Since Thanksgiving is this week, I thought I’d do a little Thanksgiving Special with the newsletter. My favorite fact is the connection between Thanksgiving and the Great Depression, but first…

Economics Ruined Turkey Tinder

Maybe you’re single and worried about finding a good mate. Well, thank your lucky stars you’re not a turkey. This classic Freakonomics episode from 2011 talks about the problems created by the economics of turkeys. Americans are willing to pay a premium for bigger turkeys (probably an economies of scale story: easier to cook one large turkey for your family rather than multiple small ones).

In response to that demand, turkey suppliers started breeding larger turkeys. But this created a problem: eventually the turkeys became so large that they could no longer breed naturally. So the market created a new solution: artificial insemination.

If you’re having turkey for Thanksgiving, there is almost a 100% chance that the turkey is a product of artificial insemination.

Become a Billionaire By Smuggling Turkey

Can you tell the difference between a turkey and a chicken? Alive, almost certainly. But when you strip them down to just the meat, probably not.

That’s what I discuss in this video about a Chinese smuggler. He noticed that turkeys and chickens faced different tariffs, so he started switching labels to exploit the regulatory gap.

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Grateful for This Newsletter

Since Thanksgiving is about gratitude, let me share a newsletter I’m grateful for. My weekly must-read newsletter is Latinometrics. Of course, I’m biased since my research focuses on Latin America and the Caribbean, but I have been blown away by how many interesting economics stories they deliver. Like, did you know that in the last 7 years Peru has become one of the largest producers of blueberries? After reading that one, I checked the box of blueberries to see where it was from. It was Peru!

I get nothing for recommending them as a newsletter. It’s just rare to find quality economics reporting that makes me genuinely excited, and I wanted to share it with you.

Thanksgiving and the Great Depression

The Great Depression is one of the most important, well known economic events in modern history, and yet it is one of the least well understood.

For example, did you know FDR hoped that Thanksgiving could help end the Great Depression? In fact, that’s why we’re celebrating Thanksgiving this week.

For my non-American readers, Thanksgiving is a weird holiday. Rather than landing on a specific date, it lands on the fourth Thursday in November. But that’s not what it was before FDR. Starting with Abraham Lincoln in 1863, Thanksgiving was the last Thursday in November.

Why did it change? Well, in 1939, the last Thursday in November landed on November 30, the latest it could possibly be. And, apparently, even back then Christmas shopping did not start until Thanksgiving was over. FDR was worried that retail sales would be depressed by the late start, so he decided to move Thanksgiving up a week.

People were outraged. If Fox News was around, they would have labeled it the War on Thanksgiving. And states were split on when to celebrate: about half celebrated on the 23rd and the other half on the 30th.

When FDR pulled a similar stunt in 1940, Congress convened to decide when to have Thanksgiving. A joint resolution decided to fix Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November.

Did FDR’s Thanksgiving ploy help the economy at all? A Congressional study said no.

What did help us escape the Great Depression? You can read a ton of good articles about that here.

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Did Thanksgiving end the Great Depression?