Tuesday's Assorted Links
Cheap cars, Survivor occupations, language homogenization, film tax credits, and modern food deserts
Hi y’all! Here are five stories from this week that contain some neat applications of economic principles or are related to teaching:
Why the $25,000 car is going extinct [The Hustle]
The BLS breaks down average employment and wage figures for the occupations of US Survivor winners [Bureau of Labor Statistics]
Researchers are finding that artificial intelligence is influencing how humans write and speak, homogenizing our style and vocabulary [The Verge]
California legislators voted to approve a $750 million film tax credit to lure production back to Hollywood [Variety]
How a federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert [The Atlantic]
Amazon Prime Day isn’t just a shopping event; it’s a great example of a certain type of price discrimination. This week’s post explored how Amazon uses a two-part tariff to increase revenue and get customers to spend more by paying to save. If you missed it yesterday, now’s a great time to see the economics behind the discounts.
What Amazon Prime Day Can Teach Us About Economics
Amazon Prime Day kicks off this week, and Prime members have already been getting “exclusive early access” emails and “lightning deal” alerts. Since launching in 2015, Prime Day has become one of the biggest online shopping events of the year, right alongside Black Friday
Are you an educator looking for ways to introduce this week’s newsletter into your classroom? Sign up for the Classroom Edition of Monday Morning Economist to get assessments and lesson plans delivered straight to your inbox every week.
5/5 would subscribe
The first chart in the Survivor article is extremely confusing until you click on it and things move. The entire article seems disjointed, like it's dancing around a conclusion (eg, which industries are over- or underrepresented in the winners' circle).
The food desert article is particularly interesting. That "food desert" is just a scary-sounding term for a nothingburger -- essentially a simple case of supply and demand -- notwithstanding, this jumped out at me: "The problem of food deserts will not be solved without the rediscovery of the Robinson-Patman Act." Ah, yes, the problem of too much government should be solved with .... more government!