Economics – Page 70 – Sound Economics

Podcasting: An Emerging Industry? (Part 3)

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Matthew Moreno — No Comments ↓

Last week I outlined the history of the podcast. I noticed that previous attempts to launch podcast-like services as organized business ventures had failed. Podcasting only took on its modern form around 2005, when it launched as an open-source method of embedding audio files in RSS feeds. The first user-side podcast service was the personal project of an ex-MTV host. These observations raise the question: why did podcasting emerge outside of the corporate sphere? This week we’ll investigate the emergence of podcasting by looking at it as a disruptive technology. What is a disruptive technology? NPR recently interviewed Ryan Knutson, Continue reading Podcasting: An Emerging Industry? (Part 3)→

Why Is College So Expensive?

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Lorraine Black — 1 Comment ↓

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

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Tesha Shalon — No Comments ↓

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

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Collin Hoover — No Comments ↓

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

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Connor Lennon — No Comments ↓

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

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Miranda Kraus — 1 Comment ↓

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→

Podcasting: An Emerging Industry? (Part 2)

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Matthew Moreno — No Comments ↓

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)→

Goodhart’s Law and Standardized Tests

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Lorraine Black — No Comments ↓

As the debate surrounding American education reform continues, more states are adopting a system of teacher evaluation that relies heavily (up to 50%) on their students’ standardized test scores. Considering the published studies showing correlations between increased test scores and student success in college and later in life, it’s not surprising that the Education Department has been encouraging school districts to adopt this new evaluation system. Eduardo Porter recently wrote an article for the Atlantic about these new education policies, and their potential for failure due to Goodhart’s law. Goodhart’s law was named after British economist Charles Goodhart, and explains how performance statistics Continue reading Goodhart’s Law and Standardized Tests→

For-Profit Schools

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Ricky Howard — 1 Comment ↓

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→

Ghosts of Economic Activity’s Past

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Miranda Kraus — No Comments ↓

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→