few years. (Post by Lauren Bailey)
Amid all of the talk about unemployment duration and the unemployment rate is a little known ratio, touched upon in this Wall Street Journal editorial. You’re curious, however – because the unemployment rate calculation has been messed around with quite a bit, how does it line up with the ratio? Lucky for you, I’ve got a graph here.
The incidence of a tax (who truly pays for it) is very significant in welfare analysis. Cameron Daniels analyzes this concept using the real life example of gas prices.
I recently posted on the ‘Bush Tax Cuts’, however, as Dr. Mark Perry points out, another way of looking at the Bush tax law is the ‘Bush tax hike’! Compared to the top marginal rate under Bush I and Reagan, the Bush II tax ‘cuts’ had a higher marginal tax rate on the highest bracket. In fact, as one of Dr. Perry’s commentators points out, the 2011 retirement of the Bush tax law could be considered another ‘Bush Tax Hike’ – as President Bush was the one who put an expiration date on the law.
How about this title in the Wall Street Journal? “Credit Cards Take From Poor, Give to the Rich” is the name, in reference to a Boston Federal Reserve Bank report on credit card reward programs. The paper says just that: credit card rewards programs and merchant fees for credit card usage are increasing the overall cost of goods for check and cash customers.
… is higher than credit card debt in our country (hat tip: Wall Street Journal). How can this be?, you may ask, when the number of news stories on credit cards seem to vastly outweigh the corresponding reports on student loans. Well, yes, credit card stories seem to outnumber student loan stories by a ratio of about 15 to 1, according to StudentLoanJustice.org. How did this happen?
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CO2 emissions fell with the economy last year! CO2 emissions had fallen 3% in 2008, but multiple factors account for the fall last year. As the Ars Technica article states, the drop in emissions wasn’t completely attributable to the fall in GDP; some of the fall was due to trends that may continue in the next few years towards higher mileage cars and cleaner industries.
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Carnivals (2) and links (5) for the week!
Not: new articles when I get my new video card and monitor. Let’s go FedEx!
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Reality check or tempered expectations? The number of 401(k) investors who believe they can retire early has, as expected, decreased over the last few years of market turmoil. Since 2007, the number of investors who think their 401(k) or IRA accounts will be the largest source of income in retirement has fallen 7 percentage points – from 52% to 45%.
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There’s been a lot of talk about the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP for short) as of late. The TARP, as you may know, authorizes the Department of the Treasury to purchase (or repurchase!) up to $700 billion of so-called “Troubled Assets” in order to shore up bank and bank-like company (somehow including the auto industry) finances. The Treasury has kept the TARP in the news by deciding it is time to sell its stake in Citibank.
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In Economics, there is a concept of ‘leading’ and ‘lagging’ indicators. ‘Leading’ indicators predict economic activity in the future- they are statistics which give a decent idea how things will be soon. ‘Lagging’ indicators are the opposite; they signal performance in the recent past. Is it possible that there is a leading indicator of the economy that we all experience? According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, our spam email messages have become more bullish over the past few months.
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Substitution and Income Effect: These two terms are very familiar to anybody who has taken an intermediate course in macroeconomics. With the recent articles regarding volunteerism and labor statistics, I thought that it was very timely to write on these two very important concepts.
Let’s start with a thought experiment: if you were to receive a 10% increase in your hourly wage, would you increase, decrease, or maintain your hours worked? Believe it or not, any answer is correct, despite many assumptions regarding the positive slope of labor supply curves. The reason that any answer is correct lies in an understanding of substitution and income effects.
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You knew it was only a matter of time – once it was revealed that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner blamed his personal tax problems on a misuse of the tax software TurboTax – that someone would try to blame their own tax problems on the software in Tax Court. Well, your wishes came true, and the first tax case was decided on the 19th concerning the “Geithner Defense”!
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A recent article on CNN Money highlighted what I like to refer to as truly alternative investments. The article, entitled “Investments You Can Live With” covered four categories of ‘investments’ which one can use or display (or drink!) in their home. Wine, photographs, antique furniture, and paintings are all mentioned as possible additions to your investment portfolio.
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