Happiness, universities, Africa, and income gaps

What makes you happy? And, how much is your happiness worth?

The success rate of universities and their prices are brought to question. Do "better" universities have more of an incentive to graduate their students (who might be in wealthier families or are well-connected)? James Hamilton pointed out that students seem to prefer prestigious research universities. Seems to me that the job market prefers students from prestigious research universities.

As much as Africa is progressing, they don't have very many trade links, and are disconnected from the global economy.

Some money news. Poverty is up, and income is down.

Unemployment rate <10%, income distribution, IV, the recession's end, and unemployment again

Nate Silver makes the claim that the unemployment rate won't hit 10%. Bold, considering there are many expecting it to go well above 10%.

People in the top .01% have 6% of the nation's income, the highest ever. It's interesting how it was so low for so long.

The Economist has an interesting article on instrumental variables. The gist: they attain more accurate answers to less broad questions. Instrumental variables are tools, however. We should never rely on one tool in our toolbox--that has always led us astray. That's just like articles bashing macroeconomics due to "bad" econometric forecasting.

According to this graph, a lot of economists seem to think that the recession is over. That's the WSJ, though, so take that with a grain of salt. The more interesting part, in my opinion, is that the unemployment predictions, on average, don't hit 10%. More predictions here.