Sound Economics

What can explain why we do something out of the goodness of our heart, or put ourselves into dangerous situations and perform heroic acts? Most heroes that you ask will tell you that they acted instinctively and unconsciously, and didn’t stop to think. But clearly if we all stopped to think about helping and saving others from a purely economical standpoint, there would be a sharp decline in heroic acts. So why do we continue to put ourselves in situations that can be proven to always leave us with lower payoffs? Some explanations turn to the long run and karma; Continue reading The Game of Genuine Altruism→

I thought I would take this opportunity early on in the semester to take another look at one of the bigger stories of the summer: the brief time in June and July Greece stood on the brink of default and the Eurozone stood on the edge of crisis. Not only was the international media thoroughly aflutter over the situation, but emergency measures imposed on Greeks at best proved a severe inconvenience. Most visibly, capital controls curtailed the ability of Greeks to access their savings, leading to long lines for ATMs.   NPR’s Planet Money team interviewed a man who, disillusioned Continue reading Groundhog Day in Greece→

This is the first installment of our Friday interview series! Every Friday a Sound Economics contributor will conduct an interview with a current student (or alumni). Some economics students spent the summer conducting research, studying abroad, or doing an internship. This is a chance to hear more about their experiences. Since we’re still organizing interviews, I’ll start with my own internship. I interned at a small company (Karson Management) in Boston over the summer – it offered financial services to a wide variety of companies. Initially I thought they offered some sort of financial consulting (i.e. risk management). This was true, but the firm did much more Continue reading Friday Interviews (name pending)!→

I thought it would be appropriate to open up the semester with a gem from my summer reading: the MONIAC Computer. I discovered it in Tim Hartford’s The Undercover Economist. It’s an analog macro-economic simulator developed in the late 1940’s by Bill Phillips, who at the time studied at the London School of Economics. Digital computers, which readily “crunch” numerical simulations for us today, were in their infancy at the time. So, Bill Phillips used a carefully arranged series of tanks and tubes through which moved an actual, physical fluid to simulate the flow of money in the UK economy. The Wikipedia Continue reading A Summertime Gem to Start the Semester→

Welcome to another year of Sound Economics! Starting this Monday, we’ll be bringing you a daily dose of economic news and features on economics students here at the University of Puget Sound. This semester we will: introduce you to our new team of writers; feature several discussions of our theme for the semester: increased minimum wage proposals; present a new collection of profiles of student internships, student research, and economics department alumni. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook, or sign up for our daily e-mail digest!