Wanted: Chicken Killers

Coronavirus economics are so interesting. The disruptions have created unpredictable consequences. Maybe some of you saw the news a few weeks ago when Idaho potato farmers had to dump potatoes because no one is going to restaurants anymore. (What’s crazy is that a supply shortage sent prices skyrocketing at the beginning of the harvest to $23/carton, and then the pandemic crashed them to $10/carton). Well, there’s an even stranger story with chickens.

Farms in Maryland and Delaware are going to kill 2 million chickens…because there aren’t enough people to kill the chickens. That sounds like a contradiction, but it’s just economics! You need workers at meat processing plants to slaughter chickens and turn them into meat. But there aren’t enough workers at the plants to process them. So instead of sending them to factories, the farmers have to kill them and dispose of them.

Religious Signalling

A lot of economists like to describe religious practices as signalling. Signalling is an economic phenomenon where you do something hard or costly to prove that you are part of the community. For example, for Jews, eating kosher is really costly—you can only eat at certain restaurants, you have to setup your kitchen in a certain way, etc.—but by eating kosher you prove to the rest of the community that you’re committed to the cause.

Well this last week I saw the most extreme example of religious signalling. There are people in Ethiopia who baptize their children in a mountain chapel. But the thing is, for them to get there, they have to rock climb. Without equipment. With the baby strapped to them. Without shoes! It’s crazy, and there’s a video here on twitter.

(I showed this to my brother and he said he’d rather risk going to hell.)

The Most Beautiful Graph in Economics

This summer I’m trying to share some of my favorite findings in economics—the ones that make me giddy. Today’s video is me geeking out over a beautiful graph of fish prices. I know that sounds weird, but it’s a real-world example of economics, and it reflects the beauty of markets.