This and That

Prostitution Insurance by Arnold Kling;

A few economists argued that Americans ought to try to get over their discomfort with paying for sex. The economists proposed that Americans pay for prostitution with their own money, in which case they would be less likely to obtain unnecessary services. In addition, consumers would pay more attention to cost, which would force prostitutes to lower their prices in order to avoid losing business.

Marvelous properties- Don Boudreaux

Each time you shuffle a deck, you produce an arrangement of cards that exists for the first and only time in history. The arithmetic works that way. For a very small number of items, the number of possible arrangements -- which item is first, which item is second, which is third, and so on -- is small. Three items, for example, can be arranged only six different ways. But the number of possible arrangements grows very large very quickly. The number of ways to arrange five items is 120. For 10 items it's 3,628,800. For 15 items it's 1,307,674,368,000. The number of different ways to arrange 52 items is 8.066 times 10 to the 67th power.

This number is so enormous that no human can comprehend it. By way of comparison, the number of ways to arrange a mere 20 items is 2,432,902,008,176,640,000 -- a number larger than the number of seconds that elapse in the course of 10 billion years. And this number is microscopic compared to 8.066 times 10 to the 67th power.

A world full of good news

The End of National Currency

Summary: Global financial instability has sparked a surge in "monetary nationalism" -- the idea that countries must make and control their own currencies. But globalization and monetary nationalism are a dangerous combination, a cause of financial crises and geopolitical tension. The world needs to abandon unwanted currencies, replacing them with dollars, euros, and multinational currencies as yet unborn.

Conflicting creeds: how to value art, houses and Asian stock by John Kay;

There are two approaches to valuing assets. For fundamentalists, the value of an asset is the sum of the returns it will yield over its life. For fellow travellers, an asset is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. The conflict between fundamentalists and fellow travellers is the root of many financial controversies, over investment styles, over fair value accounting. Anyone who owns, or might buy, a Chinese share, a house, or a work of art is pressed into – implicitly – taking a view

Specialization or diversification

Paul Krugman: Don’t Blame Bush

Tyler Cowen: Why Is Income Inequality in America So Pronounced? Consider Education

"Paradoxes of Rationality"

You Economists Don't Get It, Do You?

In Search of the World’s Most Livable Cities

Just How Amazing Is Jacqueline Gagne -- And Her 10 Golf Aces?