Sacking Mugabe

The path to growth remains elusive for many of the world's economies. Prescribing effective growth policies is exceedingly difficult. The unique features in each of the world's economies defy formulaic approaches to growth—it's not necessarily clear that Japan's path will work for Cambodia. Economic history offers a bit more clarity when it comes to what won't work. Of the more recent episodes of economic collapse, Zimbabwe's is perhaps the starkest. The Mugabe regime's mismanagement of the Zimbabwean economy reads like a step-by-step guide to economic ruin.

In 2000, Zimbabwe's autocratic ruler, Robert Mugabe, implemented a clumsy and often violent land redistribution program. Mugabe forcefully seized white-owned farmland and gave it to black farmers unfamiliar with commercial farming practices. The absence of any cooperative knowledge transfer between white and black farmers led to a precipitous fall in agricultural output. The failure of the agricultural sector caused a severe contraction in overall economic output, creating massive unemployment. The collapsing economy sapped Mugabe's regime of the tax revenues necessary to pay soldiers and finance government outlays. An autocrat's reign is only as secure as his army is brutal—hungry, underpaid soldiers aren't much for intimidating political opponents or scaring the populace into submission. To maintain his government's outlays, Mugabe turned to borrowing. Of course, the loans would eventually need to be repaid. Lacking the tax base to repay the loans, the government resorted to the capstone of many economic disasters: printing money.

The results were predictable: hyperinflation reached roughly 4 million percent per year as of June 2008. At these levels of inflation, even the most mundane daily transactions involve considerable uncertainty and frustration. Mugabe's response to the hyperinflation that he himself initiated could not have been worse. The government imposed price ceilings, threatening to jail shop owners if they charged more than the official price. The price ceilings led to massive shortages of necessities like bread and milk. Many firms shut down production, escalating an already high unemployment rate.

You don't have to be an economist to recognize the first step to improving Zimbabwe’s economy: get rid of Mugabe. But removing Mugabe from power is easier said than done. Opposition presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai gave it an impressive go during this year's elections, but widespread violence against opposition supporters caused Tsvangirai to withdraw from the presidential run-off. At this point, Mugabe remains president.

Discussion Questions

1. Mugabe is 84 years old—why doesn't he just step down? Charlayne Hunter-Gault's article in The Root suggests that Mugabe has strong incentives to maintain his grip on power given the fate of other overthrown tyrants. Hunter-Gault raises an interesting dilemma for freedom-lovers all over the world: we want to get rid of brutal dictators, but the dictators may do everything they can to retain power precisely because they fear what we'll do to them once they're out of office. Should we offer Mugabe amnesty just to get him to step down?

2. In a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, former World Bank president and U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz suggests a way to pressure Mugabe out of office. Wolfowitz calls on the international community to very publicly declare promises of aid and debt relief for Zimbabwe under the condition that Mugabe is removed from office. Do you think this strategy would succeed?

3. Mugabe's land redistribution program was catastrophic for Zimbabwe's economy, but as this NPR story points out, several neighboring countries attempted to benefit from the displacement of white farmers in Zimbabwe. How could the Zimbabwean government have balanced the goals of efficiency of the farming sector and equity for the black population that suffered a history of oppression by a ruling white minority?

None and Done: The Labor Market for Young Basketball Talent

The 2008 Celtics-Lakers NBA finals featured two great straight-from-high-school athletes: Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett. The NBA benefits from a host of other players drafted straight from high school, such as LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Tracy McGrady, Amare Stoudemire, and Tyson Chandler.

Early entry into the NBA is a classic example of opportunity cost—the notion that the cost of something is what you give up to get it. For elite players, attending college can cost millions in forgone earnings as an NBA player. So until recently, the decision for most was simple. Skip college, sign a huge NBA contract, and worry about getting a degree later, if at all.

Curiously, a 2005 collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and the players' union implemented a draft-eligible age limit of 19 with the requirement that athletes be one year removed from high school. This was great news for the NCAA, since most draft-worthy players would spend their first year away from high school wowing college basketball fans. Without the rule, we'd have missed Derrick Rose in the 2008 NCAA tournament. Of course, Rose might not have missed us, since he'd be earning a big paycheck as a rookie in the NBA.

As a recent article in the New York Times points out, labor mobility and the presence of European leagues offer young players an opportunity to break free from the strictures of NBA and NCAA rules. Europe promises pay and a chance to develop against professional players, an alternative that may prove superior to an earnings-free year of college ball and freshman classes.

Discussion Questions

1. Why would the NBA players' union support the age barrier to draftees? Why would the NBA support the restriction?

2. College basketball generates big money. Should college players be compensated in accordance to the value that they add to their school's program? How would less-than-NBA-caliber players benefit from such a system?

3. Under what circumstances might it make sense for a phenomenal young athlete to play one year in the NCAA rather than playing professionally abroad?

China’s One-Child Rule, Post-Earthquake

Right on the heels of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar came news of another equally shocking and destructive natural disaster in China. The very first reports of the devastating earthquake centered on the destruction of schools and the resulting loss of many young lives. The quake left many families without children—particularly because China enacted a policy in 1979 that restricts families to having just one child in an attempt to help ease the pressures of a fast-growing population. The Chinese government is now ensuring that families who had a child killed or disabled by the earthquake understand that they are allowed to have one more child, as reported here.

Why was China’s birthrate so high before this policy was implemented? Japan has no one-child policy, yet its birthrate is relatively low. What is the difference between these two countries in this regard?

In a developing country (as China arguably still is to an extent), markets for retirement savings and pension funds are often absent. To compensate for this, parents must count on their children for support later in life. And a couple must decide how many children they need to have in order to be reasonably certain they will be supported. This is determined in part by the couple’s attitude towards risk, and when it comes to security in old age, it is reasonable to assume that most people will be quite risk averse. To assess the risk of ending up alone and destitute in their old age, they need to estimate the probability, given current economic and social factors, that any single child will provide old-age support. Assuming the child lives into adulthood, he or she must earn enough income to be able to provide support, as well as being willing to do so. Furthermore, if only men have the earning potential needed to provide financial assistance, the necessary number of children will double. Facing these risks, couples in developing economies often choose to have larger families than needed for the sake of old-age security, leading to relatively high birthrates. China’s one-child policy was meant to curb this trend.

Discussion Questions

1. The opportunity cost of raising children is another factor that influences birthrates. Women in China (particularly rural China) face fewer employment opportunities, and at lower wages, than women in Japan. How does this help to explain the disparity in desired number of children between the two countries?

2. Will a grown child be able to support two elderly parents any better than a single parent could provide for him- or herself and two young children? How might this problem be magnified further with multiple generations of only children?

3. Has China’s one-child policy been a success? Why or why not? What unintended consequences might result from this policy?

The Hanger Hang-Up

According to a recent NPR story, dry-cleaning costs increased substantially after the U.S. imposed import tariffs on wire hangers from China—so much so that many dry cleaners are now soliciting customers for unused hangers. The U.S. imposed the tariffs after several American producers made dumping accusations against Chinese producers. Dumping occurs if a Chinese firm sells hangers in the U.S. for significantly less than it sells the same hangers for in China, or for significantly less than it costs to produce the hangers in China. The U.S. International Trade Commission found that Chinese manufacturers were, in fact, dumping hangers in the U.S. market.

Economists tend to be skeptical of trade restrictions based on the anti-dumping argument. In markets for standardized goods (like wire hangers) with relatively free entry and exit, there's no long-term benefit from selling a product at below cost. While legitimate cases of dumping certainly come up, some cases may simply involve domestic firms that want to protect their market position from lower-cost foreign manufacturers. In the case of hangers, the tariffs benefit U.S. manufacturers at the cost of the dry cleaners and consumers who would otherwise benefit from lower-priced Chinese imports.

Milton Magnus III, owner of one of the U.S. manufacturers that filed for the anti-dumping duties, argues that the costs to consumers are negligible—amounting to a penny or two per hanger. "If I pay $12.95 to have my suit cleaned and that hanger cost him a cent and a half more, that's $12.96 and a half. It's not a factor." Magnus's point partly explains why import-competing industries often succeed in their efforts to lobby government for the imposition of trade restrictions: the tariff offers concentrated benefits to a few domestic firms, while the costs of the tariff are spread out among millions of consumers—none of whom see a sharp increase in price. Of course, over millions of hangers, a penny or two per hanger can add up.

Advocates of trade restrictions often argue that protection will save jobs. Since we can observe price and cost increases associated with trade restrictions, we can estimate how much it costs to save each job in a protected industry. According to the NPR story, there are roughly 30,000 dry cleaners in the U.S., and on average, each pays an additional $4,000 per year due to the hanger tariff. This indicates an average annual cost of 30,000 firms x $4,000 per firm = $120 million. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission's report, U.S. employment in wire hanger manufacturing was 564 workers in 2004 and fell to 236 workers by 2006. Let's assume that employment in this sector would have fallen to zero in the absence of the tariff, and that with the tariff, employment will recover to 2004 levels. In other words, assume the tariff "saves" 564 jobs. Dividing the cost of the tariff to U.S. dry cleaners ($120 million year) by the number of jobs saved (564 jobs) indicates that each job saved costs about $212,765 per year. Keep in mind that the typical full-time worker in this sector earns about $30,000 per year. Even if we assume that industry employment doubles, the cost of the tariff is still roughly $120,000 per job.

Discussion Questions

1. Our cost estimates ignore possible job losses in the dry-cleaning industry. How would this impact the overall cost of the trade restrictions? Will dry cleaners organize to oppose the tariff on wire hangers from China?

2. According to the Trade Commission report, China provides tax rebates to firms that export items that use steel (such as wire hangers). As of July 2007, the tax rebate amounted to 5% of the value of exports. How do you think export subsidies or tax rebates should factor into government analysis of trade policies?

3. The story mentions dry cleaners' attempts to reclaim and reuse wire hangers. Are there inadvertent environmental benefits from the tariff? Could the U.S. government encourage dry cleaners and their customers to reuse wire hangers without resorting to tariffs on Chinese manufacturers?

The Millionaires’ Amendment and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Even more than the law of supply, the law of demand, or the law of diminishing marginal utility, economists love the law of unintended consequences. A brief editorial in the New York Times provides a nice illustration of that law.

One of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform laws was an exception to campaign finance limits for the case in which a rich candidate contributes a large amount to his or her own campaign. The idea is simple: campaign finance laws generally govern how candidates for office can raise money from others, but don’t restrict how much money they themselves can spend on their own candidacy. Therefore, if one candidate is of modest means while another is rich, campaign finance laws that make it harder for the poorer candidate to raise money implicitly help the richer candidate.

To solve this problem, McCain-Feingold lifted campaign contribution limits for candidates facing a challenger who spent more than $350,000 of his or her own money on the campaign. This provision of the law is now being challenged as unconstitutional by Jack Davis, a millionaire who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2006. Davis claims that the effect of the law is to deter rich people from public service.

The Times editorial makes the following rebuttal:

There is also no sign that the amendment is discouraging the wealthy from running or spending. The very rich are represented in Congress in large numbers. Contrary to Mr. Davis’s claims of “chilling,” the number of candidates who spent more than $1 million of their own money actually increased after the amendment took effect. It is now common for party recruiters to seek out “self-financing”—or wealthy—candidates.

Consider the structure of the two arguments here. Davis argues a theoretical point: that allowing opponents of rich candidates to raise more money will have a “chilling” effect on millionaires running for office. The Times seeks to refute that point with empirical evidence: that the number of wealthy candidates has increased since the amendment was passed.

Now, a fun part of thinking like an economist is being able to parse arguments like this. Here are some questions that get you started.

1. Is Davis’s argument internally consistent? That is, holding all else constant, would you expect this amendment to have a “chilling” effect on millionaire candidates?

2. The amendment cited in the article was part of broader legislation limiting campaign fundraising. What effect would this have on the incentives political party recruiters face when choosing to seek out “self-financing” candidates?

3. Does the Times make the most convincing possible case against Davis? How might you argue the point differently? What is the strongest argument you could use to refute the Times’ point?

4. Think about the goals of John McCain and Russ Feingold, the authors of the campaign finance legislation. How do you think they feel about the fact that one effect of their legislation has been an increase in the recruiting of wealthy candidates? Based on that increase, do you think they would want more or fewer provisions like the Millionaires’ Amendment?

The Per Capita Recession

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a statistic that economists use to gauge the output of a nation. Movements in GDP provide clues about the health of an economy.

Look at GDP growth over the last five years, and the United States comes out smelling like roses, relative to other high-income countries, at nearly 3% growth per year. But statistics can be deceiving.

An article from the Economist titled “Grossly Distorted Picture,” questions whether GDP is an accurate measure of a nation’s economic health. The article suggests that, though GDP growth for the United States is higher than other countries, other factors, like population, also play an important role. As the article points out, growth of GDP per person is perhaps a more meaningful measure of economic progress than simply growth of GDP.

For example, over the same four-year period (2003-2007) Japan’s GDP growth was just over 2%, far below the nearly 3% growth the United States experienced. But during that time, Japan’s population was shrinking while the population of the United States was growing at nearly 1% per year.

If you calculate GDP per person Japan’s economy actually grew faster (2.1%) than that of the United States (1.9%).

Discussion Questions

1. Which countries have the biggest discrepancies between GDP growth and GDP per person over the last five years? Does that change your perceptions of the health of these nations?

2. As the article points out, annual U.S. population growth is roughly 1%. The annualized growth of U.S. real GDP (real GDP is an inflation-adjusted measure of output) was 0.6% during the last three months of 2007. Assuming U.S. real GDP growth in the first three months of 2008 was about the same—what does this imply for U.S. GDP per person?

3. Economists typically define a recession as six months or more of declining real GDP How would the use of real GDP per person rather than real GDP change our perspective on recent U.S. economic performance? According to this method, is the U.S. economy in recession?

4. As gauges of economic output, both GDP and GDP per person have their flaws. For starters, each measure misses the value of things that are not traded in a legitimate marketplace but may nonetheless impact our economic well-being. Underground activity, whether illicit drug dealing or benign babysitting, does not register in national income accounts. Environmental damage associated with our production and consumption is also not a factor. Can you think of other statistics we should consider when measuring a nation's economic health? What are some of the benefits and drawbacks to those methods?

To Act, or Not to Act: That Is the Question

Like Hamlet, we often face tough decisions without perfect information. In Hamlet’s case, the choice was something like, “My dad was murdered. I think my uncle did it. Now he’s my stepdad. Sigh.” What’s a prince to do? Should he seek revenge? Should he rat out his uncle? Seemingly incapable of making a decision, Hamlet stuck with the default: do nothing and stew.

Maybe Hamlet had the right idea. According to Ofer H. Azar, a lecturer in the School of Management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, inaction may often be a prudent choice in situations where most of us feel compelled to do something.

Mr. Azar studied high-stakes decision-making—not in the boardroom, but on the soccer field, where he collected data on the attempts of professional goalies to block penalty kicks. Regularly faced with huge incentives to block penalty kicks, goalies offer a great proxy for people who routinely make quick, high-pressure decisions. Mr. Azar hoped to see just how rationally people respond to such situations. Surprisingly, he found that goalies facing penalty kicks tended to let their emotions dictate their actions—often leading to detrimental outcomes.

During a penalty kick, the goalie must stand with his heels on the goal line while an opponent kicks the ball from 12 yards away. The goalie cannot move until the opponent has kicked the ball, and there is not enough time for the goalie to watch the shot and react. Thus, goalies must make a choice about where they think the ball will be kicked before the shot is made.

Since the greatest proportion of shots end up near the center of the net, the goalie’s best defense is to stay put. The trouble is, goalies find it very difficult to stay in the middle, simply because it makes them feel they aren’t doing anything. When asked why they jump left or right when it's efficient to stay put, they explain that they would feel worse if they stayed in the middle and the shooter scored than if they had at least jumped one way or the other.

We are not all professional soccer goalies. But we may feel the compulsion to act under pressure. Even if inaction is more efficient, we may take action just so we feel good about doing something. Emotion can play a large part in our decisions, especially high-stakes decisions. Economists may need to reassess the degree to which emotions can influence decision-making. In the same article, Stanford economist Paul Romer says, “How people feel about various kinds of activities means a lot about what they decide to do. In many situations, [economists] just look at the narrow monetary payoffs and forget about the effects of preference or feelings.” To learn more about the blend of emotion and calculation that goes into our decisions, read this article from the New York Times and think about the questions below.

Discussion Questions

1. Apply this logic to high-stakes business decisions made by major corporations. When times are tough, do companies tend to want to do something rather than ride out the storm? Is that always the right decision?

2. What about playing the stock market? How much do emotions play a part in the decisions we make?

3. Identify areas in your own life where emotion plays a part in important decisions. Would the outcomes of your decisions be better if emotion did not play a part?

Conflicting Employment Figures

The government's monthly survey of businesses indicates that payrolls experienced a net drop of 63,000 jobs during February. At the same time, numbers from the government's monthly survey of households indicated that the unemployment rate declined from 4.9% in January to 4.8% in February. How can the unemployment rate fall even as the economy sheds jobs? Understanding this paradox requires a closer look at the household survey numbers for the past two months.

* Numbers in thousands

The household survey indicates that the number of employed persons saw a net decline between January and February. The ranks of the employed thinned by about 255,000 people. Normally, the net drop in the number of employed people would cause the ranks of the unemployed to swell by a similar amount. The government considers a person unemployed if she lacks a job but has actively searched for one in the past four weeks. Yet, the pool of unemployed workers actually shrank by about 195,000 people between January and February. The change in the size of the labor force over the same period provides some clues as to why.

The number of people dropping out of the labor force in February exceeded the number of new entrants—on net about 450,000 people left the labor force. These people either left jobs with no intent of finding another or gave up on their employment searches altogether. If you want a job but you're so frustrated with past failures to find one that you stop looking, the government classifies you as a discouraged worker and no longer considers you to be part of the labor force.

All things being equal, February's employment drop of 255,000 should have increased the pool of unemployed workers from 7.58 million to 7.83 million. Things weren't equal though, as a number of people considered unemployed in January gave up on their job searches in February, contributing to the 450,000 person drop in the size of the labor force and causing the number of unemployed workers to come in at 7.38 million in February rather than 7.58 million. If we assume that all 450,000 people became discouraged workers in February, the drop in the ranks of the unemployed and, consequently, the labor force, reflects the inability of those out of work to find compatible job vacancies.

The unemployment rate is simply the ratio of unemployed people to the size of the labor force (unemployed / labor force). Since the ranks of the unemployed declined by 2.6% and the size of the labor force declined by only 0.3%, the fraction of the labor force considered unemployed declined from 4.9% in January (7,576 / 153,824) to 4.8% in February (7,381 / 153,374). In this peculiar case, the small drop in the unemployment rate reflects economic weakness rather than economic strength.

Discussion Questions

1. Here's what the employment numbers for February would have looked liked if the 450,000 people who left the labor force had remained in the labor force as jobless workers actively searching for employment (unemployed people):


* Numbers in thousands

Under these conditions, what would the unemployment rate have been for the month of February 2008?

2. You can find the Bureau of Labor Statistic's (BLS) news release for February 2008 here. The national unemployment rate is at best a rough gauge of joblessness in the United States. The February numbers illustrate how the unemployment rate can paint a misleading picture of labor market strength. A fuller understanding of labor market issues requires a closer look at employment figures. How do the unemployment rates for specific age and racial groups differ from the national rate?

3. According to the BLS, who are the people who “work part time for economic reasons”? What has happened to their numbers over the past year? Does the unemployment rate capture changes in the number of folks who work part time for economic reasons?

4. Our assumption that all 450,000 people who left the labor force in February became discouraged workers is unrealistic. (Indeed, the BLS only counted a total of 396,000 discouraged workers in February.) Who, according to the BLS news release, is considered a “marginally attached worker”? Are all marginally attached workers also discouraged workers?

5. An unemployment rate of just below 5% is still relatively low by historical standards. Nonetheless, tepid employment reports in January and February darken the U.S. economic outlook when considered along side reports of weak output growth and continuing turmoil in housing and financial markets. Keeping in mind that the Fed's recent rate cuts and the government's tax rebates will begin to impact the economy in May and June, what type of economic performance do you expect in the United States for 2008?

Resource Management, Post-Apocalypse Style

So suppose—and I’m not trying to get you down here—that an asteroid were to hit the earth, wiping out 90% of known species. (Or, if you prefer, that a combination of deforestation and our fascination with only growing a few key crops achieves the same outcome.) How could we regain our current biodiversity?

In case these kinds of things keep you up at night, you can rest easier thanks to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault that opened yesterday in Arctic Norway. There’s a great blog post about it on the New York Times website. The vault is a step up from existing seed banks, which are threatened by political instability or a lack of funding.

The post points out, though, that a group called grain.org has criticized the seed vault. Read their criticism here.

Discussion Questions

1. The post asks, “How much of this intergovernmental work help[s] sustain farming diversity, as opposed to museum-style genetic diversity?” Another way of asking this is as follows: producing food requires land, labor, and capital. The seeds themselves are just part of the equation. What happens if farmers, after hundreds of years of not farming these crops, lose the skills associated with their use? What can be done to preserve knowledge of how to maintain a species that is no longer actively farmed?

2. The seed vault acts as a centralized mechanism, much like a kidney donor list, that describes who is entitled to the seeds in the vault and under what circumstances. How does that mechanism compare to a market mechanism? Is it true, as grain.org argues, that the wrong stakeholders are given priority in this system? What rights do (and should) farmers have, as opposed to governments?

Ireland's Plastic Bag Tax

In an important scene from the 1999 movie American Beauty, two characters—Jane and Ricky—watch footage of a plastic bag dancing in the wind. That there's beauty all over the place, even in garbage, seems to overwhelm Ricky: "Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in."

Unlike Ricky, Dubliners have to live without the heartbreaking splendor of airborne garbage. Plastic bags nearly disappeared from Ireland's cities after the government began taxing them in 2002. The tax, 33 cents per bag, was enough motivation for most shoppers to replace plastic bags with reusable cloth bags. Ireland's experience illustrates a basic principle of taxation: if you want less of something--like the not-so-biodegradable, sewer-clogging plastic bag--tax it. Read Elisabeth Rosenthal's New York Times article to learn more about Ireland's bag tax.

Discussion Questions

1. There's nothing like a green tax to bring out our inner-environmentalists. As Rosenthal points out, after the tax passed, plastic bag use became socially unacceptable in Ireland. In what way does the tax lower the barrier to adopting a disapproving attitude toward plastic bag use?

2. Ohio issues yellow and red license plates to drivers convicted of drunk driving (apparently, Ohio officials didn't give much thought to tourists from the great state of New Mexico). Can you think of other situations or even laws that are governed largely by the threat of disapproval from others?

3. How is the Irish government's campaign against plastic bags similar to government campaigns against tobacco? In what ways do cigarette and plastic bag taxes increase efficiency for society as a whole?

4. Taxing bad behavior can be good, but implementation and enforcement are issues. It'd be relatively easy to cut down on paper waste from ATM receipts because the fee can be collected electronically at the site of the transaction. Why does a plastic bag tax that works remarkably well in the digitized supermarkets of Ireland run into implementation problems among the vendors and mom and pop shops in China?

Labels: Taxes, Incentives, Market Failure, Externalities, Environment

The Economics of Love

Those who know me well know I’m not often at a loss for words. Yet, here I find myself truly stupefied.

I thought that, for Valentine’s Day, I’d write a blog post on the economics of love. So I Googled “economics of love” and got Solve Dating. It’s one of the more interesting, if bizarre, applications of cost-benefit analysis I’ve ever seen.

Now don’t get me wrong—I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on search-based marriage matching models, so I’m not against applying economic principles to questions of matrimony. But I wonder: how useful is it to try to get into the nitty-gritty of quantifying the costs and benefits of love? Is the equation “rejection cost = – (your self-esteem + frequency of past rejections)” a valid one? What units could you possibly use?

On the other hand, some of the conclusions on the site are fairly decent applications of basic economic analysis. For example, just below that equation is the insight “People who are sensitive to rejection are less likely to find their soulmates.” They suggest, “Build up your self-esteem. Convince yourself that it was their loss.”

Now there’s cost minimization for you! Happy Valentine’s Day.

Discussion Questions

1. We use a lot of math and graphs in economics, but some questions are better answered with equations than others. What lends a phenomenon to mathematical analysis? Do the good folks at Solve Dating go too far?

2. What kinds of questions of the heart can you answer with economic principles? Do you apply your knowledge of economics to your own love life?

3. My favorite title of a search-based marriage model paper was “Transplants and Implants: The Economics of Self-Improvement.” This paper discusses the fact that people rationally improve themselves when trying to attract a mate, and then optimally “let themselves go” once they get married. Is that an argument that makes sense to you? How could you test that hypothesis?