Emily Oster
Emily Oster
Emily Fair Osteris an American economist. After receiving a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard in 2002 and 2006 respectively, where she studied under Amartya Sen, Oster joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where she taught prior to moving to Brown University, where she currently holds the rank of Associate Professor of Economics. Her research interests are unusually wide-ranging, and span from development economics to health economics to research design and experimental methodology. Her work...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEconomist
CountryUnited States of America
I had always been told that you shouldn't clean the litter box when you're pregnant, because of your cat. And I think that is overblown - unless you have, like, three kittens in your house that are living outside and eating raw meat, this shouldn't really be a significant source of concern.
I tell my micro students everything I teach them is important, but the truth is that some things are more useful than others, and opportunity cost is near the top.
The greatest moments are those when you see the result pop up in a graph or in your statistics analysis - that moment you realise you know something no one else does and you get the pleasure of thinking about how to tell them.
The biggest food-related risk in pregnancy is listeria. It's a dangerous bacteria, to which pregnant women are especially susceptible, that can lead to miscarriage or stillbirth.
The value of having numbers - data - is that they aren't subject to someone else's interpretation. They are just the numbers. You can decide what they mean for you.
Almost every woman I have spoken to about pregnancy has a story about her doctor giving her a hard time about her weight. Later in my pregnancy it felt like all of my time with my doctor was focused on how fat I was getting - so fat!
I've always loved doing research. I remember doing a research project on the Babylonian numeral system in the eighth grade and thinking, 'This is pretty awesome - is this really a job you can have?' This led me toward a career as an academic, although it took me until college to realise that economics was the right field.
How much is an hour of your time worth? It's worth whatever wage you would get if you spent that hour working. If you work for an hourly rate, this is an easy calculation. Even if you work for a salary and a fixed number of hours, the principle is the same: It's whatever your salary works out to per hour.
Young women who live in areas with high maternal mortality change their behavior less in response to HIV than young women who live in areas with low maternal mortality.
Good household decision-making often relies on thinking about your household like a firm.
All's fair in love and purchasing.
Even if you are planning a birth with an epidural, the evidence suggests that a doula can help make things go much more smoothly.
Talking to women about birth can be polarizing.
You work hard for your income, and that hard work is what fuels the economy.