Economic Logic

I received this letter the other day. Fill in [...] with a name I am withholding: Dear Parents of [...] Congratulations! [...] has been nomi...

Following up on yesterday's post on how little time unemployed people spend searching for a job, I claim that we need to model unemploym...

When we model economic behavior with micro-foundations and are interested in unemployment, we need to take a stand about what the unemployed...

Classes have started, students have bought the assigned textbooks, and they have thoroughly complained about the cost of the textbooks. It i...

Following the axions of rationality and self-interest, it is diffcult to fathom why someone would be driven to suicide bombing. This is espe...

This is the second installment in our continuing series on the Economics of toilets. After the issue of whether the seat should be left up,...

It is possible on IDEAS to create reading lists . Economic Logic has now its own . It lists all papers discussed on this blog, along with al...

A politician is supposed to represent others, the electorate, and not act selfishly. We know everyone will act selfishly in one way or the o...

With the availability of rich data sets, new research has tried to establish how rigid prices really are and thus whether monetary models wi...

Now that football (soccer) leagues are back in play, let us consider the old question of how to get more goals scored. As the play has becom...

GDP measures all activities taking place on the market place, and thus neglects and production in the home that never hits the market. With ...

In many countries, local governments rely to some degree on the federal government to cover for deficits. This has been regarded as a poor p...

Even when eligible, not everyone chooses to receive payments from welfare. This may be by ignorance or by choice. In the latter case, welfar...

These are tough times, and in tough times, the government is here to help. This is why the finance industry is getting help, people late on ...

Whenever we model economic behavior, we assume preferences are given and stable. If we observe from empirics that preferences change, we att...