On raising the federal minimum wage in USA, again

First, I blogged on this topic before: here, here and here.

So what’s new? There is now a very interesting survey in the EconJournalWatch, which asks a set of questions to the 659 economists (some of them top researchers whom I always admired and admire- not necessarily for their views in this context, though) who signed the formal statement released by the EPI, concerning a raise of the federal minimum wage.
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Rich libido

Since my blog is not a “family blog” like MR , I should be able to talk without inhibition about this :-). So I try. Not that we didn’t have already a hunch about this, wealth comes with better sex lives (bloody Joop, he kept telling me this all the time- money and women and sex and the rest- ok, ok, you’ve got a point my friend, though not the whole truth…).
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Gift Giving III: David Friedman’s explanations

This post by David Friedman on the gift giving topic (why people give gifts when simply giving cash instead appears to be the most efficient choice in most cases) is very interesting, hence I add his two explanations to the signalling hypothesis by Greg Mankiw, with the “wild self” connotation by Alex Tabarrok (however it appears that Tabarrok’s wild self ran into trouble subsequently…that’s what happens when you’ve got both a wild self and a wife).
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