When I meet people on airplanes and they find out I'm an economist, they usually ask about stock tips.

One of the big take-aways from a lot of economic theory is that people should engage in consumption smoothing.

You work hard for your income, and that hard work is what fuels the economy.

Education campaigns ... may not be enough, at least not alone. If people have no incentive to avoid AIDS on their own, even if they know everything about the disease, they still may not change their behavior.

In short, humans are programmed to get bored.

Even if you are planning a birth with an epidural, the evidence suggests that a doula can help make things go much more smoothly.

Economics works great for planning your life when you don't have a work passion, since we tend to assume that your job delivers only money and you trade off job hours with leisure hours. If you think your job will just be a job, pick one that pays well per hour and leaves you some time off, even if the activity of the job is boring.