Where Has All the Viagra Spam Gone?
…market seems to have solved the problem. Spam still exists, though; the latest is the email saying I’m the nearest surviving relative of XX [pick some first name] Hamermesh, and…
…market seems to have solved the problem. Spam still exists, though; the latest is the email saying I’m the nearest surviving relative of XX [pick some first name] Hamermesh, and…
…The Game (Iran), while managing his relationship with middle powers like Kanye West (Europe). But in this rap-based power map, who does our own microeconomics-spitting contributor Dan Hamermesh represent? [%comments]…
(Photo: Hemera) Dan Hamermesh’s much-discussed post about taxing capital gains brought to mind my own taxonomy of taxes, so to speak, from least to most progressive: Poll tax. Everyone pays…
Photo: Dan Hamermesh I love to collect examples of bizarre pairs of goods that sellers or buyers apparently believe are complements or substitutes. Our local, now-defunct Tower Records used to…
Dan Hamermesh wrote recently that he doesn’t feel sorry for would-be retirees who lost their savings by bad asset allocation. Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff thinks people aren’t capable…
…suit. This is just another story suggesting that American capitalism is in the throes of a Great Giveback; it’s also another suit-bargain dilemma for Dan Hamermesh. (HT: Peter Houston) [%comments]…
On Dan Hamermesh‘s always-interesting blog, I read the first sentence of a recent entry: My grandson will be 13 in 13 months. I had to read it three times to…
…data increase, it will become more and more valuable. Katherine Abraham, Suzanne Bianchi, Dan Hamermesh, and Alan Krueger are spearheading the effort to save ATUS which you can read about…
Today is apparently D-Day here at Freakonomics — the “D” stands for divorce. Along with Hamermesh’s earlier post and this post by Wolfers, there’s one more on the way. One…
…(soccer) fanatic, a 50-year fan of Watford Football Club and contributor to that team’s now-defunct fanzine, BsaD (Blind, Stupid and Desperate). Like our friend Dan Hamermesh, who put a summary…
Dan Hamermesh, on his Economic Thought of the Day blog — it is excellent, and always fun — wrote this recently: A disaster has occurred in Germany: The staple drink…
A recent N.P.R. report about housing prices in D.C. shows the close link between driving costs and the housing market. According to the report, home prices in the suburbs have…
A related set of lawsuits involving billions of dollars has provided employment opportunities for a number of consulting economists specializing in antitrust issues or labor economics issues. I’ve been involved…
The actor Ed Begley Jr. has a widely-circulated OpEd piece touting his eco-friendly activities, featuring a proud announcement that his exercise on his stationary bicycle generates the electricity he uses…
There are at least four ways of meeting a decline in labor demand: laying off workers, cutting nominal annual salaries, cutting hires, or reducing hours. It is difficult to lay…
Imperial College, the science-oriented school in London, recently pulled out from the umbrella organization, the University of London. Imperial graduates will no longer have University of London diplomas, but will…
I had my students present and discuss a study of the market for organ donations. The study points out that prices are not used to elicit supply of live organs…
News of the Weird has a depressing economics story this week about food prices in the poorer sections of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which is perhaps the poorest country in the Western…
This morning I downloaded an update on the software for my iPhone. As so often happens with software updates, it completely screwed up the device, requiring me to spend an…
We just returned from four days of hiking in Big Bend National Park, and today we drove 500 miles in Texas along I-10. A number of oil wells were pumping…
Lecturing on divorce today, I was reminded of the refrain in Clay Walker‘s song, Then What: “Then what, what you gonna do, when the new wears off and the old…
Germany is considering a new government-imposed minimum wage — a price floor in the labor market — to apply to postal carriers and related workers. One of the major proponents…
Nancy and Harry Chapin’s song, “Cat’s in the Cradle,” is one of my favorites, partly because of the beat, and partly because it illustrates one of the essential trade-offs in…
For a number of years I’ve been impressed with the wireless credit-card machines with which many European restaurants equip their wait-staff. This substitution saves workers time (and also that of…
While traveling through Istanbul, I noticed numerous free-standing kiosks with several (as many as six) A.T.M.’s — each from a different bank. This struck me as being bizarre. A Turkish…
The average human being will be substantially richer in 50 years, just as the average American today has a real income three times what it was in 1955. But the…
Photo by Steven Stewart of his son. The essence of a free market is exchange — you and I raise our utility voluntarily by exchanging things with which we are…
I’m on our annual beach week with the extended family in New Jersey and the beach patrol comes by insisting I buy beach tags for everyone 12 and over. The…
Starbucks prides itself on how green it is. No negative externalities here — and it proudly advertises on its website its commitment to “Environmental Stewardship.” I wonder, though, about its…
When we choose a major in college we are to some extent choosing a series of future wage rates. The amount of human capital in which we invest is to…