This summer I have been reading a little bit of Becker’s 1971 textbook, Economic Theory. I love this book because it is relatively short and has much interesting commentary which is omitted from other micro theory textbooks. The book’s strength is also its weakness—math often appears as an after thought.
Last night I read a section […]
Author Archive for Matt
Why math is useful in economics; or, the value of precision
Published by May 24th, 2008 in Economics. 0 CommentsThis photo courteous Carpe Diem, via The Club for Growth.
If you’re looking for the best place to learn a lot more about a given topic, the Handbooks in Economics series is a great place to start. These texts attempt to summarize research findings in many subfields of economics. They are not necessarily extremely advanced, however they are probably the closest thing there is to […]
An interesting decision: Apple will not accept cash payment for iPhones. Presumably this is to prevent resellers: cash does not allow Apple to ration quantities.
The popular gadget blog Gizmodo reports an update in the net neutrality saga. Another popular blog, The Consumerist, reports that the “Passenger’s bill of rights” has been shelved in Congress. In this article The Consumerist reports on further government encroachment on our private property.
This community typically decries laws extending the power of the government to […]
The NBER is offering a free 18 hour mini-course entitled “What’s new in econometrics” taught by Jeffrey Woolridge and Guidio Imbens.
I would just like to pass along this interesting post from The Perfect Substitute blog. Essentially, the pilgrims initially starved because of a lack of property rights. The problem was later relieved by assignment of private property rights–not help from the Indians.
Famous papers in econ: most cited papers since 1970
Published by May 8th, 2008 in Economics. 0 CommentsAlthough this series will mostly stick to work done pre-1970, I would like to briefly mention this paper by E. Han Kim, Adair Morse, and Luigi Zingales: “What Has Mattered to Economics Since 1970.”
Many of the citations are to technical papers related to advances in econometrics and estimation techniques, but there is a wide selection […]
Why are goods priced at $19.95 instead of $20.00?
Published by May 8th, 2008 in Economics. 5 CommentsThis article, which features two UF marketing professors, discusses the difference between “precise” prices like 19.95 and “imprecise” prices like 20.00. Still, the article doesn’t really address the question of this post.
To be more specific, let’s consider retailers and grocers selling relatively low cost goods in high quantities. These are the industries that we usually […]
Famous papers in econ: Hayek 1945, The Use of Knowledge in Society
Published by May 2nd, 2008 in Economics. 7 CommentsThis is the first post in a new series at AU for this summer. The series will highlight famous papers in economics, typically older papers that have already cemented their names in history. For all of the posts in the series, I encourage everyone to at least skim the accompanying paper and comment with your […]
In the early 18th and 19th centuries, most mathematicians thought that continuous functions were differentiable everywhere except perhaps at a few various points. In 1806, Andre Marie Ampere tried, and failed, to prove this result, which was subsequently known as Ampere’s Theorem. He also failed to provide a counterexample. Lagrange later attempted to prove the […]
Steven Levitt says a few quick remarks at Freakonomics (what an insane close up on his face too, geez) about voting. First, the probability of your vote being decisive is very small. He implicitly says it’s irrational to vote with the intention of changing an election. He does note that it can still be rational […]
This is the first post in a ridiculously pro-market series I am introducing. Robert Nelson wrote a book called Economics as Religion, suggesting that Economics has become a religion (with Chicago as a church and economists as priests). Well, perhaps he was right, and we should bow down to the free market.
So, on to the […]
There are a few goals common to all subfields of mathematics, and they are intimately related. One is classification of mathematical objects. This is identical to the entomologist classifying species of insects, can we describe all possible objects that exist?
The best known example is the complete classification of finite simple groups. This classification spans of […]
Virtual v. Real, part I
Published by September 3rd, 2007 in Economics and Virtual Worlds. 0 CommentsI just discovered this response from Nate Combs, a TN writer, to an earlier post of mine. Mr Combs says,
“A player’s ‘profit’ in Eve-Online may not, in significant part, be the same profit they would seek in a real world market. This, I think, is the fallacy of comparing virtual world markets with real ones.”
My […]