Dan Ariely was Bob Brinker’s guest on Money Talk last weekend.  Dr. Dan, as Brinker called him, is a professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.     Dr Dan was pushing his new book Predictably Irrational. I am going to give a rough summary of one of Dr. Dan’s experiments for the book that I found interesting.   He gave subjects a simple math test where the subjects would be able to able to figure out the correct answers but he made sure that the subjects did not have enough time to complete the tests. He then tested different variables to measure the impact of cheating.   He had testers tell the subjects that they would be paid $1 for each correct answer. The first group:  Once the time was up, they told the testers how many correct answers they got correct.   On average these subjects reported they got 4 correct. The second group:  Once the time was up, they shredded the tests and then told the testers how many they got right.  They knew evidence would not be there to verify how many they got correct and said they got 7 correct. 

Often, the word “gay” is used in high schools as slang for something bad. When high school freshman Rebekah Rice said “that’s so gay” in 2002 she claims, now as an 18 year-old, that the phrase meant: “That’s so stupid, that’s so silly, that’s so dumb.”

She was reprimanded by her school, and received a warning and notation on her file. Her parents sued, and claimed that Rice’s first amendment rights were violated because she used a phrase that “enjoys widespread currency in youth culture.” Supporters claim that the school’s actions are just another overly politically correct action.

On the other side, the school district claims that there is a duty to protect gay students from being harassed. They claim the phrase “that’s so gay” used in a derogatory manner has been shown to make gay individuals feel uncomfortable or hurt, just as derogatory terms directed at someone because of his or her race is hurtful.

So, the question is, will this be considered slander or is it merely an innocent comment that Rice didn’t believe would cause harm and thus would be protected under the first amendment? I think this will be an interesting case and I look forward to finding out what the court rules.

Well, my Labor Market Economics class got entirely canceled for the semester, due to the professor having an illness. So I got placed in an independent study in the economics department at William and Mary. I’m actually pretty excited about it, because I can basically study anything I want.

If you read this blog regularly, you probably know that I’m interested in doing something related to environmental economics. I’ve come up with a few ideas of topics to focus on, but I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to decide. So I thought I’d post some of the topic ideas I had on here and see if any readers think they’d be interesting for me to study. Of course I will post what I learn on gimme-five.

1. Economics of Climate Change in General, in particular, in relation to the discount rate. (a large discount rate means environmental damage in the future doesn’t matter so much today in terms of present value, for example)

2. Comparison of Environmental incentives used to reduce CO2 emissions or improve ecosystems (i.e. Gas Tax v. Permit Trading)

3. Feasibility of international enforcement of climate regulations from an economic context.

Please welcome gimme-five’s newest author, Klives.  I know very little about Klives, except that his email address implies he is somehow associated with Kilgore, one of gimme-five’s former authors.  He plans to write a few investment columns for the site.

Anyways, I hope everyone enjoys his writing.  Sorry I haven’t been very active on the site lately.  I’m taking the LSATs on September 30th and studying for those along with school stuff has really taken a lot of my time.  I’ll write somewhat regular articles starting in October.

Featuring an interview with George’s girlfriend, Jessica, on the topic of childhood obesity in the USA today.  This was not recorded in pristine quality (I’m working on it…) so bear with me…

powered by ODEO