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Things to Know About Cars

finance their new-car purchases, easy loans kept U.S. sales hovering around 17 million vehicles a year until gas prices spiked. At the same time, substantial gains in quality and reliability…



Adrian Grenier Answers Your Questions

…There is only one main industry. N.Y. is also the country’s fashion and finance capital, and it is easier to get lost in the crowd. Q. At what point in…






The Economics of Tiger Parenting

…about any endeavor is likely to pay Marshmallow benefits even outside that area of specialization.? My personal bias is in guiding my children toward endeavors (like learning statistics or US…






"The Quarterback Quandary"

…don’t take Bohr’s word for it. Let’s look at evidence from a couple of fields unrelated to the NFL draft: finance and politics. In recent years, academic researchers have been…



A Secondary Market for Graduate Degrees?

…and finance.” One of the program’s perks, and there are many (including dinners with the likes of Paul Volcker, Jamie Dimon, and Joseph Stiglitz), is that you can get an…



Will China Need a New Debt Ceiling Too?

…China’s government debt is considerably higher than has been acknowledged by the Finance Ministry, which puts just the central government’s debt at 17% of GDP without taking into account local…




Did Rating Agencies Give Preference to Big Banks?

…disclosed that 44 percent of their revenues came from rating structured finance products, exceeding the 32 percent earned from rating corporate bonds. There is also direct evidence that rating agencies…








A Postcard from Brookings: Wolfers Bids D.C. a Fond Farewell

…details about inequality, international trade, national accounting, government budgets, monetary policy, exchange rates, regulation, social policy, finance and the labor market. After this sort of exposure, it’s little surprise that…




Do Home Prices Affect the Birds and the Bees?

…authors used Vital Statistics data from 1990 – 2007, and Federal Housing Finance Agency Price Index (and alternately the Case-Shiller Index) to simulate equity/fertility correlations. From the abstract: Our estimates…



It's Good to Have Friends in Texas

…Interestingly, the start-up is run by a man who was on Gov. Rick Perry’s re-election finance committee and by another whose father was a previous chancellor of the System (with…



Freakonomics Quorum: Can Amtrak Ever Be Profitable?

…a regular contributor to Freakonomics, is a transportation scholar at UCLA. His work focuses on transportation and well-being, transportation equity, transportation finance, and transportation history. AMTRAK: OFF TRACK I have…



Is Not Saying "I Don't Know" a Guy Thing?

Our most recent podcast, “Why Is ‘I Don’t Know’ So Hard to Say?,” continues to draw interesting replies. Here’s one from Erich Knobil, who works in the finance office of…





It’s Not the President, Stupid (Ep. 65)

…in fact the opposite turned out to be true. (Ungated paper here.) FWIW, here’s a TV interview I did with Yahoo! Finance on the topic a few weeks back. And…



How High Gas Prices Triggered the Housing Crisis

…one-in-four households underwater and unable to withdraw home equity to finance consumption, a slow suburban housing recovery bodes poorly for short-run growth in aggregate demand and a broader economic recovery….



Are We Living in a Loss-Averse World?

…wants to believe) that behavioral economics has a lot to teach us about real-world investing behavior. The money quote: “What you’re seeing is a gigantic exercise in behavioral finance,” says…