Source: Email from Hagar

Zimbabwe’s most recent rate of inflation is now 8,000%. Sadly it appears that the current period of relatively low inflation is over and according to the IMF by the end of this year inflation could reach 100,000%.
The Zimbabwean finance minister scoffed at such reports calling them pure speculation. The official Zimbabwe monetary position is [...]

In the past economics students studied widgets and macro-economic cycles. It appears that today’s students have eschewed such dry content in favor of analyzing lap dances and monthly cycles. Three economics researchers published their study on the differences in suggestive behavior exhibited by strippers during different parts of their monthly fertility cycles. As described [...]

Red
From Marginal Revolution:

Advertising Age calculates that around $100 million has been spent blanketing billboards and magazines with images of Bono and other “celebrities”, while the total sum raised for Africa is $18 million.
Just to be clear… Total spent on making Bono more famous = $100 million.
[...]

We’ve all heard about the best selling Tipping Point and it’s seemingly omnipresent Malcolm Gadwell. Something about it never sat right with me. Turns out that I was not alone and some good folks at Harvard Business review have taken it apart.

In his best seller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that “social epidemics” are [...]

Money, as the Beatles once said, can’t buy you love. But according to a new survey, wealth can bring you hotter, nastier, make-you-scream sex.
It’s true! According to economics blogger Marginal Revolution, 70% of today’s multimillionaires said being wealthy gave them “better sex.” Not only that, but a majority also said wealth gave them “more [...]

Economists at Columbia and Berkeley have developed a new way to measure a country’s corruption: find out how often their UN diplomats don’t pay their parking tickets.
Prior to November 2002, UN diplomats in New York City faced no penalties for not paying their parking tickets. So, theorized Ray Fisman of Columbia and Edward Miguel of [...]

…but if downward trend continues, well that’s another story.
In an article about public relations tips for economists (Marginal Revolution), economists were warned to not ignore local news in favor of more prestigious outlets:
Get over your snobbery about local television news. Remember that the local TV reporter’s gasoline-price story this evening will be seen by [...]

Which of the following is true? [Answers are in the comments section.]
1. Team payroll and team wins are not strongly correlated in the major U.S. sports?
2. Labor disputes and lock-outs do not have a long-run negative effect on attendance and receipts?
3. Problems of competitive balance come from the distribution of playing talent, and sports leagues [...]

Sometimes sound economic policy isn’t nearly as much fun as populist knee-jerk, long-term-be-damned politics, but that’s life. Marginal Revolution discusses one topical example:

Forget about how much you like either oil companies or taxes. Let’s boil down the comparison to either taxing profits or taxing gasoline prices.
Taxing profits will reduce the incentive to increase future [...]

Many years ago I learned to treat stock analysts reports with more than a grain of salt. In case you haven’t yet reached that same conclusion you might want to read this blog posting which details how poorly Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter projections on Netflix and Blockbuster video played out over a period of [...]

Chad weighing in on “what are the government’s most harmful programs”. (See this link to the first post on this series and Insider’s list).
I basically believe that all government programs at the federal level outside defense (including border enforcement), foreign policy, interstate commerce regulation, and revenue collection are basically harmful. Specific programs [...]

Econoblog Marginal Revolution asks the interesting question on what are the most harmful government programs. Their thoughts:
At the top I will put our aggregate of health care policies, including Medicare, but without pretending that removing any one of them would solve the major problems. Many smaller decisions, taken together, have painted us into a [...]

Surprise! Researchers prove that the judgement of high testosterone men is impaired by the sight of an attractive woman.
Exhibit A:

From Mahalanobis:

Researchers at the University of Leuven in Belgium asked men to play an ultimatum game, in which they split a certain amount of money between them. High-testosterone men drove the hardest bargain — unless they [...]

Economists have tackled a question that has dogged heteronormative couples since the advent of indoor plumbing: should the toilet seat be left up or down after use?
Fortunately for us, the world of economics has tools for tackling issues like this and it turns out none is better than game theory.
Using the aptly labeled #1 [...]