The names people have are endogenous: A new study in Germany shows evidence of teachers discriminating their students based on their name! You can access the study here.

Is this result very strong? Well, I don’t know. But one possibility is that are certain names more predominant among wealthier sectors of society, which usually [...]

In Economics, the term “Free Rider” refers to a situation when an individual “consumes more than their fair share of a public resource” (from Wikipedia).

I’ve found repeated evidence of Free Riding in Thanjavur:

These pictures are taken by me in the back seat of two different auto rickshaw that took me to the office [...]

These are the main headlines in Thanjavur’s newspapers today – it says: “KING OF POP, MICHAEL JACKSON, PASSED AWAY”

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Economic theory suggests that in equilibrium, the price of a good is given by the intersection of the demand and supply curves. This means that the market chooses a quantity to be produced and a price for that good such that the consumers and producers’ surplus is zero. You may be thinking: “WHAT is this [...]

I think I may have just stumbled upon the holy grail of macro-economics. I think I have found qualitative evidence in support of the seemingly ridiculous intuition of the Real Business Cycle (RBC). RBC theories try to explain why there are booms or recessions which deviate the economy from their growing trend.

RBC created a revolution [...]

In the past two days I’ve been traveling around Chennai and some villages nearby, as part of a field trip organized by the Center for Micro Finance. Here are some pictures of the places I’ve visited so far:

A Street in Chennai

Poster in the Training Center of a Micro Finance Institution

Coconut Seller

Creativity

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In economics, equilibrium is the long term stable outcome of any dynamic process. We not always reach equilibrium, and to be honest, we don’t really care how do we reach them. We only care about their existence.

However, shocks can move us out of equilibrium, and it is interesting to see if after a shock we [...]

Most of consumer’s theory in Economics is based on – guess what – consumption. How do people make their consumption decisions? What if the price of one good increases or if suddenly you have more income or an increase in your salary?

Of course, all these questions depend on one’s preferences. Each one of us have [...]

Would Jerry be friends with Newman if they would find themselves alone in Alaska?

Have you noticed that when you are out of town for a long period you become friend more easily of people from the same origin as you? Maybe even people that you knew before but you never thought of being his/her friend, [...]

Part of the Christmas Spirit is the Secret Santa game, or known as the “Secret Friend” in other places (such as Venezuela, where I grew up). I guess all of you know how it works, but just for those who don’t here is the main idea: a group of people decide to play the game, [...]