Was that title a bit of an exaggeration? Perhaps. Pokemon Go hasn’t been officially released in parts of Europe, Asia, or even Canada yet, after all. Almost a year ago, I wrote about how Pokemon Go marks a change in Nintendo’s reluctant shift to mobile, and this shift in strategy is paying big dividends. Nintendo’s … More Pokemon Go has Taken Over the World
“Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone.” – King Pyrrhus Well, the moment that many across the world feared has arrived. On June 23rd, 2016, the United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union, 52% to 48%. As a result, stock markets worldwide are tumbling, the British pound sterling is … More Brexit: A Pyrrhic Victory
Recently in the news, an Ivy League economist was escorted off a plane and interrogated for doing math. Guido Menzio, a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Italian economist, was scribbling away in his airplane seat, working out properties of a price-setting model he was going to present at Queens University in the near … More Weapons of Math Destruction
In Saratoga, CA, two neighboring families are fighting over a historic Italian stone pine. From an economic point of view, this example is a beautiful depiction of both positive externalities and the work that won Coase the Nobel Prize. In short, the family who has the pine tree on their property wants to get rid … More Econ in the News: Pining for a tree
In honor of the recent opening of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, I thought it would be fun to examine some of the economics behind the Galactic Empire from the original trilogy. First up is the question of building the Death Star, namely how the Death Star II could be built in so … More Econ in the News: Death Star Economics
For this holiday season, reports say that the glut of Christmas trees these past few years is now disappearing. Christmas trees are expected to be in shorter supply and run about 5% more expensive on average. After finishing advanced microeconomics this quarter, I now realize that this is a textbook case of short-run versus long-run supply. The reasons for why … More Econ in the News: Christmas Trees
With the rise of MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games) in recent years, revenue models have shifted from one-time sale of physical games to in-game purchasing, either in addition to buying the game upfront or in a “freemium” model, which allows basic gameplay free of charge but unlocks items or additional gameplay in return for real money. This … More Econ in the News: Real Money, Virtual Economies
When I couldn’t find an Indiana-Jones style leather jacket for this Halloween, I turned to a charitable champion of the secondhand economy: Goodwill. While I couldn’t find a leather jacket in a reasonable price and size range (the store may have been Goodwill, but it’s also located in posh Palo Alto), I did manage to come across a … More Goodwill Hunting and the Secondhand Economy
In mid-August, 32-year-old Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, bought Daraprim, a small little drug that was being sold in the market for $13.50 a dose. After the acquisition, Turing increased the price more than 5000% to $750, leading to large public backlash. It’s tempting to say “moral issues aside” and just attempt to discern the … More Econ in the News: Morality and Medicines
In a first-ever move for the franchise, Nintendo’s wildly popular Pokemon series is going mobile. The recent announcement of Pokemon GO, an augmented reality Pokemon game that turns your smartphone into a Pokemon-geolocating device has gained a lot of buzz on social media as investors and sentimental millennials alike contemplate what this game means for the … More Econ in the News: Pokemon GO and the Shift to Mobile
Andrew Jabara 