The Oregon State Beavers have finally learned a little something about price discrimination.  The Oregonian reports that they have increased seat sales by lowering prices - wow, who would have guessed? But you don't a

States like Oregon are in a fiscal mess as a result of the recession and are being forced to go through some 'belt tightening.' In Oregon, since the state general fund is vital to education funding, this means some pretty severe cuts to K-12 education.But does it really matter that much if a kid has a year or t

The New York Times reports on a study by Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi:Like a mantra, officials from both the Bush and Obama administrations have trumpeted how the government’s sweeping interventions to prop up the e

Once again, I am farming this out entirely to the Wall Street Journal.  Portland's home values increased slightly from April and from the previous year, but what little improvement there was most likely is represen

The Sellwood Bridge, which I cross to comme

Just how important are exports to the Portland economy?  Very. This is from a new Brookings Institution report on metropolitan areas export activities.

From the O:

In an otherwise very solid piece on the Oregon budget crisis by Harry Esteve in The Oregonian, there are a few high profile misfires.  I am most disappoi

By the way, as an aside, with my little rumination on the price of a token at the OBF remaining the same for eons, it occurs to me to point out that while the price may not have risen for beer the cost certainly has.To phrase this as a question for my students and other economics groupies: the buzz tent aside, a

As seen by The New Yorker.

I got back from my little vacation just in time t

Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian

I am about to go off on another short vacation, but this one will be without the internets (and phone, and cell phone and television and newspaper) so no posting until Friday after this post today. And no time for a proper blog post today except for a quick comment on a

I am in full vacation mode again for a few days while relatives are v

Oregon's unemployment situation remained stuck in a rut last month with a dismal jobs performance of 3,600 jobs lost on a seasonally adjusted basis.  Not much time to expound on this today, but it kind of speaks for itself.  Depressing

A comment on my post about how to choose airline travel for maximum efficiency directed me to the AirScape Engineers Blog wherein I found this wonderful little chart (more on the specifics of the calculations can be found there):

A nice piece on exchange rate policy by Greg Mankiw appeared in The New York Times over the weekend.Here is an excerpt:What is the trilemma in international finance? It stems from the fact that, in most na

Now the Beer Stimulus Bill is hitting the national media: this time the Wall Street Journal, under the tag "can beer stimulus hop up the economy?"  Ha, I like it when the WSJ gets clever.Can microbrewer

Astoria is where I am at for a quick break and a nice respite from the heat, but I have a moment to chime on on this little debate: doing away with the OLCC.To me the OLCC has always been a bit of an anachronism: an unnecessary bureaucracy and regulation of a market th

My step-father, who is a United Airline

This was brought to my attention (with the comment "must be an election year"):Beer-brewing in Oregon generates more than $2.3-billion every year. Senator Ron Wyden proposes a federal tax cut for small breweries in hopes of expanding the industry even m

A nice article from The New York Times on some of the challenges China will face as they mature from developing to developed economy.  With decades long double-digit growth suddenly a host of issues are appeari

Haven't written much for a while so a collection of thoughts:My first thought about Uruguay's Luis Suarez batting what would have been Ghana's winning goal away with his hands in the last seconds of the extra-time period was t

My little, but highly scienti

The New York Times' Richard Sandomir has an article on what has so far been a World Cup ratings bonanza for ESPN.  This is striking because the time difference means that all the games are shown during the day in the US.  

The New York Times today has an interesting article on Latin America and their dominance at the World Cup their recent growth performances. While the United States and Europe