Category Archives: Economics

Seeing as I just presented my thesis findings at the UPS Economics Poster Session, I thought it would be relevant to post about an aspect of my thesis that I found myself explaining to a few people over the course of the evening. My thesis was centered on ethnicity, and how a person’s ethnicity impacts their earnings capacity. This measure of wealth is different than the more widely used measures, like their income in relation to the rest of the nation. Earnings capacity is essentially the potential earnings an individual could make through their lifetime if they leverage their personal capital Continue reading Earnings Capacity: A better indicator of poverty than income.→

I’ve written a few posts over the past year about humor in economics. Humor in the field, it seems sometimes, is a desert. Not necessarily for its desolation, but for its dryness. However, this gem from APM’s Marketplace caught my eye for its extreme lack of moisture. A paper entitled “A Few Goodmen: Surname-Sharing Economist Coauthors” was presented at a recent American Economics Association in Boston. Its main finding:    We believe this paper is the first written by four economists who share a surname. From the conclusion section,   Future breakthroughs on this topic should be possible. We believe much could be Continue reading Some Arid Economic Humor→

Those of you who read Sound Economics last year might remember that in the spring we had a special column dubbed “Thesis Corner”. This semester we are bringing it back and this time we are featuring theses written by the class of 2015. If there are any seniors that you would like to see on the Thesis Corner, or if you are an Economics senior that would like to be, get in touch with me at cehoover@pugetsound.edu. Our first thesis on the column is by Taylor Smith, who also happens to be the ASAPS Director of Business Services. You can come see him present his thesis, along Continue reading Thesis Corner | Taylor Smith→

In 1982, Nobel Prize winning psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman conducted a study of how framing affects decision-making. They created a scenario and asked two groups of participants to choose the program that was most optimal. This scenario was called the “Asian disease problem” and it yielded surprising results. Try it for yourself: “Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume the exact scientific estimate of the consequences of the programs are as follows”:   Continue reading The Science of Decision-Making: Framing→

I thought Connor’s post yesterday was interesting in the way it took a game theoretic approach to the last play of Sunday’s Super Bowl. So, sorry if you were looking for something other than football, but you will have to give us a break just for this week. I wanted to look at the strategy choices of the team that won the game on the last play rather than the team who has been scrutinized so heavily this entire week. Every play in football is an instance of game theory. Teams are trying to keep their opponents off guard by changing and Continue reading Bill Belichick Knows Game Theory→