Word: economisters
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...means fewer people commute to work or because people are trying to save on gas - but also of less easily explained drops in factors such as cardiovascular and liver disease, influenza and pneumonia. In one groundbreaking study in 2000 on the impact of joblessness, for example, Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, examined statewide mortality fluctuations in the U.S. between 1972 and 1991 and found that a 1% rise in a state's unemployment rate led to a 0.6% decrease in total mortality. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
...remedial class by itself. In no other industrialized country do 20,000 people die each year because they can't afford to see a doctor; nowhere else do 700,000 a year go bankrupt because of their medical bills. When it comes to health-care policy, an economist tells T.R. Reid, the U.S. is the "bogeyman of the world." The question Reid poses, however, isn't, What are we doing wrong? It's, What are other countries doing right--and how can the U.S. learn from them? A Washington Post correspondent with a nagging shoulder injury from his Navy days...
Google pooh-poohs this claim. Hal Varian, the company's chief economist, has pointed out that most search engines look at only a small sample of their data in order to improve their results. In other words, Microsoft already has enough data to learn from its users. "It's not the quantity or quality of the ingredients that make a difference. It's the recipes," Varian told CNET. The recipes are Google's proprietary algorithms, which it has slaved over for more than a decade. They're Google's ultimate competitive advantage, and Google believes they'll help it weather...
...price implosion. Across major U.S. cities, the ratio is back to 17.4, practically its historical average. (If you wrap in rural areas, the figure is smaller and the trend less pronounced but still there.) "A year ago, it was a better deal to rent," says Andres Carbacho-Burgos, an economist at Economy.com "Now you have a significant number of areas, especially those hit the hardest by the correction, where, when you compare prices to rents, you'd be led to believe it's a good time...
...This is good news for sure, but the data don't come without caveats. First of all, as economist Robert Shiller has pointed out, the index that bears his name has shown signs of turning a corner in the past. In early 2008, the rate of monthly home-price declines started dropping (that is, the housing situation looked to be moving from really bad to less bad). That momentum didn't stick, though, owing to the broader economic downturn. This time around, a first-time homebuyer tax credit is giving a huge boost to the market - nearly a third...