Hurricane Economics
A short while ago, I had threatened to send a friend a bunch of interesting articles on the economics of Hurricane Katrina. The articles I spoke of took an interesting look at the disaster, focusing on relief and other things a bit closer to home for most
folks, like gas.
Much like any promised updates to update this space lately, I forgot to do so. Or didn’t get to it. Or pushed it into the black hole that occasionally forms near the middle of my priority list. Let’s see if I can hit two birds with one stone for once.
Steven E. Landsburg, an author I’ve mentioned before, asks a couple of intriguing questions in his Everyday Economics gig. How much should we help the victims of Katrina’s wrath and how would these folks really like to spend all that relief money heading their way?
On the gas front, Austan Goolsbee points out just how price insensitive we are when we visit the gas pump and that we need not worry too much about price gouging right now, at least.
It’s no coincidence that all of these articles come from the Slate, one of my long lived RSS feeds. Sometimes I have to refer my local paper (sorry, no direct link) for economic tidbits like fuel efficient cars do not lead decreased gas use but the Slate isn’t a bad source for this type of stuff at all. I highly recommend it.
