Weekly Roundup: From Area Codes to Toilets

This week’s economic news summary included looking at human capital from a health care and college perspective and at area codes as conspicuous consumption.

Why We Care About Our Area Code

Conveying a message about its place of origin, an area code becomes a status symbol that displays conspicuous consumption.

Weekly Roundup: From Uber Drivers to Gasoline Prices

Our economic news summary includes labor regulation and Uber, the GDP and streets, gasoline price fluctuation, food and inequality and markets and syrup.

What Our Food Says About Us

Because middling food like hamburgers is consumed by most people in the affluent West, what we eat does not necessarily reflect inequality or social status.

Weekly Roundup: From Data Spies to Ivory Trackers

Our economic news summary ranges from elasticity and a Berkeley soda tax to the minimum wage and the cost of living, to the power of the market and ivory.

How Your Lawn is About More Than Grass

Nothing but grass, lawns began as conspicuous consumption from the English and French aristocracy and now are a middle class manicured status symbol.

Weekly Roundup: From Desirable Currency to Rejected Coins

Our everyday economics includes gender gap, human capital, competition, regulation, opportunity cost, money supply, currency and conspicuous consumption.

Where Prada is Called Ordinary

Purchasing less expensive luxury goods like Prada and Louis Vuitton, China’s growing middle class displays Thorstein Veblen’s conspicuous consumption.

Weekly Roundup: From Shopping More to Driving Less

Our everyday economics includes tradeoffs, debt ceiling, fiscal policy, GDP, productivity, entitlements, regulation, autonomous vehicles, and innovation.

Why We Want New iPhones

A competitive strategy, planned obsolescence is controversial. It can spur innovation and growth or represent corporate waste and consumer manipulation.