Here is Jeff Ely on his Cheap Talk blog on how to get an estimate of the number of cheaters in a class (surely zero at Northwestern!) and how the optimally structure the incentives to avoid false starts in Track and Field.

Lynne Kiesling on her Knowledge Problem blog on the “Whales, Electricity and Sustainability“, the Justice Department’s action on the ATT/T-Mobile merger, and how we should respond to 9/11.

According to a recent Vault article Are Interns Killing the Job Market?, the decline in employment numbers in the last month may not be dues to a more dismal outlook on the economy. There is a seasonal element to the hiring and firing process. In addition to low new employment figures, the number of temporary workers has declined significantly by around 10%. This is likely to be correlated with the vast inflow of interns into the market. Because interns that are unpaid are not counted in employment figures.

By definition, interns tend to be unpaid because they are working to gain the work experience. Thus the inflow of interns squeezing out the cost of hiring temporary workers means that the outlook should not be interpreted by numbers alone. Although temporary workers tend to be a sign of permanent hiring, but interns also are a great indicator of future employment. But they are often not counted.

In this job market, most college students are working unpaid internships. The paid are the few grails that we seek but sometimes working unpaid might lead us to jobs we like the most. This summer, I am working as a paid research assistant in Finance research and also as an unpaid intern at a boutique investment bank. Although I can add to my bank account with my research job, the investment bank job is the one that I can learn the most from. Because the jobs we want often tend to be the most competitive or in the spotlight jobs, sacrificing pay means that the experience and the joy of working there is our reward. This morning, I met 2 of my high school friends on the metra and a college friend while walking. All of them are working unpaid jobs. The English Major is working at a non-profit organization focused on improving literacy. The Political Science major is working at a government regulatory and tax department. The Pre-Med biology major is working at a laboratory in Feinberg. My point is, that sometimes, the jobs that will help you the most are unpaid. And it is those jobs that we will likely go back to after graduation. This ties back to the earlier point because if most interns are working unpaid in jobs they are passionate about, the economic indicators on employment are missing a major factor on the reality of job entry.

In another article, Searching for The Perfect Job With a Side of Conscience, Stacy McCoy was searching for the perfect job that was for-profit (didn’t have to live on cups of noodles) and had a CSR (corporate social responsibility) aspect to it. She had a hard time finding a job that she wanted and proceeded to found a company called Give to Get Jobs that focuses on providing a job between job seekers and companies that fit into this fold of for-profit and non-profit niche. Sometimes dream jobs can’t always be found, that’s why you might have to tap into your entrepreneurial side and create it. For information on market frictions and the difficulties of finding jobs, see Nobel Prize winning economist Dale Mortensen speak on the subject here.

By Bill Wu

Apple dominates the tablet industry with its iPad devices. Latecomers used to watch in grimace as the laughingstock idea of a smaller computer, larger iphone develops into the next big thing that Fortune 500 companies are experimenting with as part of essential corporate technology. Indeed, Apple and Jobs have proven everyone wrong.

Apple is soon to come out with a new iPad2.0 version that will feature a new design as well as video camera on its iPad. No big surprise; it’s been expected for a while. More info can be found at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-expected-to-extend-lead-with-new-ipad-2011-03-01?dist=afterbell

But, latecomers to the game are not to be overlooked. South Korean electronic giant Samsung has pushed out the Galaxy tablets that are lighter than the iPad, acts as a phone, has front & rear facing cameras and has more Ram available despite being smaller. More comparisons at: http://www.pcworld.com/article/204779/samsung_galaxy_tab_vs_the_ipad_compare_for_yourself.html (click on the chart/picture).

What’s even more amazing is Motorola’s Xoom. This tablet has a larger screen, higher resolution, front camera and a rear facing 5megapixel HD video capable camera, very very business/user friendly multitasking capabilities, less annoying notifications, Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system with upgrade capabilities, dual core chip, and 1GHz Nvidia chip. There’s already buzz flying around: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/04/why-android-honeycomb-should-have-apple-scared/.

Apple will continue to dominate the tablet industry for now as Samsung and Motorola fight for small pieces of the market share. But the latecomers are hungry and feature more functionality as opposed to Apple’s simplicity. Who knows, but I’m betting the competition on the block will drive down some of Apple’s market shares.

Comparison pics are also all over the web: http://usingapple.com/img/HP_TouchPad_vs_iPad_vs_Xoom_vs_PlayBook-20110211-193635.jpg

One of the great things about economics is that the models are fundamentally simple, particularly for Microeconomics.  By simple, I don’t mean that all of the implications are obvious or that that we can figure out what those implications are without doing some math.  However, much of economics is encompassed by the idea that people are trying to do the best that they can with their limited resources, and as a result we would expect voluntary exchange between fully informed parties to make both players better off (or at least no worse off).

Part of the joy of behavioral economics is how it demonstrates where predictions from the reductionist economics approach to modeling human interactions badly and consistently miss how actual humans behave.  An illustration of this comes from a recent Dilbert.

By Bill Wu

Each winter, flocks of young men and women in charcoal suits and starched shirts will flock toward the meccas of internships and career fairs. The search for the holy grail has each person on their toes, from prepping their game day outfit, to 30 corrections to the resume the week before, to the incessant Careercat search. Just how much does these internships factor into your careers and what can you do to prepare yourself? I will attempt to answer some of these issues with some of my own experience.