Demonstrating How to Stand Out as an Economics Student
A few weeks ago I started a series of videos on how to stand out as an economics student. I argued that the best way was doing some self-directed research. I’m starting videos where I’m demonstrating that process, starting today.
Today’s looks at police militarization and police violence. If we give police military-grade equipment, do we see an increase in officer-involved killings? In the video I go through collecting data, forming hypotheses, then analyzing the results.
I even made the data and code available on my website if you’re interested.
Tokyo vs San Francisco
I came across this interesting article on housing prices in Tokyo vs San Francisco (heads up: it’s four years old). San Francisco is well known for its exploding housing costs, but apparently Tokyo has done a good job controlling prices. How? By increasing the supply of housing! Economics.
But the article is interesting for how the city was able to overcome the public choice problems. San Francisco doesn’t build more housing because people who have houses want their values to increase (a small group of people with big benefits!). Tokyo avoided that. More at the article.
Did you just bring up an economist??
The clip below is so good that I am considering making a basketball video just so I can use it.
Dwayne “The Rockonomics” Johnson
I enjoyed the economic lessons from this tweet about Dwayne Johnson. Summary: he couldn’t get his private gate open because of a power outage, so he ripped it off to save 30 minutes. But it makes sense. He has a high opportunity cost of time, so 30 minutes is worth the cost of replacing the gate.
