Category Archives: Economics

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?→

It seems like one can’t go anywhere on the internet without being exposed to some sort of obnoxiously catchy title that is practically begging to be clicked on. Whether it’s a slideshow of before-and-after weight loss pictures that will “blow your mind,” or an article talking about an obsolete cultural phenomenon that “only 90s kids will understand,” these links have permeated nearly every social media site and search engine. These attention-seeking articles are known as linkbait. Linkbait (also known as clickbait, although some people argue that they are different), is a type of digital advertising technique that showcases a story with a provocative Continue reading The Economics of Buzzfeed→

At first blush, Jeopardy and spreadsheets might seem like they don’t have a lot in common. However, together they illustrate the quantum leap economic automation is poised to take. NPR’s Planet Money recently ran a great episode on the genesis of computer spreadsheets. In a nutshell, before computer spreadsheets accounting clerks kept giant paper spreadsheets by hand. This was a laborious, error-prone system. Once computer spreadsheets arrived on the market, those clerical positions began to evaporate. However, non-clerical accounting positions expanded rapidly. The computer spreadsheet also allowed the financial sector to grow rapidly. So there was a loss of jobs due to automation, Continue reading Spreadsheets, Jeopardy, and Automation→