In the last minutes before we depart to the airport, our clothesdryer breaks down, potentially leaving our housesitter high but not dry. Murphy’s Law states: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” This well-known aphorism ignores the crucial fact that things go wrong at different times, and that the opportunity cost of our time varies. I don’t mind if things break down when I have time to worry about and solve the problem. But that doesn’t happen.
Matt Miller It isn’t hard to think of ideas that were once considered conventional wisdom — “Women shouldn’t vote,” “People should be segregated by race” — but were eventually laid to rest. In his book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash A New Prosperity, Matt Miller writes that the country’s biggest . . .
The conventional employer wisdom has always been that a happy employee is a more productive employee. Countless dollars are spent every year on initiatives to raise employee morale, create camaraderie in the workplace, and eliminate practices that could lead to a hostile work environment, all so that companies can boost their retention rates and productivity levels. So is it really . . .
It may not be surprising to you that Trevon D. Logan, an economics professor at Ohio State University, is interested in college football. Ohio State is, after all, a football mecca (as we experienced first-hand some time ago). What may surprise you, however, is what Logan has concluded about college football polls. In a new working paper, Logan used 25 . . .