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Monthly Archives: September 2011
Twitter shows we get up happy and get progressively grumpier.
Is there anything that we cannot learn from Twitter? It seems from a study of 509 million posts (wonder what p-value they used for the testing?) on Twitter that while we start the day happy, its downhill all the way. … Continue reading
Posted in topical stuff
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More than 500,000 years of right-handedness in Europe
Most people are right-handed, about 90% on average. Researchers have deployed ingenious means to investigate handedness in previous populations, for example by looking at skeletons one can tell which hand was used the most and by looking at striations (scratch … Continue reading
Posted in Brain/Psychology, research
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The earliest strike in history?
In my academic youth I worked on the economics of trade unions. In my biological youth, I was obsessed with ancient Egypt and I have been fortunate to travel there a bit. The photograph at the top of the blog … Continue reading
Posted in research
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Some unintended consequences of a drugs policy
Economics is (almost) all about incentives and one of the things economists enjoy doing is finding examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Often well intentioned policies have unfortunate effects because the incentives that arose from the policy hadn’t been … Continue reading
Posted in Policy, research
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Home or away: what to do with baby?
The choice of what form of child care to adopt for one’s children is important and emotionally laden, particularly for the child’s mother. Economic pressures may encourage the mother to “farm out” the child to someone else (either center-based care … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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The Brain drain
The recent increase in migration from Ireland has prompted some discussion about a “lsot generation” and the potential loss to the economy associated with a brain drain. This article by Gibson & McKenzie,in the Journal of Economic Perspectives (downloadable for … Continue reading
Posted in research
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College quality and college choice
The interest in measures of “college quality” (i.e. university rankings) assumes naturally that high quality is a good thing. It might seem to be true by definition. Another way of thinking about it is that for a student to do … Continue reading
Posted in Education, research
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Do college rankings matter for student choice?
The recent publication of the QS world rankings generated a lot of interest as well as criticism from various people, including me. A common response to such criticisms is to say “Like it or not, they matter to people so … Continue reading
Posted in Education, research
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Tipping and sexiness
I am sure that all readers of this blog are generous tippers. Whether I am, of course, is an ecumenical matter. An interesting question is :what are the determinants of tips? There is a fair of research on this from … Continue reading
Posted in research
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