CDAE Grad Student Blog

Bill Ryerson of Population Media Center sent this out via his email listserv. I wanted to share as well. Get inspired and be proud and humbled by the work that you do and are getting prepared to do. Paul Hawken’s Commencement Address to the Cl

CDAE Chair Jane Kolodinsky weighs in on bartering

Jun 15th, 2009

http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/85168/Jane Kolodinsky weighs in on the extent of, new developments in, and economic aspects of bartering with VPR’s Jane Lindholm on the June 15th Vermont Edition. Reminded me of the Morrill Money discussions and

Refugees impact homelessness

Apr 14th, 2009

This letter to the editor in today’s Burlington Free Press has been under my skin all day. The author discusses the five families he knows that have become homeless because of various reasons and points the fingers at incoming refugee populatio

Economics of Sustainability

Mar 18th, 2009

Listen in on the Economics of Sustainability lecture from March 17th.

Opportunity Costs, Choice Architecture & Careerism

Feb 26th, 2009

I haven’t read anything in Behavioral Economics about the way we react to opportunity costs and so I’ll posit what I think is a serious influence on the way we make choices. I was talking with a well-established professor and friend not long a

Frederick the Great and Getting away from Mean Economics

Feb 25th, 2009

I had a quote from Frederick the Great running through my head today. I don’t remember where I heard it, but the wording is something similar to: “If you seek to defend everything, you defend nothing.” I was looking at some data while this i

Irrationally Obese

Feb 24th, 2009

I was eating lunch today, an especially fatty one, and came across a quick theory on how the assumption of rational economic behavior is refuted simply by the way we eat. Traditional economic theory assumes that consumers are rationally engage