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
I use annual CPS instead. Why? Because it can be corroborated with the annual American Community Survey (ACS) data for 2017-2023.… Continue reading →| 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
A recent blog post from the St. Louis Fed claims that: “Both younger and older workers withdrew from the labor force in large numbers during the pandemic: In fact, their participation rates plummeted. Yet, within two years, the younger workers… Continue reading →| 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
We put my daughter on a waitlist for the daycare her siblings attended when she was one month old. Fourteen months later, she is still waiting, and we are looking around for other options. Almost e…| 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
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
I am your intrepid reporter, deep in the trenches of real mommy blogs and neighborhood Facebook groups. This year, a local entrepreneur is offering to take one job out of the hands of working paren…| 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
A country that has both characteristics can do all of the typical rationing and enticing of domestic supplies. But it can also access foreign supplies in a very low-cost manner. Specifically, highe…| 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
I’m here to discuss women in the criminal justice system as part of the ongoing BRIDGE series organized by Arnold Ventures. DC remains one of my very favorite cities, one I lived in and aroun…| 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
To say Warren Buffett is not a fan of gold would be an understatement. His basic beef is that gold does not produce much of practical value. His instincts have always been to buy businesses t…| Economist Writing Every Day
While DOGE is advertising their new deregulation AI (HT MR) with promises of “trimming 100,000 of those rules”, the reality is that the administration is ushering in the most profound l…| 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
Remember when Biden continued the aggressive trade policy that Trump had adopted? That’s consistent with lower EPU.| Economist Writing Every Day
I don’t know whether the above policies are ‘hacks’. But they work well considering that they don’t inflate grades or compromise on course content.| Economist Writing Every Day
Depending on who I tell, I’m given both congratulations and condolences. Generally, at my university there is an expectation that department faculty ‘take turns’ being chair. So, we’re expected to …| Economist Writing Every Day
We noted last week Meta’s successful efforts to hire away the best of the best AI scientists from other companies, by offering them insane (like $300 million) pay packages. Here we summarize and ex…| Economist Writing Every Day
Tyler suggested that a “smarter” LLM could not master the unconquered intellectual territory of integrating general relatively and quantum mechanics. Forget passing Ph.D. level qualifyi…| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by Scott Buchanan, mdmakowsky, Joy Buchanan, Zachary Bartsch, James Bailey, and Jeremy Horpedahl during April 2024| Economist Writing Every Day
Trump wants both low taxes and low interest rates. I hope that he doesn’t get it.| Economist Writing Every Day
Iowa recently joined the growing list of states where midwives or obstetricians can open a freestanding birth center without needing to convince a state board that it is economically necessary. The…| 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
America is in the news, and not for reasons I’d like. Here is G.K. Chesterton on “patriotism.” I will always remember this quote from reading his book Orthodoxy (emphasis mine): Let us suppose we a…| Economist Writing Every Day
Unexpectedly, Chesterton on Patriotism from 2021 is one of my all-time top performing posts due to a slow but steady drip of Google Search hits. In 1908, G.K. Chesterton published the following lin…| Economist Writing Every Day
I thought this was going to be another election post, but it didn’t turn out that way. My plan was to do another annual portfolio review, with a focus on changes I’ll make to my portfol…| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by Jeremy Horpedahl, Scott Buchanan, mdmakowsky, Joy Buchanan, Zachary Bartsch, and James Bailey during April 2025| Economist Writing Every Day
When the state makes decisions for the individual regarding consumption and production, the rational utility optimization model goes out the window. The individual consumes what they’re allotted, w…| 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
The 23 blue-shaded MSAs in this map produce half of US GDP: You might be tempted to think this map, like so many maps, is just a map of US population. It kind of is, but not completely. These 23 MS…| Economist Writing Every Day
Here is a chart of the evolution of U.S. farm workforce between 1991 and 2022: Source: USDA A bit over 40% of current U.S. farm workers are illegal immigrants. In some regions and sectors, the perc…| Economist Writing Every Day
It’s not AGI, it’s barely even regular AI, when an LLM is this heavily directed. This appears to be very real over on Twitter. What’s most telling is the thinness of the prompts t…| Economist Writing Every Day
You’re probably sick of ChatGPT thinkpieces prognosticating the future of AI but, let me assure you, this is not one, if only because I haven’t thought about it all that much. I have be…| Economist Writing Every Day
It turns out, ChatGPT mirrors the strengths and shortcomings of human interns more closely than I expected.| Economist Writing Every Day
A black swan is a crisis that comes out of nowhere. A gray rhino, by contrast, is a problem we have known about for a long time, but can’t or won’t stop, that will at some point crash i…| Economist Writing Every Day
I recently spent a week in Norway with my family. Highly recommended overall. While we were mostly able to get around the country by train, we needed to rent a car to get to a small, remote village…| Economist Writing Every Day
Some eighteen months ago, I wrote here on “Money as a Social Construct“. Most civilizations over the millennia have found it expeditious to move from simple, immediate barter of physical objects li…| Economist Writing Every Day
1 post published by Scott Buchanan during July 2025| Economist Writing Every Day
Anyone who reads financial headlines knows that gold prices have soared in the past year. Why? Gold has historically been a relatively stable store of value, and that role seems to be returning aft…| 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
Where would you expect Federalism to occur? In other words, where would expect a government to devolve authority to a lower government. Importantly, this is different from freedom vs authoritariani…| Economist Writing Every Day
One of my favorite economic journal articles is by Barry Weingast and has the short title “Market Preserving Federalism” (MPF). In this paper, Weingast lays out the conditions necessary for two ten…| Economist Writing Every Day
The OP laments poor policy in Massachusetts. But compared to some other nearby states, MA is doing just fine economically. This is not the same as saying that the OP is wrong about poor policies. R…| Economist Writing Every Day
Have you seen this chart? The chart originates from Statista, as you can see from the label in the image. But it is very frequently shared on social media, Reddit, and elsewhere (often with the Sta…| Economist Writing Every Day
Here is a personal economical anecdote from this week. A medium-sized dead branch fell from a tall tree and ripped off the driver side mirror on my old Honda. My local repair shop said it would cos…| Economist Writing Every Day
Even since Scott’s post on Tuesday of this week, a new response has been launched titled “The Illusion of the Illusion of the Illusion of Thinking” Abstract (emphasis added by me)…| Economist Writing Every Day
10 posts published by Scott Buchanan, mdmakowsky, Joy Buchanan, Zachary Bartsch, James Bailey, and Jeremy Horpedahl during December 2024| Economist Writing Every Day
Who ends up benefiting from the deduction? The short answer is people who 1) itemize & 2) have heavy state and local tax bills. Who is that? Rich people of course! They have high incomes and lo…| 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
Memes on Twitter are at least as important today as political cartoons of the 19th and 20th centuries. Two memes went viral this week, surrounding the events of protests in Los Angeles. The …| Economist Writing Every Day
I saw this scary-looking graphic of S&P 500 returns versus price/earnings (P/E) ratios a couple of days ago: JPMorgan The left-hand side shows that there is very little correlation between the …| Economist Writing Every Day
If you want to enjoy $500 of real, after-tax monthly income once you hit age 65, then you can start your modest $100 monthly contributions by the time your about 36 years old – assuming you only pl…| Economist Writing Every Day
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is proposing to cut off student loans for programs whose graduates earn less than the median high school graduate. The House proposed a ri…| 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
“Cruikshank played a crucial role in terminating Reconstruction and launching the one-party, segregationist regime of “Jim Crow” that prevailed in the South until the 1960s. The circuit court…| Economist Writing Every Day
The most recent (published in 2025) is this piece about doing data analytics that would have been too difficult or costly before. Link and title: Deep Learning for Economists Considering how much o…| Economist Writing Every Day
It’s easiest for us to think about the quantities that we can afford 2021 as a proportion of goods in 1990. Below are the inflation-adjusted quantities of consumption per capita.* These use t…| Economist Writing Every Day
Even after the pandemic policies have settled down, we are still SO MUCH RICHER – and even richer than we were with all of the pandemic-related stimulus. The worst consumption category since the pa…| 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
