We can always debate how useful economists might be, or how legitimate their field of study is. But it should be obvious to you by now there is significant value in understanding things such as GDP, employment, government stimulus, and interest rates. This kind of knowledge influences everything from how you save to who you’re [...]

Chances are you didn’t go to college in a big city. Many of us probably went to schools in either smaller towns or at least not bustling metropolises. But if after graduation you didn’t move to a major city to find a job, you probably considered it. Big cities have lots of job opportunities and [...]

The economy sucks. Plain and simple. We’re just barely moving along while carrying tons of deadweight. The government doesn’t have the chops to help out and in fact they may simply make things worse. Fear of the unknown makes employers reluctant to hire. And companies that do want to hire don’t have the talent to [...]

Today we pretty much take gross domestic product (GDP) for granted. It’s a fairly reliable and stable measure of national income. GDP is now a critical metric for measuring the health of any economy, and the movement of the metric has profound implications for the policy decisions in any country. But how long has GDP [...]

Even non-fans are all too aware of March Madness. Each year the media likes to latch on to some fairy tale story of a team that shouldn’t have made it this far. This year, that team is Florida Gulf Coast University. It’s a school that was barely a school 2 decades ago. Two years ago [...]

Weakonomics has covered the problem with education from many different angles. We’ve talked about what we should really be teaching, whether college is worth it, and everything in between. But the analysis continues and even as I try to put the issue to rest, we learn new things. The question of whether college is worth [...]

Much of what we learn in life is based on the outcome of the decisions we make. Our success and happiness in life very much hinges on how we react to and understand our decisions. Do we make snap decisions? Do we consider all possible outcomes? When something goes right or wrong do we try [...]

“Our simulations show that endogenous financial knowledge accumulation has the potential to account for a large proportion of wealth inequality.” Said another way, lack of financial literacy can explain a large portion of wealth inequality. Said another way, if you don’t know how to manage your money chances are you won’t have a lot of [...]