Dedicated to Ross Martin, teacher.
What does a myth about a fountain and some glasses of milk have to do with climate change?
I’ll tell you, and in so doing let you in on the moment I first became really interested in economics.
I must have been about five. My Dad’s bedtime story concerned a wonderful plan by a village to have its fountain in the town square spurt forth milk the next morning
"Parentonomics lays bare what most sleep-deprived parents only dream about.
Forget about inflation and unemployment. Here an economist uses game theory to tackle really important topics, such as toilet training and fussy eaters."
Melbourne Business School Professor Economics Joshua Gans new book will be out in six weeks.
It is deeply personal.
He reports that he is selling the first copy on
"The outrageous success of bottled water, in a country where more than 89 percent of tap water meets or exceeds federal health and safety regulations, regularly wins in blind taste tests against name-brand waters, and costs 240 to 10,000 times less than bottled water, is an unparalleled social phenomenon, one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries." -
Are you finding it hard to buy a house in Canberra?
Does it seem to you as if the people who own houses want far more for them than they are actually worth?
They almost certainly do, and a cutting-edge experiment using brain scans has just told us why.
The team led by Brian Knutson from Stanford University couldn’t actually scan the brains of people who were buying and selling houses. It would
At least don't make it your rule of thumb.
Until now you have probably thought that you were good at maths. You probably thought you got value for money when you shopped.
You might be about to discover that you were wrong on both counts.
The Competition and Consumer Commission is likely to recommend a compulsory national system of “unit pricing” as a result of its grocery inquiry. Family First
When you go out looking for petrol today what do you expect to pay? Will it be 169.9 cents per litre, or perhaps 164.9?
Whatever the price, it is certain to end in a nine.
But why, when we all know that for practical purposes 169.9 is 170?
Surely it can’t be because we’re all fooled into believing that we are paying a lower price?
The reassuring news just published in the journal
"The outrageous success of bottled water, in a country where more than 89 percent of tap water meets or exceeds federal health and safety regulations, regularly wins in blind taste tests against name-brand waters, and costs 240 to 10,000 times less than bottled water, is an unparalleled social phenomenon, one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries." -
Australia’s oil imports have collapsed under the weight of higher prices and the resulting changes in consumer behaviour.
Trade figures released yesterday show that just 1.6 billion litres were imported in May – well down on the long-term average of 2 billion litres per month.
May volumes were down 28 per cent on those imported a year earlier.
The change gives heart to those who have claimed
If you give it to someone else.
The results are in, and they look pretty conclusive.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia and the Harvard Business School have just confirmed it in three ways.
First they surveyed 600 Americans and asked how much they spent on themselves and how much they gave away or spent on other people.
Asking how happy each was they found that personal
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