Month: March 2015

The (brief) history of how podcasting came to somewhat surprised me as I was researching this article. The medium has existed through all of my adult and adult-ish life. I had always assumed that it was some corporate project (maybe of Apple?) that others jumped in on it. It turns out, this is not the case at all. In fact, almost the exact opposite occurred. The idea of serialized audio predates the advent of mainstream digital personal audio devices. NPR’s Planet Money ran an episode about a guy who claimed to have patented the concept. He ran a company called Personal Audio that delivered magazine articles read aloud to subscribers via cassette tape. Continue reading Podcasting: An Emerging Industry? (Part 2)→

First and foremost, Go Badgers. Now that I got that off my chest, I want to get into for-profit education. We see these commercials constantly for DeVry University, and University of Phoenix and I never really understand who goes to these strip mall universities, and what purpose they serve. It is interesting to consider why a school would choose to be for-profit rather than the more traditional and popular non-profit structure. In theory, these schools could be very effective at offering efficient education because it would be their profit-maximizing strategy to offer the best and cheapest education. This, I think, Continue reading For-Profit Schools→

  Over spring break, I drove to Utah with a group of friends to camp in a couple of the incredible national parks that the state has to offer. The drive consisted of a little over 1,000 miles and traveling through the depths of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and finally, Utah. On the rare occasion that our route deviated from the major highways, I noticed a few disheveled clumps of chipped-painted buildings and houses that looked like nobody had gone inside of them in years. I quickly realized these ill-fated areas were ghost towns. Simply put, ghost towns are abandoned cities that contain Continue reading Ghosts of Economic Activity’s Past→

I’m sure many Sound Economics readers regularly use podcasts to get econ-related news and discussion. Personally, I regularly tune in to APM’s Marketplace, NPR’s Planet Money, and and WBUR’s Here and Now. Although podcasts are likely not particularly obscure among our audience, they do not register much with the vast majority of the American public: just 29 percent of Americans had ever listened to a podcast. In fact, the medium is so niche that when This American Life released its podcast-only spin-off show Serial, it provided a special YouTube instructional video on how to use it. It so happens that that project, Serial, quickly became Continue reading Podcasting: An Emerging Industry? (Part 1)→

As our bloggers take a well-deserved Spring Break, I’m sharing a new feature on the blog. Our Photo Gallery will be the home for pictures of campus events involving economics students. So, check it out, leave a comment or two, and enjoy!

In many economics classes, technology is seen as a positive: more advanced technologies being used in production can lower costs and increase efficiency. Firms that are on top of their industry’s respective tech tend to be more successful. People also love technology in their social lives: social media, communication and news are one and the same now, with every aspect of your life weaved seamlessly into one device. While technological advances are seen as positive in most social environments and economic markets, it might not be so great for the job market. According to Michael Osbourne of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Continue reading Are Robots Going to Take our Jobs?→

Last week I talked about ambiguity aversion; how we prefer known risks to unknown risks. Although guilt aversion does not revolve as much around probability, it does play a large role in gift giving and shopping. To put this idea into context, behavioral economist Dan Ariely describes a scenario in which you encounter a coat at a store that you would like to buy, but realize it’s twice as expensive as you originally guessed and decide you cannot justify buying it. You get home to see that your significant other has bought you the exact same coat out of your Continue reading Is Amazon Prime a Method of Guilt Aversion?→