Tuesday's Assorted Links

Lettuce Shortage, Thanksgiving Dinner (x2), Holiday Spam, and Housing Inflation

Thanksgiving dinner this year is pricier than last year. Check out links #2 and #3 for more information. [Source: Purdue Center for Food Demand Analysis & Sustainability]

Hi y’all! Here are five stories from the past week that contain interesting economic concepts:

1. There’s a national lettuce shortage that could impact your next lunch break [Business Insider]

2. The average cost of a Thanksgiving dinner this year costs about 20% more than last year [American Farm Bureau]

3. The average cost of a Thanksgiving dinner varies a lot by where you live [Purdue Center for Food Demand Analysis & Sustainability]

4. Spam is introducing a holiday-inspired product that includes “fig and orange flavors” [NPR]

5. Have we been measuring housing inflation all wrong? [The Washington Post]

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   Yesterday I summarized how Ticketmaster operates as both a monopolist and a monopsonist in the market for live events:

   Ticketing Power Takes Center Stage

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Week 46 is over and I’m still at 49 books for the year. I finished 3 books last week, so this week included a lot of fresh starts. I should have a few books to check in next week, but one that I’ve enjoyed so far is John List’s new book, The Voltage Effect. It’s made me start to question ways that I could scale the work that I’m doing and reach even larger audiences. In a sense, this Substack was one way I could take the stuff I was doing in class and share it with so many others. This does feel like the kind of book I need to read again before implementing any more new ideas.