Economics Guest Speaker: Rod Fort

Friday, October 14, 2016
203 Carl Wimberly Hall
3:30-5:00 PM

Rod is a professor, Sport Management at University of Michigan School of Kinesiology and the Co-Director, Michigan Center for Sport Management . He will be presenting "Monetary Cost of Concussion: The Case of Major League Baseball Players."

Economics Guest Speaker: Joel Foster

Tuesday, September 20, 2016
1309 Centennial Hall
6:00-7:30 PM

Joel is with the Grassroots Leadership Academy. He will be presenting “The Power of Economic Freedom” :A discussion of the Economic Freedom Index, what it is, and how activists can use it to measure the current economic freedom of the United States.

Celebration of Student Inquiry Conference - Friday Apr 29, 3:00PM in Centennial 3213

You are invited to attend the Celebration of Student Inquiry in Economics, which will be held this Friday afternoon from 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM.  

The keynote presentation will feature economics undergraduate honors student Matt Nicholson's presentation of his honors thesis, which will begin at 3:00 PM in Centennial 3213.

We will then walk across the hall to rooms 3212 and 3214 where students in managerial economics and economic development will present their final projects in a poster presentation format.

Seminar Speaker: Shatanjaya Dasgupta

Please join us for the next Economics Department seminar on Friday, April 1 in 203 Wimberly Hall, 3:30-5:00 PM

Shatanjaya Dasgupta is from the Department of Economics at Beloit College. She will present "Paying for Violence? Spousal Abuse and Son Preference in India"

Seminar Speaker: Travis Minor

Please join us for the next Economics Department seminar on Friday, April 1 in 203 Wimberly Hall, 3:30-5:00 PM

Travis is an Assistant Director of Economics at the US Food and Drug Administration. He will present "The Effect of Nutrition Labeling on Consumers' Diet and Dietary Knowledge"

Pro-Social and Fair Monkeys

Below is an excellent video on pro-social behavior and fairness among monkeys. The good stuff is at 12:00min and 14:40. Monkeys demonstrate interdependent utility functions.

Nudge

Behavioral Econ gets a department in the UK government. A report on the group and the concept of nudge from BBC4.

Reasoning in Economics

Here is a discussion about behavioral econ, psych, and inductive versus deductive reasoning. It is wonderful throughout.

An interesting talk on India

This is quite an interesting talk on India. What makes it more interesting is that Shashi Tharoor is a dynamic speaker

Here is the link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/shashi_tharoor.html

Office Solutions: Econ Style

Check out this new podcast on behavioral economics. The first one discusses the bargaining versus the primadonna solution for who cleans out the coffee pot when the Administrative Assistant is laid off.

The Monty Hall Problem

Check out this article by John Tierney based on an economist's work that argues that previous studies on cognitive dissonance and how we rationalize our choices fail due to a statistical problem known as "The Monty Hall Problem".

The Economics of Repugnance

Check out today's New York Times article "Economists Dissect the 'Yuck' Factor" by Patricia Cohen.

Here's the introduction:
You can kill a horse to make pet food in California, but not to feed a person. You can hoist a woman over your shoulder while running a 253-meter obstacle course in the Wife-Carrying World Championship in Finland, but you can’t hold a dwarf-tossing contest in France. You can donate a kidney to prevent a death and be hailed as a hero, but if you take any money for your life-saving offer in the United States, you’ll be jailed.

These prohibitions are not imposed because of concerns about health or safety or unfair practices, some economists say, but because people tend to find such activities repugnant. In other words, just hearing about them can cause a queasy sensation in the pit of your stomach.

People don’t pay enough attention to how repugnance affects decisions about what can be bought and sold, asserts Alvin Roth, an economist at Harvard University.

Interestingly, one of the conclusions is: Often introducing money into the exchange — putting it into the marketplace — is what people find repugnant. Mr. Bloom asserted that money is a relatively new invention in human existence and therefore “unnatural.”

Consumed

National Public Radio has been providing different views about our consumer society under the title" Consumed Is our consumer society sustainable?" On its web site npr states the objectives of the series as: "...Is our consumer society sustainable? Marketplace and American Public Media take on that question in this special series. We follow consumerism from its origins to its dominance in the world's economy and, arguably, its culture. And we examine how, and if, it might be adapted to reduce its destructive consequences while keeping store shelves stocked."

Audio reports, web stories and blogs are dealing with the effects consumption is having on individuals, families, regions, nations, environments. It tells stories like how a Chinese woman gained a net worth of $10 billion with our garbage or how a country, Bhutan, which was closed off from the rest of the world changed since they opened their doors seven years ago.

Radiohead: "How much are we worth to you?"

Check out this fun experiment in behavioral economics by the band Radiohead, as reported in the October 4, 2007 NY Times article "Radiohead Fans, Guided by Conscience (and Budget)".

Since Sunday, when this British rock band announced that it would independently release its first studio album since 2003 as a pay-what-you-wish download on Oct. 10, there has been a perfect storm of interest among fans and industry watchers. Online and in record stores, clubs, bars and label and public relations offices, the announcement was hotly debated, a de facto referendum on what to do about illegal file-sharing and the declining music business, spurred by one of rock's most respected and forward-looking bands.

. . .

In fact, Radiohead's move is as much an experiment in consumer behavior and the socially acceptable cost of art as it is a way to distribute records. Each donation is a sort of commentary: on the nature of fandom and band loyalty, on the indier-than-thou current rock scene, and on the worth of buying -- not sampling or stealing -- new music.

''It could change the feelings about free downloading,'' said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. ''If the band is willing to trust you to pay what's fair, all of a sudden, for the people who have been saying it's not stealing to download the song for free, it's much more difficult to rationalize that. I think it may be a brilliant move in that dimension.''

Mr. Loewenstein, whose specialty is behavioral economics and who has studied the relationship between emotions and financial decision-making, added: ''It's almost like supporting a sports team or donating to a political candidate. You're selling to the world how much you like them by how much you pay.'' Most important, he said, ''how much you are willing to pay signals something to yourself about who you are: are you exploitative? Are you a tightwad?''