Sources: Christmas Spending Survey 2012, Deloitte; NRF’s Holiday Survival Kit  (US only); HSBC Christmas Spending Survey 2012 (UK only)The Christmas Season is probably the heaviest burden for family budgets among all the annual holidays, and the best business opportunity for retailers. In the US alone estimations of spending on Christmas-related items hit $586.1 billion in 2012.

INOMICS continues and expands its working partnership with the European Regional Scienc Association (ERSA) into 2013.

Halloween is a highly commercialized holiday in the US, with people of all ages celebrating and spending. Expected Halloween spending of US consumers in 2012 almost equals government expenditures of Kenya. According to surveys conducted annually by the National Retail Federation, in last five years total spending on Halloween in the US grew from $4.96 billion in 2006 to an expected $8 billion in 2012. After a significant drop in spending in 2009, consumers managed to bring it back up to the level of a previous year in 2010.

Google’s California headquarters is one of the more unusual places where you might find economists hard at work. While economists did not have a place at Google when it launched in 1998, by 2002 Google had begun to hire economists in advisory roles as the demand for Google’s ad space grew in size and complexity.

“You can’t be an economist without noticing all the interesting things about how the economy works, it is natural to be interested in it and I have had the privilege to be able to study it” said Alvin A. Roth answering questions during the unexpected 4am call from Sweden. Together with Lloyd S. Shapley, Roth was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel – more commonly known as the Nobel Prize in Economics – “for the theory of stable allocations and practice of market design”. During the award speech the field was described as being  “…about economic engineering, [and] how to design certain markets where the traditional market mechanism is expected to not work well.”

Data published on OECD.Stats Extracts gives an overview of the absolute numbers of graduates from tertiary type-A and advanced research programs for all standard fields of education.  According to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), economics and economic history fall under the category of Social and Behavioral Science (business and related disciplines are not included). The graph presented above includes aggregated data for countries with the largest number of graduates in social and behavioral science* for the year 2010. The number of graduates from the US significantly out numbers graduates from other OECD countries, leading in every other discipline as well. Unfortunately, there is no information available on the exact percentage of economists among the graduates.

On November 16, 2006 the world lost one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. Today, July 31, 2012, Milton Friedman would have celebrated his 100th birthday, which makes it perhaps a fitting time to stop for a moment and recall some of his contributions to the field.

Three Economists go out hunting

The Tilburg University Economics Ranking Sandbox For anyone that doesn’t know it, the Tilburg University Economics Ranking, which ranks economics departments based on contributions to articles published in any one of 62 (mostly English-language) economics-related journals, is well worth a look.

The cost of education varies enormously depending on what one studies and where. In the last few years, there has been plenty of hype about the ‘Higher Education Bubble,’ brought to the attention of the media by the Economist last year. This phenomena seems to be particularly prominent in the business-oriented fields worldwide and as an overarching situation in the US.

Every year, Max Bazerman, a Harvard Business School professor runs the exact same experiment with his students. In short form, he auctions off a $20 bill but places strict rules on how the betting can take place regulating who pays, and who wins.

Podcasts are a great way not only to enrich your knowledge, but also to look at an already familiar matter from a different perspective. Normally, podcasts are issued in the style of lectures, talks, interviews or just short commentaries, and cover either current economic issues or pure academic topics.

The question of how far to proceed within academia, and subsequently, where to ply one’s trade when done, is, and will always be a tricky one. In times of widespread austerity, this quandary is further complicated by a general job climate of increased precariousness, falling wages, and diminished social security - rarely before has financial planning for the future held such significance. It is for this purpose, the elucidation of the conditions of the global economics job market, that we at INOMICS compiled our 2018 Salary Report – downloadable for registered users here. With over 2000 participants from across the world, the Report serves as an invaluable resource, detailing the remuneration one can expect in academia or the private sector depending on one’s level of qualification. It also outlines the direction current salary trends seem to be headed, permitting prospective students to judge how ‘cost-effective’ future degrees are likely to be, thus making the best-informed career decisions possible.

Are you curious about the academic careers of your peers in Economics? We had a chance to ask a couple of questions to Mehmet Gökhan Özdemir, a PhD Student in the first year of his program in Economics at the Faculty of Political Sciences at Ankara University.

INOMICS supports students and researchers in attending conferences with a €500 grant

INOMICS supports students and researchers in attending conferences with a €500 grant

INOMICS supports students and researchers in attending conferences with a €500 grant Hear their perspectives on attending conferences and what advice they have to give other academics.  

INOMICS supports students and researchers in attending conferences with a €500 grant Hear their perspectives on attending conferences and what advice they have to give other academics  

INOMICS supports students and researchers in attending conferences with a €500 grant Hear their perspectives on attending conferences and what advice they have to give other academics.  

INOMICS supports young students and researchers in attending conferences with a €500 grant Hear their perspectives on attending conferences and what advice they have to give other academics  

INOMICS supports students and researchers in attending conferences with a €500 grant Hear their perspectives on attending conferences and what advice they have to give other academics.  

As more women continue to occupy a greater number of senior positions both in academia and the private sector, the gender pay gap has become an increasingly relevant issue in the professional and academic labor market.

With 2017 ASSA Annual Meeting in mind, we thought that this information will be helpful for all of you who are considering pursuing a PhD degree in Economics as many students and prospective PhD candidates often question whether obtaining a PhD in Economics is worth it. Will the time, effort and money spent on working towards a PhD guarantee you a higher salary when compared to the salary that can be earned with a Master’s or Bachelor’s degree?

The winners of the 2016 Nobel Prizes were recently announced, to honour outstanding contributions to the fields of economics, physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and world peace. The winners have each made a dramatic impact on the state of their various fields, so in this article we'll introduce you to the winners and to the work which they have be recognised for.

Guilherme Morlin is a Brazilian currently pursuing his Master’s degree in Economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Guilherme is also our lucky winner of $100 Amazon Gift Card in the recent INOMICS Review Prize Draw. Students and researchers from all over the world took part in the contest by submitting reviews of the universities and institutions where they study or work.