Posts by: Will Masters
If you took the NUTR 238 final exam last week, you’ll know that this year’s questions involved news clippings from the past month’s food policy news, about SNAP restrictions, trade policy, pesticides and monopolies.
Now that class is over, a great to new way to follow these and […]
A friend who writes for the Financial Times newspaper just published a terrific essay on recent books about economics, and about the applicability of standard methods like what we use in class to real-world choices and policymaking. To read it you’ll need to make yourself an FT login at their website but it’s well worthwhile:
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Our fifth annual class potluck this week was terrific. We do love our food!
For this year, we were able to schedule the dinner immediately after introducing the idea of optimization in food choice. The class had just completed a data-analysis exercise using the famous least cost diet problem, looking for combinations […]
By Cherie Asgeirsson
Last spring I wanted to have a garden, to grow tomatoes. There is nothing better than a fresh juicy, vine-ripened tomato! I have had a garden at our home in the past, but water is increasingly expensive and restricted, and my home garden plot is more shaded this year due to tree […]
I had a lot of fun making the playlist of econosongs, so recently dove into songs about food. It turns out that songs about food are actually about… well, you can guess. Or listen, if you dare:
If you check it out you might notice a few patterns.
Some parts of the playlist […]
I recently subscribed to Spotify premium, for more music during my daily commute. Their categories and suggestions help solve the paradox of choice for a while, but soon I was looking for more songs about economics, about money and things. Hence this playlist:
It’s public and collaborative, so please add tracks you think […]
My economics research is mostly about undernutrition in Africa and Asia, but I am also keen to learn about nutrition in the US, and maybe help improve policies closer to home. Recently I had the opportunity to collaborate with Sue Roberts and others on a question that’s puzzled me for some time: why […]
Our fourth annual Econ o’Food potluck was last night, the biggest ever and great fun.
This year we had prizes for the best dish in each of five categories, aiming to be as nutritious and delicious as possible while pursuing any one (or more) of the following widely shared goals:
least monetary cost, least […]
New students at the Friedman School have just arrived, and students everywhere are thinking hard about a lot of things. I often get emails from like the one below but they almost never ask so many great questions at once. After replying, I realized that this exchange would make a good blog post. It’s posted […]
A fun feature of NUTR 238 is our annual econ-of-food potluck dinner, to celebrate the privileges of modern food culture. So many choices! The idea is to show off our amazing dietary optimization skills, with prizes for the best dish in each of several categories.
We start with the oldest challenge in the economics of […]
Twitter (click photo for full profile)
- Congrats to @mfbellemare on his 1000th blog post. Sharp, funny, and helpful: doing the internet right since 12/31/… https://t.co/s4AxJCq8Pn about 2 weeks ago
