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.

Solar power, education, inflation, and majors

China is really pushing the production of solar panels. Siemens has also invested a lot of money into solar power recently. I've heard people say that oil prices will only go up in the long term, but I wonder if energy prices will actually go down.

Some people talk about why the price of upper education has risen.

As the economy bottoms out, we look more towards inflation. With slow growth, I don't expect inflation to get out of control, though even if that were the case it seems to be a necessary condition for growth in this recovery period.

College students fret about their majors. I thought this has always been a problem for them, especially for liberal arts people.

Education, Google monopoly, racism, and behavioral economics

CalculatedRisk has graphs on unemployment rates and wages for different education levels. That things are tough for everyone isn't a surprise, nor is it a surprise that lower education levels are worse off. The degree is pretty striking, though.

Donald Marron lists three defenses Google can use in anti-trust cases. Not only is being a monopolist legal, but Google has a claim on not being a monopoly (in my opinion, the first and third reasons are the strongest ones).

David Henderson argues that free markets reduce racism by making the discriminators bear the cost of their prejudice. That is, if you refuse to do business with a certain type of person, then you're limiting the scope of your own business. On the other hand, if you're willing to do business with anyone, then you can make more money.

Geoff Riley offers his introduction to behavioral economics.

Africa, college gards, unemployment and stocks, children, and cheap condos.

William Easterly challenges Sachs in development issues, pointing out problems with Sachs's arguments, and problems in aid money. I think Easterly's position is often overstated by others--Easterly doesn't think that we shouldn't provide aid to Africa, necessarily. Easterly, instead, recognizes that much aid to Africa is wasted, and helping Africa requires some non-monetary reform.

Mike Shedlock tells us how hard the job market is for new college graduates. This isn't anything new, I think, but it is important. We know the job market is bad, Mike just tells us that it's also bad for recent college grads.

Felix Salmon shows us that unemployment and stocks are more coincident than we may have thought. I'd like to see more historical data, though it'd be understandable for unemployment to be more coincident with large changes in stock markets, unemployment being a less sensitive indicator, and both potentially being affected by other economic phenomena. Still, I'm not sure I buy it. The decline in the stock market from 2007 - 2008 alone seems within normal fluctuations and doesn't quite justify the rising unemployment rate.

Nancy Folbre warns us that kids may be the most severely effected by the recession. Parents' job loss can lead to instability in the home, which hurts education and hurts physical health due to lower quality food.

The amazing Tata is making $8000 condos. I wonder if this sort of thing will catch on in other parts of the world, as land becomes more scarce. Certainly, I would think this sort of thing would be popular among college students.

Local stuff, business models, infrastructure

Unsurprisingly, the economy is the top concern for Houstonians. The Harris County Sheriff wants federal stimulus money for a helicopter, a surveillance van, eight machine guns for their boats, and some other stuff. Is that really necessary? Not only do machine guns not provide jobs, but who exactly are they going to shoot? Is that really in their jurisdiction? Will that keep Harris County safe? Galveston is considering bringing in gambling. I wonder what studies there are to show the negative effects of casinos for a neighborhood or area. I suppose Nevada does casinos pretty well. Houston's job losses increased, though unemployment held constant. Dr. Barton Smith gives some commentary, though to clarify one point--he projects Houston will lose 56,000 more jobs over the next two years. That doesn't sound too bad. Houston home sales and prices continue to drop. Some people in Houston want some infrastructe expenditure to upgrade the power grid. I hope this gets off the ground.

I think this is a good example to use when I describe firms in the same industry with different business models. I often lack knowledge of real life examples of this. Pepsi is buying up their bottlers, while Coke chooses not to.

There was a lot of talk, recently, about Obama's high-speed rail plans. I've gotta say, I like the infrastructure spending, but I didn't really expect this in Obama's first 100 days. I expected a more along the lines of smart grids and high-speed internet access. I'm not sure how essential high-speed trains are, but I admit having realistic rail options would be nice. And, hey, maybe they'll have wireless internet access on them, too. If I could jump on a train and go from Houston to Chicago or New York in 4-6 hours, that'd be nice. I don't think that's very realistic, though. I wonder how much tickets would be.

Time v money, manufacturing jobs, future cities, R&D, advertising, recessions, Economics degrees, and Latin American data

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.

For students of Economics

The Economics Help blog poses a question--is Economics irrelevant if there is no scarcity? The answer seems to be yes. It's an interesting thought question, certainly.

And, some links about how a degree in Economics can help you.