What is the unhappiest day of the week?
It is Sunday, at least according to one study conducted in Germany, by Swedes.  Could it be because there is much less to buy?  Because the cities empty out? Because walking in nature is overrated?  Because you are supposed to go to church or are supposed to spend more time with family?  Indeed the effect is stronger for married people.  For former East Germans there is not a significant Sunday effect. When I lived in Germany, Sunday was my least favorite day, as it was in Wellington, New Zealand, although that is not the case living in the Unite

Assorted links
1. "Best buy" programs, from the Poverty Action Lab. 2. More favorite fantasy novel picks. 3. The research productivity of Robert Tollison varies with the business cycle. 4. Economic incentives can work for blood donation: another blow against the Titmuss hypothesis. 5. Blog posts to giggle over; read the comments to

My NYT column on Austro-Chinese business cycle theory
The column is here and one excerpt is this: China uses American spending power to enlarge its private sector, while America uses Chinese lending power to expand its public sector. A longer excerpt is this: China has been building factories and production capacity in virtually every sector of its economy, but it’s not clear that the latest round of investments will be profitable anytime soon. Automobiles, steel, semiconductors, cement, aluminum and real estate all show signs of too much capacity. In Shanghai, the centra

Bad Scrabble strategy, from Alaska
I try not to blog Sarah Palin, but this passage, reproduced on Andrew Sullivan's blog, caught my interest for non-Palin reasons: "Everybody in the family played Scrabble and took great pride in hoarding Ks and Qs and slapping them down in long, fancy words on triple-letter scores." -- Going Rogue, p. 12. Sullivan's reader objects that there is only one K and one Q but I think permissible to use the plural in this context, referring to general acts of hoarding over time. My point is that this is

Debtors' prison
Ahem: “I’m really scared of what could happen, because I bought property here,” said Sofia, who asked that her last name be withheld because she is still hunting for a new job. “If I can’t pay it off, I was told I could end up in debtors’ prison.” With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.