“Urban legend has it that the hemline is correlated with the economy. In times of decline, the hemline moves towards the floor (decreases), and when the economy is booming, skirts get shorter and the hemline increases.” To test the validity of such a(n) hypothesis, researchers Marjolein van Baardwijk and Full Professor Ph.H.B.F. (Philip Hans) Franses […]
Tag: economy
Tamagotchi, time-wasting, Pokémon Go, and the economy
Tamagotchi, whose inventors were awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for economics in 1997, is celebrated by Jaime Rubio Hancock, writing in El Pais: Does not anyone remember the Tamagotchi? 6 sets which we found as harmful as Pokémon Go …This Japanese toy Bandai hooked millions of children in 1996. It was not more than a small […]
Country Music singers’ chins and general hard times
Professor Terry Frank Pettijohn II, of Coastal Carolina University, is the lead author of a new study which investigates the ‘Chin Area’ (and other facial features such as ‘Eye Width’) of US country Music singers between 1946 and 2010 – and examines possible correlations with an index of economic and social conditions called the General Hard […]
Should you lose sleep over losing sleep over the economy?
Three economists issued a wake-up call of some sort about the economy and sleep. The economists say that people who say they lose sleep over the economy are — in the aggregate, statistically speaking, based on some data and cogitation —wrong. Marina Antillon of Yale, Diane S. Lauderdale of the University of Chicago, and John Mullahy of the University of […]
Lawyers: Drag or Accellerant?
Two investigators plunged into the depths of a dark suspicion, producing this report: “Legislating for Economic Sclerosis: Are Lawyers a Baleful Influence on Growth Rates?“, Samuel Cameron [pictured here] and Andy Thorpe, Kyklos, February 2004, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 67–85. The authors conclude: “Our investigation has failed to lend much support to the idea […]
When an economist talks rubbish
When economists talk economics, some of them talk rubbish. Few mean it as plainly, as directly, as Alexi Savov [pictured here]. Savov wrote a study called Asset Pricing with Garbage, which filled 24 pages of the Journal of Finance early in 2011. To Savov, garbage is valuable not only for its own worth, but because, in […]
100-trillion-dollar bills again fuel the economy
The Associated Press reports that Zimbabwe’s 100-trillion-dollar bills are again helping fuel the nation’s economy: Visitors snap up 100 trillion Zimbabwe bank notes HARARE, Zimbabwe – Western visitors to Zimbabwe are looking for zeros. They’re snapping up old, defunct Zimbabwe bank notes, most notably the one hundred trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill, as an economic souvenir. […]
Bank gives its customers “funny money”
A sign of recovery in the banking industry: Citibank invites its customers to a gambling event at which “The games will be played with ‘funny money’ provided by the bank.” The cover letter accompanying their invitation [a portion of the invitation is reproduced at right] reads: As a token of our appreciation to you, our […]