Why Coke Cost A Nickel For 70 Years
Prices change; that's fundamental to how economies work.And yet: In 1886, a bottle of Coke cost a nickel. It was also a nickel in 1900, 1915 and 1930. In fact, 70 years after the first Coke was sold,...
View ArticleA Sequester Is A 'Jelly-Like Mass,' And Other Notes On Fiscal-Cliff Jargon
Here's a quick rundown on three of the most impenetrable terms related to the fiscal cliff. For more, see our post, The Fiscal Cliff In Three And A Half Graphics.
View ArticleHow The Government Set Up A Fake Bank To Launder Drug Money
In the early 1990s, Colombian drug cartels had a problem: They had more money than they knew what to do with."They were having a very difficult time with just the logistics of laundering millions and...
View ArticleHow A Middle-School Principal Convinced Students To Come To School
Shawn Rux took over as principal of MS 53, a New York City middle school, last year. At the time, 50 or 60 kids were absent every day. You could understand why they stayed away: The school was...
View ArticleWhat A Former FBI Hostage Negotiator Can Teach Us About The Fiscal Cliff
The tortuous negotiations involved in the "fiscal cliff" talks are like a chess game.To shed some light on the kinds of negotiation techniques that members of Congress might be using during the talks,...
View ArticleThe North Dakota Town Where A One-Bedroom Apartment Rents For $2,100 A Month
A plain, one-bedroom apartment in Williston, N.D., rents for $2,100 a month. For this price, you could rent a one-bedroom apartment in New York City.Williston is not New York City. There are 30,000...
View ArticleWhy Is The Government In The Flood Insurance Business?
There's a quick, one-word explanation for why the federal government started selling flood insurance: Betsy.Hurricane Betsy, which struck the Gulf Coast in 1965, became known as billion-dollar Betsy....
View ArticleAn International Battle Over One Of The Most Boring Things In Finance
This week saw the end of a years-long, international, multi-billion-dollar battle over one of the most boring things in finance: savings accounts.At the center of the battle was Iceland, a tiny country...
View Article'Give Me The Money Or I'll Shoot The Trees'
Ecuador's Yasuni National Park is one of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. But there's a complication: The park sits on top of the equivalent of millions of barrels of oil.This creates a...
View ArticleThree Ways To Totally Transform U.S. Immigration Policy
With immigration policy in the news again, I asked three economists, "Dream big: If you could create any immigration policy for the U.S., what would it be?" Here's what they said.1. The Best And The...
View ArticleWhen A Famous Hospital Didn't Want An Expensive New Drug
Last year, a new drug called Zaltrap was approved as a kind of last-chance therapy for patients with colorectal cancer. Studies suggested Zaltrap worked almost exactly as well as an existing drug...
View ArticleLady Gaga Writing A New Song Is Like A Factory Investing In A New Machine
I spoke yesterday with Dan Sichel, a Wellesley economist and a Lady Gaga fan. Both of these facts are relevant for this story.The U.S. government is about to tweak the way it measures the economy, and...
View ArticleWho Hides Money Outside The Country?
Over the past decade, some 39,000 people have come forward voluntarily to tell the IRS about offshore money they haven't been paying taxes on. This group provides a small window into the world of...
View ArticleA Surprising Barrier To Clean Water: Human Nature
In many parts of the developing world, drinking a glass of water can be deadly — especially for young children, who can die of diarrheal diseases contracted from dirty water.So getting clean water to...
View ArticleEconomists Have A One-Page Solution To Climate Change
Climate change seems like this complicated problem with a million pieces. But Henry Jacoby, an economist at MIT's business school, says there's really just one thing you need to do to solve the...
View ArticleWhy Doesn't Everybody Buy Cheap, Generic Headache Medicine?
Why does anyone buy Bayer aspirin — or Tylenol, or Advil — when, almost always, there's a bottle of cheaper generic pills, with the same active ingredient, sitting right next to the brand-name...
View ArticleThe Charity That Just Gives Money To Poor People
For more of our reporting on this story, please see our recent column in the New York Times Magazine, and the latest episode of This American Life.There's a charity called GiveDirectly that just gives...
View ArticleCash, Cows And The Rise Of Nerd Philanthropy
For more of our reporting on this story, please see our recent column in the New York Times Magazine, and the latest episode of This American Life.This morning, we reported on a charity called...
View ArticleEcuador To World: Pay Up To Save The Rainforest. World To Ecuador: Meh.
The government of Ecuador has abandoned a plan that would have kept part of the Amazonian rainforest off limits to oil drilling. The initiative was an unusual one: Ecuador was promising to keep the oil...
View Article
