A study shows that advertisements that reference time are more appealing than those that reference money. Spending time with something is more appealing than spending money on something. On the subject of consumer appeal, prices that end in 9 are also more attractive, the NYT reports.
James Joyner won't miss manufacturing jobs. Good riddance! I think this similar sort of discussion occurs whenever we lose jobs in certain sectors... probably in any country.
Ryan Hahn talks about cities of the future, sparked by Tim Harford. In my undergraduate years, I spoke in class of future cities as well. When the world becomes "too crowded," we'll just start building up or down. Massive towers of people and communities. Worried about land for food? The towers will have greenhouses. Worried about energy? Cover the towers in solar panels (there are certainly a myriad of energy solutions). This, of course, is an imagination of the extremely distant future, forced into existance by strong price incentives.
A discussion at the Angry Bear about R&D spending in the new budget. Technological progress drives economies, so I hope the money goes to good projects.
Southwest Airlines has sold adverising space to Sports Illustrated--on the side of their planes. This has got to be a marketing gimmick of some sort. Certainly, the people inside the plane can't see the advertisement, and you can't really see the side of a plane very well while it's in flight. You probably can't even see it from inside the airport! The only time this gets viewed is by the very limited number of people who can see the plane as it's coming in our leaving.
More on the recession: The NY Fed predicts an end by the end of the year, based on historical empirical evidence. Managers are more likely to take a pay cut, but lower workers have a harder time finding a replacement job. Menzie Chinn weighs in on the Mankiw-Krugman-DeLong unit root v trend stationary debate. I thought the debate got a little too personal when Mankiw dared Krugman to wager some of his Nobel money on the issue. As if there would even be a clear end to the data! Robert Waldmann laments on the implausibility of macroeconomic arguments. The Everyday Economist quotes anti-New-Keynesians.
The SCSU Scholars comment on how awesome a major Economics is. I agree it's pretty awesome, though I'd agrue that a major in Math gives you more options than Economics does (though, Math may be the only major which gives more career options than Math). I've been thinking that a restructuring of Economics programs may be a good idea, though. At least at my university, I think there should be more of a focus on political science and math. We give the students too many pure-economics classes to take, and they don't get much insight into how economics plays in the real world and what economics is like at the professional level.
Anyways, here's some great Latin American and Caribbean data.
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