Economics textbooks say that the three main functions of money are 1) a unit of account (a measurement of value); 2) a medium of exchange; and 3) a store of value. As I wrote earlier, only the first two functions are really unique…
Economics textbooks say that the three main functions of money are 1) a unit of account (a measurement of value); 2) a medium of exchange; and 3) a store of value. As I wrote earlier, only the first two functions are really unique…
Life expectancy is the mean number of years someone is expected to live if conditions would remain the same in the future as they are in the current year. But because life expectancy is slightly skewed to the left, David…
Jane Mayer at the New Yorker has a profile of Robert Mercer, the reclusive Billionaire who probably invested more money in getting Trump elected than any other American (and we don’t know how much Putin spent). He not only directly…
There are many diseases that have been basically eradicated from rich countries because they are easy to cure with modern medicine, but they persist in poor nations for the lack of money for basic treatments. For example, I’ll be taking…
A property right is the right to exclude others’ access to something. It is the right to infringe on others’ freedom. These rights are socially determined and vary greatly across different societies. For example, do you think you should own…
Raj Chetty et al. published a study of the correlation of class and life expectancy that got a lot of press, but I hadn’t actually looked at the original publication until this week. Here is the correlation between life expectancy…
Interest in median income is much bigger in the US compared with the rest of the world according to Google Search Trends. Perhaps the US is more interested in median income because, as Brian Nolan, Max Roser, and Stefan Thewissen…
