This week’s everyday economics involves opportunity cost, regulation, behavioral economics, GDP, automation, innovation, supply and demand and productivity.
Our Weekly Roundup: From Being Cool to Being a Wise Investor
This week’s everyday economics stories included spillover, externalities, incentive, opportunity cost, sovereign debt, demand and financial intermediaries.
Where Have All the Milkmen Gone?
Structural change in the economy involves new technology replacing old and eliminating jobs like milkmen, icemen, gas lamplighters and typists.
The Long Life of the 3 to 4 Minute Song
Moving from records to digital, the music industry has undergone creative destruction but the length of a song between 3 and 4 minutes has been the same.
From Estonia: Cheap International Calls, Priceless Tweets
Estonia’s market economy resulted from eurozone membership, human capital and infrastructure development and fiscal discipline.
Do Real Entrepreneurs Have to be Rich?
Because startups tend to be small, do not focus on innovation nor growth, they are a less accurate measure of entrepreneurship than self-made billionaires.
Note to Self… Entrepreneurial Activity Shapes Our World.
Asked about how much market research he did for the iPad, Steve Jobs said, “None. It’s not the consumer’s job to know that they want.” Art Fry could have said the same thing. His story is a good one… But first, where are…
If Milk is Good For Us, Why Are We Drinking Less?
Do you remember those milk mustaches? We first heard “Got Milk?” in 1993. I loved the campaign because, in class, it was the ideal way to illustrate a market that resembled perfect competition. Since firms are small and their products…
Software's Creative Destruction
During 1989, a computer scientist wrote a memo in which he explained how information could be shared through a computer network. Two years later we had the first web pages and by 1998, one quarter of the US population was using them. Just…
The Robot Milkers That Cows Like
It appears that cows prefer robot milkers. Rather than following a human schedule of pre-dawn mornings and late afternoons, the robots respond to what the cows want. Perhaps 5 or 6 times a day, the cows line up in front…