Untimely meditations on a mania

Gamestop's market capitalization (share price multiplied by number of shares, a measure of valuation for the company) exceeded $22 billion by the end of this week, up from the quarter of a billion it was valued at the same time last year. This $22 billion valuation is greater than the market capitalization of Kellogg's, the …

Store Wars: Imperfect views of imperfect markets

Economics has something of an edge when it comes to respectability among the social sciences, but it is often squandered by talking heads acting like everyone else is an idiot on TV. The benefit of taking an introductory economics class is not prestige or a set of talking points but rather a set of tools …

The Networks of Cultist Simulator

Cultist Simulator reveals its world through fragments and its lore is discovered by considering these fragments in relation to each other. The game's Discord server has an active community that discusses the lore of the world (now known as the Secret Histories), and there is plenty of room for interpretation about what is going on. …

Epic’s Tactics Are The System Working As Intended

The most perplexing feature of the commentary surrounding the Epic Games Store (EGS) is that the loudest voices assign criticism to Epic that is more appropriately targeted at Valve. The criticism that has gotten the most attention is the one that says Epic is using its timed exclusives in order to take over digital distribution, …

What’s in a Name: The Case of ‘Metrics

While it is hard to think of an econometrics book being popular in any traditional sense of the term, the best candidate for a popular econometrics textbook is Josh Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke's Mostly Harmless Econometrics (MHE). The title is a deliberate reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and communicates the irreverent tone taken in …