More Evidence Google is trying to rule the world

The Marshable Social Networking news site reported yesterday (“Google Health…“) that Google is developing a program which will store individual health information.  This is an area of significant need since a vast majority of physicians don’t have electronic records.  The article states: “Codenamed ‘Weaver,’ the upcoming project will be a health information storage program. With…

Metrics for Vaccination Rates

What is a good metric to measure if a doctor is adequately vaccinating their patients? For instance, is the pediatrician Dr. Smith doing an adequate job of giving his patients flu shots? One of the easiest, and most common metrics used is simply the vaccination rate. Vaccination rate = (nbr of patients vaccinated)/(total nbr of…

Advice for Economics Grad Students

Greg Mankiw has a great post on Advice for Grad Students, with links to advice given by David Romer, Hal Varian, David Laibson and more.  Cochrane’s “Writing Tips for PhD students” is especially helpful for graduate students who are attempting to write scholarly articles.

Drugs, Drugs and more Drugs

“Why is there so much controversy about drug testing? I know plenty of guys who would be willing to test any drug they could come up with”– George Carlin The New York Times published two articles this week about prescription drugs. The first deals with generic drugs (“More Generics Slow Rise in Drug Prices“); the…

Do Americans kids know anything about economics?

In 2006, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) conducted its periodic assessment of the quality of American high school students. What is unique about the 2006 “Nation’s Report Card” was that it was the first time that high school students were tested regarding the subject of economics. How did they do? Well, it depends…

Want a 912% return in one year?

Sound too good to be true? Well, according to the Motley Fool website (“Best market“), Zimbabwe’s stock exchange returned 912% in 2006. The Mises Institute states that between January and the beginning of April 2007, the Zimbabwe stock exchange returned 595%, and looks to continue to be the top stock index in 2007 as well.…

2 for 1 special on lettuce, 30% off pasta …and free ciprofoxacin?

On Monday, August 1st, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that Publix supermarket chain will be giving out free prescription drugs (“Publix to offer…antibiotics for free“).   The 7 drugs which will be freely available to customers include: amoxicillin, cephalexin, penicillin VK, erythromycin, ampicillin, sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim, and ciprofoxacin. The reasons Publix is doing this are: 1) to attract…

Violence: A Vicious Cycle

The August 1st edition of JAMA has an interesting article which examines how exposure to war crimes affects individuals view about peaceful negotiations (“…War Crimes…“). The study takes place in the Acholi, Lango, and Teso subregions in northern Uganda. Since the late 1980s, many people in this area of Uganda experienced the bitter fighting between…