Posts Tagged ‘car’
“If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid”*…
Economists have a name for this
There are plenty of economics terms regular people would find not only very interesting, but useful for thinking about policy. Sadly, the most commonly used econ words tend to be the ones with the vaguest meanings — “rational,” “equilibrium” and “efficient.” Instead, here are some of my suggestions:
• Endogeneity
Everyone knows that correlation doesn’t equal causation, but somehow people seem to forget. Endogeneity is a word that can help you remember. Something is endogenous when you don’t know whether it’s a cause or an effect (or both). For example, lots of people note that people who go to college tend to make more money. But how much of this is because college boosts earning power, and how much is because smarter, harder-working, better-connected people tend to go to college in the first place? It’s endogenous. The media is full of stories about how which kind of people stay married, or what diet is associated with better health. Whenever you see these stories, you should ask “What about endogeneity?”…
Noah Smith suggest four other useful concepts in “5 Economics Terms We All Should Use.”
* John Maynard Keynes
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As we get dismal, we might send fancy birthday greetings to Sir Frederick Henry Royce; he was born on this date in 1863. An engineer and car designer, he founded (with Charles Rolls and Claude Johnson) the Rolls-Royce company, which introduced the first successful luxury cars in the emerging automotive industry.
“I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon”*…
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U.S. coffee consumption peaked around 1950, then declined dramatically– displaced, largely, by soft drinks, 8 of the top ten selling of which are loaded with caffeine…
With protagonists like Monsanto and Coca Cola, it’s a tale with which to conjure.
Read more at “The buzz(kill) about caffeine.”
* Ronald Reagan
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As we top up our cups, we might recall that it was in this date in 1896 that the first pedestrian was killed by a motor car in Great Britain. A Benz automobile, being demonstrated on the grounds of the Crystal Place, struck Mrs. Bridgette Driscoll, who died minutes later of head injuries. Though the driver, Arthur James Edsall, was accused of tampering with the governor (which was meant to hold the car’s top speed to 4 miles per hour) and of being distracted as he drove by conversation with the young woman who was his passenger, a Coroner’s Inquest return a verdict of accidental death.
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