economics

Girl power! Kind of? Women and sex trafficking

February 13, 2009

So, you know how there’s this whole market for trafficking women for sex?  Well, apparently, in a reversal of roles, women are now targeting men for sex and acting as their pimps. The first international report into the scope of human trafficking, published yesterday, found a disproportionate number of female perpetrators, more than in any other crime, selling other women into slavery in countries including Australia. My first question is obviously how the study was designed, statistics, outliers, r squared ...

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Because “Breastaraunt” coming from NPR is a funny word

February 10, 2009

(from hootersgear.com.  Obvs.) NPR and Jezebel have caught my eye as reporting about a new trend in restaurants: According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Hooters racked up (ahem) nationwide sales of $997 million last year, a two-percent improvement over 2007. For the sake of comparison, Ruby Tuesday “reported a $37.4 loss in the most recent quarter.” While everyone knows that Ruby Tuesday’s is HORRIBLE, it seems that, like Wal Mart, other lower middle class places such as Hooter’s are thriving in ...

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Making sense of econbabble: Real vs. nominal values

January 29, 2009

(source: Cincinnati Enquirer) I recently had a client ask me for the difference between real and nominal prices in some data they were looking at. As an economist, this was one of the easiest questions I dealt with: real and nominal prices are one of the handful of pliers and wrenches in the Economic Vocabulary Toolbox that we deal with. However, I remember when I first started taking economics classes, at the crack of dawn (10:00 AM in college time), ...

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Helpful Economics Forum

January 26, 2009

Often when I was an undergrad majoring in economics, and even now, using living, breathing economics as a career, I would often have many questions that the people around me, especially busy professors, sometimes couldn’t answer.  That’s why I think it’s so great that I came across this site.  If you are either student or working with econometrics, please contribute to this community and help it grow. This one looks particularly interesting for me, but  I highly urge you to ...

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Predictions on the Economy from a Dismal Scientist

January 25, 2009

Since most everyone in my extended family knows that I am an economist, I get frequently asked when the recession will end, as if I am Frodo holding the ring to throw into Mount Doom, where Mount Doom is really a combination of Freddie Mae, Citiman Brothers, and Goldman Ford. So, here goes: The economy will hit the bottom in the third quarter of 2009 and start slightly trending upward in the fourth quarter. What does this mean, and how ...

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