Month: April 2015

Why Is College So Expensive?

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You’ve probably heard about/experienced the many hardships of being a college* student (and the perks!). Many of the struggles students encounter while going through college can be boiled down to one thing: tuition. College is expensive, pretty much no matter where a student enrolls. As of 2013, about 70% of college students graduated with an average of $28,400 in debt. Why is tuition so high? When I still lived in my hometown of Sacramento, CA, UC Davis students were constantly protesting tuition hikes and class cuts. Many were essentially paying a ton of money to try and take classes they couldn’t Continue reading Why Is College So Expensive?→

Self-Signaling: Why Wearing Fakes Makes us Cheat More

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In economics we define signaling, in simple terms, as a message sent to a receiver containing information about the party sending it, which is assumed to be credible. A well-known example is sending signals with education. When you walk into a doctors office and see his framed diplomas from prestigious medical schools you trust him more. These diplomas are a signal from the doctor to the patient about their credibility and ability to perform. But this definition involves two parties, one sending and one receiving the information. A concept that is largely overlooked in the field of economics is “self-signaling”. Continue reading Self-Signaling: Why Wearing Fakes Makes us Cheat More→

Choosing a Thesis Topic

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Next week is registration for fall semester, which means Economics majors planning on graduating will be signing up for thesis seminar! This year the economics thesis will become an “In Progress” course, which will allow thesis students to have two semesters to write their theses, and students can choose between three professors. The economic thesis professors are Kate Stirling, Matt Warning, and Bruce Mann, and the structure of the classes are designed to be similar. They all, however, have different research backgrounds and foci as economics professors. It is recommended that thesis students choose a professor that focuses what you want to study. Professor Stirling has a Continue reading Choosing a Thesis Topic→

An Outside look In

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Authors: Tesha Shalon and Connor Lennon Often times here, on this blog and elsewhere in the discipline, economics can be a little insular. We’re happy to take our models and insights to how our discipline applies elsewhere, but rarely do we bring in other disciplines to provide an opinion back. So we decided to ask non-economics professors and majors to tell us what they thought economics was. We posed a two part question to the group: 1.) What, in your own words, is economics? and 2.) Is economics useful, why or why not? Without further ado, these are their responses: Continue reading An Outside look In→

A New Trend in Emissions and Economic Progress

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Two weeks ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that in 2014, there was a decoupling of economic growth and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. As the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 3%, global emissions totaled to 32.3 billion tons, which was the same amount emitted in 2013. There were many reasons for this paramount shift, but to sum things up, many countries in different stages of development are finding considerable and effective methods in curbing their carbon emissions on both a household and industrial level. This is the first time in 40 years that a halt in global CO2 emissions wasn’t tied to a huge Continue reading A New Trend in Emissions and Economic Progress→