One of the oddities of the macroeconomy is the fact that GDP falls wildly every year in the beginning of winter. That means that there is a kind of recession every winter. It isn’t an official recession because everyone expects…
Yearly Archives: 2019
NPR thinks the average American looks like the average Trump supporter
Planet Money and the New York Times’ Ben Casselman teamed up to try to demonstrate that, “Mode, not average, is a better way to find the typical American.” They are wrong. Here is how they set up the issue: MALONE:…
Posted in Metrology
Big land
Bloomberg investigated the 100 people that own the most land in America and this map shows where they have bought land: The 100 largest owners of private property in the U.S., newcomers and old-timers together, have 40 million acres, or…
Posted in Public Finance
The occupation that tops them all
Claire Cain Miller at the New York Times gets the key issue with the gender pay gap: Flexible, predictable hours are the key — across occupations — to shrinking gender gaps, according to the body of research by Claudia Goldin, an economist at…
Amazon as a nonprofit
For most of Amazon’s history it made zero profit. That changed a couple years ago, but although its gross profit margin on revenues is now positive, it is still pretty negligible today. Amazon is a huge conglomerate these days, but…
Posted in Managerial Micro
Another ineffective health care treatment Americans waste money on
Gabrielle Glasier writes in The Atlantic about the problems of alcohol abuse and how it is treated in America. The United States already spends about $35 billion a year on alcohol- and substance-abuse treatment, yet heavy drinking causes 88,000 deaths…
Medianism 