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
You work hard for your income, and that hard work is what fuels the economy.
Adhering to budgeting rules shouldn't trump good decision-making.
In short, humans are programmed to get bored.
There is some risk to increase birth defects if you do a lot of outdoor gardening when you are pregnant. That can increase rates of toxoplasmosis.
Economists actually disagree about whether there are significant economic returns from attending an elite college versus a less-selective one.
Economists typically think that your happiness goes up as you get more money, but the more you have, the less each additional dollar matters. This means that you value money most in times when you have less income and more expenses.
Because economics is all about optimising, doing the best you can with what you have - it's usually the first place you should look for answers if you want to maximise your happiness.
Feminists of my mother's generation argued that both mom and dad should work a little less and each do some of the household chores. My parents, for example, split everything 50/50. Even though my father is a terrible cook, he still made dinner exactly half the time.
I travel a fair amount, read on the plane, and I read fast.
I think we've moved to thinking of parenting and pregnancy as something in which you should lose yourself.
The basic idea that incentives can be used to motivate behavior is a powerful one. It works for employees, and it has a clear place in parenting, as anyone who has tried to potty-train a recalcitrant toddler with sticker rewards knows.
Education campaigns ... may not be enough, at least not alone. If people have no incentive to avoid AIDS on their own, even if they know everything about the disease, they still may not change their behavior.
One of the big take-aways from a lot of economic theory is that people should engage in consumption smoothing.
Every time you have a carrot instead of a cookie, every time you go to the gym instead of going to the movies, that's a costly investment in your health. But how much you want to invest is going to depend on how much longer you expect to live in the future, even if you don't make those investments.