This is the third in a series of occasional blog posts on individual initiatives that made a strategic (not just tactical) difference in the course of the second world war.World War II was not only…| Economist Writing Every Day
Sports gambling is entering it’s first series of major crises since widespread legalization. While there is the typical handwringing around the intersection of vice and broad entertainment, t…| Economist Writing Every Day
The latest Macro Musings is an episode I could recommend to students in a macroeconomics class. Jim Clouse on the Last 4 Decades at the Most Powerful Central Bank in the World Since the great depre…| Economist Writing Every Day
How many people died in the US from heart diseases in 2019? The answer is harder than it might seem to pin down. Using a broad definition, such as “major cardiovascular diseases,” and i…| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by Scott Buchanan, mdmakowsky, Joy Buchanan, Zachary Bartsch, James Bailey, and Jeremy Horpedahl during January 2023| Economist Writing Every Day
Supporters of prediction markets tend to emphasize how they are great tools for aggregating information to produce accurate forecasts. If you want to know e.g. who is likely to win the next electio…| Economist Writing Every Day
Some events are like elections: it was obvious that some big political news would break on Election Day, we just had to wait to find out what exactly would happen. Others are like market crashes: y…| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by Joy Buchanan, Zachary Bartsch, James Bailey, Jeremy Horpedahl, Scott Buchanan, and mdmakowsky during June 2024| Economist Writing Every Day
One of the reasons that the US has such popular financial assets is that we have highly developed financial markets and the rule of law. People trust that, regardless of the individual performance …| Economist Writing Every Day
LinkedIn has its problems, but so does every other social network. I joined LinkedIn out of college because it seemed like something you were supposed to do if you want a job someday, but I never c…| Economist Writing Every Day
Inflation adjusting income and prices from the past is a common theme in my blog posts, including fact checking of other attempts to do these adjustments. But here is a really novel one, in a viral…| Economist Writing Every Day
This is the second of a series of occasional posts on observations of how some individual initiatives made strategic impacts on World War II operations and outcome. While there were innumerab…| Economist Writing Every Day
Universities continue to turn down the “Trump Compact”. The intitial nine schools targeted with an “invitation” were from a seemingly curated list of elite institutions, tho…| Economist Writing Every Day
From my trip to Florida, I recommend Mazzaro’s Italian Market for sampling the Italian roots of the Tampa-area food scene. And for cheap (free) thrills the St. Pete Pier is great for kids inc…| Economist Writing Every Day
The social media conversations omit the application of clear theory from the GDP accounting equation.| Economist Writing Every Day
There are 62 songs called “Better Man” just on Ultimate Guitar (which doesn’t claim to be comprehensive), plus many more slight variations like “A Better Man” or ̶…| Economist Writing Every Day
The following chart from Arbor Research shows that the average age of cars on the road in the US is 14.5 years. If we go back to 1995, it was almost half that, and the increase has been steady sinc…| Economist Writing Every Day
Hey look, I just found a way to get infinite free electric power: This sort of extension-cord-plugged-into-itself meme has shown up recently on the web to characterize a spate of circular financing…| Economist Writing Every Day
Economist Craig Paulsson has made a simple game free to all. When you go to MapGDP.com you will find a real picture from Google Maps and a simple question. Guess the GDP/capita in the country where…| Economist Writing Every Day
The Missouri library site links to PDFs of original statistical publications which, while digitized, have never been tabulated into useable data fit for modern researchers. Go have a look around. Y…| Economist Writing Every Day
If a scientific finding is really true and important, we should be able to reproduce it- different researchers can investigate and confirm it, rather than just taking one researcher at their word. …| Economist Writing Every Day
The Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) project is an attempt to replicate hundreds of social science papers, and to search for patterns that predict what types of papers…| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by James Bailey, Jeremy Horpedahl, Scott Buchanan, mdmakowsky, Joy Buchanan, and Zachary Bartsch during July 2025| Economist Writing Every Day
Datasets can be pulled offline for all sorts of reasons. As I wrote in February, this shows the value of being a data hoarder- just downloading now any data you think you might want later: Several …| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by Jeremy Horpedahl, Scott Buchanan, mdmakowsky, Joy Buchanan, Zachary Bartsch, and James Bailey during July 2024| Economist Writing Every Day
Yesterday on Twitter I shared a chart showing the age at first marriage for white men and women in the US, with data going back to 1880. I pointed out an interesting fact: at least for men, the age…| Economist Writing Every Day
This is the first of a series of occasional posts on observations of how some individual initiatives made strategic impacts on World War II. Most major decisions were made by teams of qualifi…| Economist Writing Every Day
For the last few years the blog Astral Codex Ten has run contests for the best reader-submitted book reviews. This year Scott mixed things up and asked people to review anything except books. You c…| Economist Writing Every Day
Last week I took kids to an excellent show at Samford’s Christenberry Planetarium. If you live in Alabama, follow them on Instagram for updates on events (often free). I have heard people say…| Economist Writing Every Day
3 posts published by Zachary Bartsch, James Bailey, and Jeremy Horpedahl during October 2025| Economist Writing Every Day
When reading an old novel or watching a period drama movie or TV show, it is almost inevitable that some historical currency amounts will be mentioned. This is especially true when the work is deal…| Economist Writing Every Day
An overlooked part of being a good Bayesian is revisiting your past failures of imagination, so that past stuggles with Knightian Uncertainty can be transformed into simple failures to accurately f…| Economist Writing Every Day
These days, when I blog-rant about my everyday life, I have increasingly ended on the thought “AGI fixes this.” Yesterday, I mused whether AGI would be my personal chef? : Where Can You Still Buy a…| Economist Writing Every Day
Tomorrow the first of the “deferred resignation program” windows close, adding to the growing sources of a chaos as the signs of a recession continue to mount. The supply chain is fille…| Economist Writing Every Day
Housing is certainly more expensive than in the past. I have written about this several times, including a post from last year showing that between about 2017 and 2022 housing started to get really…| Economist Writing Every Day
A couple of days ago I spoke with a friend who was troubled by the case of Adam Raine, the sixteen-year-old who was counseled by a ChatGPT AI therapy chatbot into killing himself. That was of…| Economist Writing Every Day
First, Pre-law literally has the word ‘law’ in the name and is marketed as preparation for law school. However, it is the undergraduate major associated with the lowest paid lawyers. For that matte…| Economist Writing Every Day
The Fed has had an official inflation target of 2% since 2012, a commitment they reaffirmed just last month after their policy review: The Committee reaffirms its judgment that inflation at the rat…| Economist Writing Every Day
Stocks (e.g., S&P 500) are up 12.5 % year to date. That is pretty good for 9.5 months. But gold has been way better, up 40%: Fans of gold cite various reasons for why its price should and must …| Economist Writing Every Day
I’ve been making a point lately to fill in the “gaps” in my film history lately. Yesterday I finally watched the John Cassavettes classic “A Woman Under the Influence”…| Economist Writing Every Day
let’s see the relationship between the number of days of tax holiday and the amount by which the tax rate on the non-holidays must change. As the number of tax holidays increases, the tax rate on t…| Economist Writing Every Day
The Federal Reserve will probably cut rates next week: I can’t advise them on the complex politics of this, but based on the economics I think cutting would be a mistake. I see one good reaso…| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by mdmakowsky, Joy Buchanan, Zachary Bartsch, James Bailey, Jeremy Horpedahl, and Scott Buchanan during June 2025| Economist Writing Every Day
Are you tired of hearing about revisions to jobs data? Well, there was another hot one released by BLS yesterday. Known as the “preliminary estimate of the Current Employment Statistics (CES)…| Economist Writing Every Day
Bar codes have been common in retail stores since the 1970s. These give a one-dimensional read of digital data. The hardware and software to decode a bar code are relatively simple. The QR code enc…| Economist Writing Every Day
The NFL has filed a grievance against the players union, alleging a conspiracy to fake injuries on the part of running backs to gain greater leverage in salary negotiations. To grant necessary cont…| Economist Writing Every Day
One of the oldest theories in economics is the idea of compensating differentials. A job represents not just a certain amount of money per hour, but a whole package of positive and negative things.…| Economist Writing Every Day
Former teammates of athletes who died of CTE would require $6 million to offset this disamenity and $1 million to be indifferent between exiting and staying in the profession. So concludes a paper …| Economist Writing Every Day
Nvidia is a huge battleground stock – – some analysts predict its price will languish or crash, while others see it continuing its dramatic rise. It has become the world’s most va…| Economist Writing Every Day
1 post published by mdmakowsky during September 2025| Economist Writing Every Day
In no particular order: $50k in cash compensation is always worth more to employees than $50k in water slides and sagely advice. College football programs that don’t have as many resources ti…| Economist Writing Every Day
When MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) burst onto the education scene in the early 2010s, they were hailed as the future of learning. With the promise of democratizing education by providing free…| Economist Writing Every Day
Tim Keller, who was the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, died last week. Starting and growing a church in Manhattan takes talent. I am reading Tim Keller’s biograph…| Economist Writing Every Day
I created a provocative title for fun. Tyler pointed me to this podcast: Joe Liemandt – Building Alpha School, and The Future of Education (Apple podcast link) I suppose I’m sold on the…| Economist Writing Every Day
It would be unusual for all of the other board members to serve out their entire terms, but if they did, then five of the six current members would remain in office beyond the end of Trump’s second…| Economist Writing Every Day
The subjects of two of our posts from 2023 are suddenly big stories. First, here’s how I summed up New Orleans’ recovery from hurricane Katrina then: Large institutions (university medi…| Economist Writing Every Day
This chart shows the average number of hours worked in the US, by gender, for those in their prime working ages (25-54), from 1900 to 2023. It includes both paid market work and household productio…| Economist Writing Every Day
In 1967, about 56 percent of families in the US had incomes between $50,000 and $150,000, stated in 2023 inflation-adjusted dollars. In 2023, that number was down to 47 percent. So the American mid…| Economist Writing Every Day
Rare earths are a set of 17 metals with properties which make them essential to a swathe of high-tech products. These products include lasers, LEDs, catalysts, batteries, medical devices, sensors, …| Economist Writing Every Day
If top government officials were regular readers of this blog, they would have been warned by a headline here more than two years ago, “China To Squeeze West by Restricting Export of Essential Rare…| Economist Writing Every Day
I’ve been thinking a lot about the loneliness of moderates/centrists/whatever you want to call them, in no small part because that’s the camp in which I place myself. While it’s (…| Economist Writing Every Day
What do women want, if they have kids and no budget constraint? I think a lot of women would choose what this wealthy mom of 3 has, if they could afford it. The title of a current article from Pare…| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by Zachary Bartsch, James Bailey, Jeremy Horpedahl, Scott Buchanan, mdmakowsky, and Joy Buchanan during May 2024| Economist Writing Every Day
Sometimes I get weeks in the summer that are more research focused. This past week is very much a teaching and service focused week at my university. I haven’t had any time to ponder topics r…| Economist Writing Every Day
John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, wrote a short book in 2006 that explains his investment philosophy. I can sum it up at much less than book length: the best investment advice for almost everyon…| Economist Writing Every Day
Wiley publishes a series of short books on investing called “Little Books, Big Profits”. I previously reviewed Vanguard founder John Bogle’s entry in this series, the Little Book …| Economist Writing Every Day
SPOILER ALERT FOR THE THIRD SEASON OF THE GILDED AGE In Season 3 of the drama series “The Gilded Age,” one of the servants (Jack, a footman) earns a sum of $300,000 by selling a patent …| Economist Writing Every Day
Arrrr, me hearties! What think ye of a venture to raise a gigantic hoard of sunken treasure? The story begins with the last voyage of RMS Republic. This was a luxurious passenger steamship of the W…| Economist Writing Every Day
As marriage rates decline nationally, Esther Perel’s “Where Should We Begin?” offers more than dating advice. These episodes are recordings of real couples or single people today …| Economist Writing Every Day
Looking at the graphs, there’s no long term bump from the 2018 tariffs in either employment or output.| Economist Writing Every Day
To get anywhere new, you need to step off the treadmill Before tenure, most academics need to publish their work in peer-reviewed journals if they want to keep their jobs. After tenure, most can pu…| Economist Writing Every Day
I’ve taught college classes since 2010, but I never graded attendance directly until this year. I thought that students are adults who can make their own choices about where to spend their ti…| Economist Writing Every Day
Yesterday I showed that BLS jobs reports from the CES aren’t getting worse over time, if we judge them by how much they are later revised. In fact, they are much better than decades past, wit…| Economist Writing Every Day
This post is to share some observations that may be helpful to readers who, like me, were rudely surprised by the simultaneous steep decline in both bonds and stocks in the past year. Bonds and Sto…| Economist Writing Every Day
You’ve probably heard a lot about BLS data recently (or at least more than usual) with Trump firing the BLS Commissioner after a bad monthly revision to the nonfarm payroll jobs figures. But …| Economist Writing Every Day
Back in February, 2023 I wrote an enthusiastic plug for including managed futures funds in an investment portfolio. That was based on several observations. First, bonds have become often positively…| Economist Writing Every Day
Economists have become almost comically skeptical of estimated effects. A researcher estimating the effect of X on Y has always had to consider the bias and efficiency of their estimator, where bia…| Economist Writing Every Day
These are notable posts from 2025, roughly presented in descending order, starting with the post that got the most views. Is there a competitive threat to the NBA? Mike Makowsky wrote, “… le…| Economist Writing Every Day
Hayek argues that, as the government employs an increasing proportion of the population, the remaining private sector experiences increasing income and employment volatility. Such volatility increa…| Economist Writing Every Day
The Affordable Care Act was supposed to make it easier for American workers to switch jobs by making it easier to get health insurance from sources other than their current employer. Mostly it didn…| Economist Writing Every Day
I had planned to write about the Trump-BLS fight today. But considering that two of my co-bloggers have already written about this (Mike on Monday and Scott on Tuesday) and that I have written abou…| Economist Writing Every Day
Every month we get new data on the labor market in the US from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As I pointed out last month, the labor market data from 2023 was very good! But lately on social media…| Economist Writing Every Day
Thousands of keyboards were likely drenched four days ago as coffee spewed from thousands of nostrils upon reading the headlines that President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistic…| Economist Writing Every Day
From Warren Nutter’s “The structure and growth of Soviet industry: A comparison with the United States.” The Journal of Law and Economics 2 (1959): 147-174.: “Let us acknowl…| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by Joy Buchanan, Zachary Bartsch, James Bailey, Jeremy Horpedahl, Scott Buchanan, and mdmakowsky during April 2022| Economist Writing Every Day
I posted See New York City for Free in 2022 and See New York City for Cheap in 2024. In summer 2025, we spent 4 nights in Midtown. I will post general reflections about kids and New York here.…| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by Joy Buchanan, Zachary Bartsch, James Bailey, Jeremy Horpedahl, and Scott Buchanan during May 2025| Economist Writing Every Day
The Federal Reserve System attempts to mimic the balance of powers that is present in our three branches of federal government, and the unique short and long-term interests are analogous to the US …| Economist Writing Every Day
I provide a simple, clean panel dataset of the historical demographics of US states here. I made this state-year level dataset from the individual-level responses in the Current Population Survey&#…| Economist Writing Every Day
This is a condensed list of what we did with elementary-aged kids for three fun days in Manhattan in July. Like a camping trip, NYC with kids depends on the weather. In good walking weather y…| Economist Writing Every Day
This month I have run across articles noting that Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has been making mind-boggling pay offers (like $100 million/year for 3-4 years) to top AI researchers at other companies, pl…| Economist Writing Every Day
When every frontier AI model can pass your tests, how do you figure out which model is best? You write a harder test. That was the idea behind Humanity’s Last Exam, an effort by Scale AI and …| Economist Writing Every Day
In 2023, we gathered the data for what became “ChatGPT Hallucinates Nonexistent Citations: Evidence from Economics.” Since then, LLM use has increased. A 2025 survey from Elon Universit…| Economist Writing Every Day
Last week I tried to address whether rising wealth for younger generations was primarily driven by rising home values. My analysis suggested that it was a cause, but not the only cause. Here’…| Economist Writing Every Day
As I have discussed in many previous blog posts, young people today have a lot more wealth than past generations at the same point in their life. But we also know that housing prices have increased…| Economist Writing Every Day
ut sometimes the field-to-general language translation doesn’t work because readers don’t have an adequate grasp of either language. It isn’t necessarily that readers are generally illiterate. It m…| Economist Writing Every Day
Latest chart on wealth for recent generations: Background and explanation of data here.| Economist Writing Every Day
The VIX is a calculated measure of stock market volatility, based on the prices of stock options. It spikes up when there is a market upset, then seemingly always settles back down again after a fe…| Economist Writing Every Day
I L-O-V-E this add in. I can download several data series quickly and have them all start at the same date faster than if I download them ‘manually’ from the FRED website. Then I can spend more of …| Economist Writing Every Day
They couldn’t really ask the coworkers what their WTP is. People are social creatures and have many reasons to lie, mislead, signal, and to simply not know. Since someone’s WTP reflects…| Economist Writing Every Day
