Category Archives: Economics

As you’re reading the words “Buddhist Economics” you may jump to the conclusion that it seems like an oxymoron. But the field and study of Buddhist economics, which has some overlap with areas of behavioral economics, is one that is starting to develop and even be taught at schools like UC Berkely. I love economics, but after every course I took I felt unsettled with the underlying assumptions the models make about us as humans, and how related fields such as finance and marketing are heavily focused on making money and convincing people to spend it on things they don’t Continue reading Is Buddhist Economics an Oxymoron?→

As America prepares for the country’s biggest unofficially official holiday of the year, better known as the Super Bowl, many very hard hitting questions are making the rounds online and on social media. Some examples are: What color will the Gatorade poured over the winning coach be? Will “Left Shark” make an appearance on stage during the Super Bowl Halftime Show? How many times will the word ‘dab’ be said by CBS Super Bowl broadcast duo Jim Nantz and Phil Simms during the game? Or my personal favorite, will the winning team score more points than the percentage of votes Continue reading Betting on Gatorade Baths→

As you may know, government officials around the world are currently deliberating in Paris in an attempt to create a legally binding agreement to combat climate change at COP21. Beginning on November 30th, and lasting until December 11th, the UN Paris Climate Talks are aiming to build a “Paris Climate Alliance” capable of keeping the average global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius that is universal, flexible, balanced, and dynamic. Policymakers have been working away at a draft text that went from a lengthy 34,678 words and 1,609 unresolved brackets, to a current 19,733 words and 361 unresolved brackets. Although Continue reading COP21 and 2 Degrees→

Economimist Martin Armstrong recently claimed that the monetary value taken in by police seizures exceeded the monetary value of damages due to burglary. In 2014, around $4.5 billion dollars were seized by the police while only $3.9 billion dollars were lost by burglaries. As Martin writes, “this means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.” Now, this is a somewhat arbitrary comparison; the fact that one value exceeds the other doesn’t hold any inherent meaning in particular. A large part of police seizures come from drug trafficking networks and other criminal syndicates not directly connected to Continue reading Police Seizures Balloon→

As the fall semester winds down, keep in mind that it’s never too early to start thinking about summer internships. Here is an research internship through the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, on the economic impact of offshore fishing tournaments. This opportunity might be right for you if you have an interest in natural resource or environmental economics. Application information is here: credentials must be submitted by May 1, 2016, and expected internship dates are from June to September.

I write about wealth inequality sometimes, it’s an important issue in the US (at least to me). The distribution of wealth is incredibly skewed. The US’ wealthiest people (400 of them) own more wealth than 61% of the country. I always wondered what would happen if some of them just gave up a bunch of their wealth to those less fortunate, and not in a controlled superficially-philanthropic way, but a massive Ebenezer Scrooge-ish dump of their assets. Mark Zuckerberg almost made my dream come true yesterday when he announced he was giving away 99% of his and his wife’s worth in Facebook stock, Continue reading Mark Zuckerberg’s Really, Really Impure Altruism→