Blog entries tagged Economics

What is Kate Winslet Worth?

Rajan Sambandam — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:13:49 +0100

The answer is 60 million pounds. At least that’s the answer according to the UK Film Council that has started a novel program (an “audit”) to evaluate the value of creative people for their country. The first data point in the analysis was Kate Winslet and the process is now being referred to as the Winslet algorithm.

There is plenty of data to show that babies born in the winter do worse later in life than babies born at other times on a variety of criteria such as being less educated, less intelligent, less paid and so on. Several explanations have been proposed in the past including pesticide levels in water at certain times of the year. But the mystery has continued to persist for a while. Recently researchers Kasey Buckles and Daniel Hungerman Read More...

Is the Economy Turning the Corner?

Rajan Sambandam — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:18:33 +0100

You can find plenty of people who will argue both sides and it can be difficult to disentangle the arguments and the data from personal biases. But what is hard to argue is that most of these discussions can get muddy very quickly unless you are well versed in the intricacies of economic data. What would be really nice is a user friendly (preferably animated) visualization of relevant data that tells us what is happening and is likely to happenRead More...

Books: Against the Gods

Rajan Sambandam — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein

Given what has been happening in the economy recently, this book (written ten years ago) provides an excellent foundation for understanding how we ended up here. In telling the story of risk, Bernstein focuses on how much people believe the past determines the future. The more we believe we understand the past, the more certain we are of what will happen in the future. Quantifying the past helps enormously in bringing certaRead More...

Can Money Buy Happiness?

Rajan Sambandam — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0100

This question has been asked for millennia and before any research was done there were three possible answers: yes, no, maybe so. After some research was done in the 70's, we had what was called as the Easterlin paradox which seemed to show that money and happiness were not related. More recent research from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with data from many countries around the globe seems to indicate that people with more money are, in fact, happier.

Insighter: Stephano DellaVigna

Rajan Sambandam — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Does movie violence increase crime? Does Fox News have an impact on voting? Do people pay not to go the gym? Are companies correct in expecting that investors pay less attention to information released on Friday? These and other interesting questions are asked and answered by Stefano DellaVigna, an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. To study movie violence, he and his colleagues looked at actual crime statistics surrounding movie releases, rather thRead More...

Insighter: Emily Oster... and family

Rajan Sambandam — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:58:10 +0100

Emily Oster is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the University of Chicago. Her research reaches outside the traditional boundaries of economics to larger health and policy questions. Her claim to fame is her disputing the Nobel winner Amartya Sen's contention from two decades ago that there were 100 million "missing" women, quite possibly because of misogynistic attitudes in developing countries.

She showed that prevalence of Hepatitis B accounted for half of them because it sRead More...