Knowledge Discovery
Markets and science advance society in fundamentally the same way. They enable the failure of theories and the hypotheses that drive those theories, thus advancing human knowledge.
Economics professor Howie Baetjer of Towson University explains how the market process generates improvements in the human condition.
This Ted-Ed video outlines the history of aspirin.
4000 years ago, the ancient Sumerians made a surprising discovery: if they scraped the bark off a particular kind of tree and ate it, their pain disappeared. Little did they know that what they’d found was destined to influence the future course of medicine. Krishna Sudhir traces the history of aspirin.
This week, Stan teaches you about patents. It turns out, they're patently complicated!
This week, Stan teaches you about patents. It turns out, they're patently complicated! So, patents have some similarity to copyright, in that they grant a limited monopoly to people who invent things. The key difference in patents and copyright is that patents are for THINGS. Copyright is for an idea. So, if you've come up with a great new invention, like for example, a condiment gun, you should get a patent. We'll also talk about some of the limitations and problems of patents, including patent trolls
What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order? On certain familiar assumptions the answer is simple enough. If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic.
Economics professor Howie Baetjer of Towson University explains how the market process generates improvements in the human condition.
The Income Statement is one of a company’s core financial statements that shows their profit and loss over a period of time.
The Income Statement is one of a company’s core financial statements that shows their profit and loss over a period of time.
Vince Kosuga farmed onions. Then he tried trading them on the market, too. He made millions. Today on the show: How trading got so out of hand that the Chicago River flowed with America's onions.
I spent 6 months and $1500 to completely make a sandwich from scratch. Including growing my own vegetables, making my own salt from ocean water, milking a cow to make cheese, grinding my own flour from wheat, collecting my own honey, and killing a chicken myself.
All prices are not created equal
Visitors to Home Depot’s website may assume they’re getting the same deal as everyone else—but in reality, the retailer charges higher or lower prices based on each individual visitor’s zip code. (Home Depot bases its virtual prices on the shopper’s nearest brick-and-mortar store.) A better-known tactic employed by airlines alters fares based on factors such as time of day, day of the week, and traveler zip code.
Countless arguments can be made that the stock market is overvalued, and just as many that it is undervalued.
In 1978, a group of farmers in a Chinese village called Xiaogang wrote a secret contract and hid it in the roof of a mud hut.
Illegal dumping is the 'new narcotics' for organized criminals in the U.K.
Illegal dumping is the 'new narcotics' for organized criminals in the U.K.
“We have to take defending ourselves into our own hands,” one farmer said as moats and trenches are dug and reinforced gates installed.
This article by the Harvard Business Review examines recent changes in patent law.
In the last few decades, courts have both broadened the kinds of inventions for which patents can be granted and relaxed their oversight of what constitutes genuinely novel innovation. As a result, companies of all sizes are increasingly hindered in efforts to bring new products and services to market by patent holders claiming infringement of even trivial features.
Biosphere 2 was one of the most lauded experiments of the 1990s, then one of the most ridiculed. Now it is back, offering a unique way to put theories about climate and environment to the test.
This video examines the purpose and effect of patents in the United States of America.
Animal advocates accuse the Cayman Turtle Centre of mistreating its sea turtles and stoking demand for the meat of an endangered species, claims it denies.
At the Cayman Turtle Centre tourists can kiss, hug, and pass around young sea turtles. They can even take a swim with bigger ones if they want. It’s billed as a rare opportunity to come into contact with endangered green sea turtles, a migratory species whose numbers are on the decline because of egg poaching, habitat degradation, and entanglement with fishing nets.
This article explores how private property may have saved the pilgrims.
There are three configurations of property rights: state, communal, and private property. Within a family, many goods are in effect communally owned. But when the number of communal members exceeds normal family size, as happens in tribes and communes, serious and intractable problems arise. It becomes costly to police the activities of the members, all of whom are entitled to their share of the total product of the community, whether they work or not. This is the free-rider problem, and it is the most important institutional reason tribes and communes cannot rise above subsistence level (except in special circumstances, such as monasteries).
This week, Stan teaches you about patents. It turns out, they're patently complicated!
This week, Stan teaches you about patents. It turns out, they're patently complicated! So, patents have some similarity to copyright, in that they grant a limited monopoly to people who invent things. The key difference in patents and copyright is that patents are for THINGS. Copyright is for an idea. So, if you've come up with a great new invention, like for example, a condiment gun, you should get a patent. We'll also talk about some of the limitations and problems of patents, including patent trolls
The first few years of Plymouth colony were fraught with hardship and hunger. Economics had a lot to do with it.
Next year at this time, Americans will mark the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower in 1620 and the subsequent founding of the Plymouth colony by English Puritans we know as the Pilgrims. They, of course, became the mothers and fathers of the first Thanksgiving.