Un alerón que ahorra 200 millones de dólares

A Sword-Like Attachment For Planes Will Save United Airlines $200 Million Per Year

ALEX DAVIES

There's a new United Airlines plane in the skies, with a dangerous-looking feature that will actually make it more efficient.

The Boeing 737-800, which took its maiden test flight in Washington on Tuesday, is the first aircraft fitted with the new Split Scimitar Winglet, a curved attachment to the tip of the wing that is appropriately named for a sword.

The winglets reduce wind drag, and can cut fuel use on the 737 by 2%. That doesn't sound like a ton, but United says that once the winglets are installed on its 737, 757, and 767 fleets, it will save more than $200 million per year. That's believable, considering that buying fuel accounted for 33% of global airline operating costs in 2012.

United will begin retrofitting its 737-800 and 737-900ER jets with the winglets early next year, once it finishes testing and gets FAA certification.

Here's the winglet in close-up:

And the whole plane:

Business Insider 

How the Dismal Science Got Its Name (Cómo la ciencia triste obtuvo su nombre)

Si usted quiere los subtítulos en español de esta exposición, haga clic aquí

10 trabajos que pagan inusualmente bien en USA

10 Unusual Jobs That Pay Surprisingly Well
Forbes

We all know that most doctors, lawyers, and CEOs make good money–but you may be surprised to learn that funeral service managers, hot dog vendors, and ice cream testers can also pull in a pretty penny.

To compile our 2013 list of 10 unusual jobs that pay surprisingly well, I combed through BLS data and scanned the pages of Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy.

Odd Jobs is a book by Abigail Gehring that features over a hundred jobs that don’t require you to sit in an office eight hours a day, five days a week. Gehring has had twenty-four of the jobs listed in her book.

Growing up, her father—who had a master’s degree and teaching experience—was best known as the “Hot Dog Man” in her hometown of Wilmington, Vermont. For twenty-five years he worked out of his metal pushcart in a True Value parking lot, and made enough money to put four kids through college.

In her book, Gehring notes that busy hot dog vendors in New York make up to $100,000 a year—while those with a reasonably successful business in less trafficked areas can earn a profit of $30,000 to $80,000 a year.

“Odd jobs can definitely bring in a good income, but often it requires a great deal of creativity, diligence, and a willingness to take risks,” Gehring says. “Certainly there are high costs to pay for the education and training required to become a doctor or a lawyer, but if you’re a bright and hardworking person, either one is a pretty straightforward path to success. There are more unknowns in the odd job road to success, and so a lot of people don’t even consider it.”

In Pictures: 10 Unusual Jobs That Pay Surprisingly Well

On a fishing boat in Alaska, you could bring in $2,500 a week worth of fish, or you might get nothing, she says. As a lipstick reader, you could make $200 an hour, but you might only get one hour’s worth of work some weeks. “To really make a lot of money doing the kinds of jobs I describe in my book, from dog walker to virtual head hunter to body part model, you need business savvy, a dogged determination, and a good bit of luck. But you also might get to be your own boss, set your own hours, and have a slew of great stories to tell your grandkids one day.”

It turns out that full-time personal shoppers can pull in over $100,000 a year, according to Gehring–while virtual head hunters make $250 to $10,000 per employee referral. Other well-paying unusual jobs from her book: Cruise ship entertainer, ice cream taster, and human statue.

“A lot of freelancers or people in creative professions want flexible hours, which often means thinking outside the box for money-making opportunities,” she says. Other people seek out unusual jobs because they’re tired of the 9 to 5 grind, or they’ve lost their job and are looking for new opportunities. “Some people just want to add a little spice to their life and if they can make money doing something exciting and unusual, why not?”

Embalmer
Average pay: $43,680 a year 
Source: BLS

Hot Dog VendorAverage pay: $30,000 to $100,000 a year 
Source: Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy.

Personal ShopperAverage pay: $25,000 to $100,000+ a year 
Source: Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy.

Ice Cream Taster (Food Scientist)
Average pay: $56,000 a year
Source: Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy.

Virtual Head Hunter
Average pay: $250 to $10,000 per referral
Source: Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy.

Funeral Service Manager
Average pay: $79,930 a year
Source: BLS

Body Part Model
Average pay: $20 to $1,000+ for an afternoon
Source: Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy.

Live Mannequin / Human Statue
Average pay: Up to $100 an hour
Source: Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy.

Genetic Counselor
Average pay: $55,820 a year
Source: BLS

Cruise Ship Entertainer
Average pay: $3,000 to $4,500 a month, plus room and board
Source: Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy.

El dilema del prisionero empírico no dio los resultados esperados

They Finally Tested The 'Prisoner's Dilemma' On Actual Prisoners — And The Results Were Not What You Would Expect

MAX NISEN

The "prisoner's dilemma" is a familiar concept to just about anybody that took Econ 101.

The basic version goes like this. Two criminals are arrested, but police can't convict either on the primary charge, so they plan to sentence them to a year in jail on a lesser charge. Each of the prisoners, who can't communicate with each other, are given the option of testifying against their partner. If they testify, and their partner remains silent, the partner gets 3 years and they go three. If they both testify, both get two. If both remain silent, they each get one.

In game theory, betraying your partner, or "defecting" is always the dominant strategy as it always has a slightly higher payoff in a simultaneous game. It's what's known as a "Nash Equilibrium," after Nobel Prize winning mathematician and A Beautiful Mind subject John Nash.

 In sequential games, where players know each other's previous behavior and have the opportunity to punish each other, defection is the dominant strategy as well. 

However, on an overall basis, the best outcome for both players is mutual cooperation.

Yet no one's ever actually run the experiment on real prisoners before, until two University of Hamburg economists tried it out in a recent study comparing the behavior of inmates and students. 

Surprisingly, for the classic version of the game, prisoners were far more cooperative  than expected.

Menusch Khadjavi and Andreas Lange put the famous game to the test for the first time ever, putting a group of prisoners in Lower Saxony's primary women's prison, as well as students through both simultaneous and sequential versions of the game. 

The payoffs obviously weren't years off sentences, but euros for students, and the equivalent value in coffee or cigarettes for prisoners. 

They expected, building off of game theory and behavioral economic research that show humans are more cooperative than the purely rational model that economists traditionally use, that there would be a fair amount of first-mover cooperation, even in the simultaneous simulation where there's no way to react to the other player's decisions. 

And even in the sequential game, where you get a higher payoff for betraying a cooperative first mover, a fair amount will still reciprocate. 

As for the difference between student and prisoner behavior, you'd expect that a prison population might be more jaded and distrustful, and therefore more likely to defect. 

The results went exactly the other way for the simultaneous game, only 37% of students cooperate. Inmates cooperated 56% of the time.

On a pair basis, only 13% of student pairs managed to get the best mutual outcome and cooperate, whereas 30% of prisoners do. 

In the sequential game, way more students (63%) cooperate, so the mutual cooperation rate skyrockets to 39%. For prisoners, it remains about the same.

What's interesting is that the simultaneous game requires far more blind trust out from both parties, and you don't have a chance to retaliate or make up for being betrayed later. Yet prisoners are still significantly more cooperative in that scenario. 

Obviously the payoffs aren't as serious as a year or three of your life, but the paper still demonstrates that prisoners aren't necessarily as calculating, self-interested, and un-trusting as you might expect, and as behavioral economists have argued for years, as mathematically interesting as Nash equilibrium might be, they don't line up with real behavior all that well. 

Business Insider

Los McJobs como el futuro laboral de muchos

McJobs Are the Future: Why You Should Care What Fast Food Workers Earn

Maybe most McDonald's workers don't make a career of fast food today. But will that be true in 10 or 15 years?

JORDAN WEISSMANN

The Atlantic

As I wrote earlier today, the corporate brass at McDonald's seem to believe that in order to survive on what they pay their restaurant workers, you need a second job. And hey, credit where it's due: they're probably right. Fast food wages are terrible. If you're relying on a minimum- or near-minimum-wage check each month, it means you're living life on the financial precipice. 

Since this out, however, I've gotten a few pointed responses from readers, the gist of which was captured pretty well in this tweet by Vincent from Chicago (I assure you, I'm the one getting yelled at):

Vincent is hinting at a fairly sophisticated set of arguments you tend to hear from people who don't worry too much about minimum-wage workers, in particular. In brief: There aren't that many them; the jobs are mostly occupied by "suburban teenagers, not single parents," as the Heritage Foundation puts it; and people don't earn minimum wage for very long.

Or again, nobody makes a career as a cashier at McDonalds. 

And there's something to all that. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were about 1.68 million workers earning the federal minimum wage in 2011, accounting for about 2.3 percent of the workforce. About half were below the age of 24, and as the Heritage Foundation notes, the vast majority of those minimum wagers were enrolled in school. Moreover, one study by the Employment Policies Institute estimated that, between 1977 and 1998, more than 65 percent of minimum wage workers managed to land a raise within a year of starting their job. 

So with all of that in mind, here's my quick case for why you should still be worried about what companies like McDonald's pay their employees. 

The Working Poor Are Real, And Some Earn More Than Minimum WageAccording to the Census bureau, 7.2 percent of American workers live below the poverty line. In other words, they far outnumber the ranks of minimum wage earners. Remember, even McDonald's cashiers earn closer to $7.72 an hour on average, according to Glassdoor. 

Fast Food Workers Are Not All Suburban TeenagersNo, not every low-pay worker is a kid assembling Big Macs between classes. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median fast food worker (technically referred to as a combined food preparation and serving worker) is about 29. A full 40 percent of minimum wage-earners, meanwhile, are in their prime working years of 25 to 54. Sure, some are married moms working part-time so they can see more of their kids. But plenty aren't.

Promotions Don't Mean Much If You're Still PoorYes, low-pay workers might get raises, but they're not necessarily big. The Employment Policies Institute found that the median annual pay hike for minimum-wage earners was 10 percent. About a third didn't get any kind of raise at all. And this was during the 90s. In today's slow economy, the situation is presumably worse.

McJobs Are Probably the Future
During the recession, the economy shed millions of middle-income jobs in fields like construction and manufacturing. During the recovery, they've mostly been replaced with low-wage service work, exacerbating a trend that dates back to the turn of the century. As shown on the graph below, the the food services industry now accounts for 7.6 percent of all jobs, up from about 7 percent pre-recession, and about 6.2 percent around 2000.

And, in all likelihood, they'll account for even more in the future. The BLSprojects that food services will be among the fastest growing source of jobs for Americans with no more than a high school degree -- right behind retail and home health aides. So maybe working at McDonalds doesn't usually amount to a career today. But it might tomorrow. 

Tips para pasantes en Economia

Internships in Economics – Lessons from an Economist!

written by Samridhi Shukla

Whether pursuing a bachelor’s degree in economics or having finished a PhD from a top university, at all stages of the academic pursuits and research careers, young economists have been engaged in the grueling process of finding internships with reputable organizations. While masters and bachelors students aim to gather work experience and transition into full time jobs, PhD candidates attempt to combine their research with the work of relevant organizations.

Having gone through the cumbersome process myself and having successfully crossed over into a “real job” after a tedious string of internships, here are a few lessons and tips I would like to share with you, no matter which part of the internship journey you are currently navigating through.

Lesson 1: Do what interests you!

It is important to go for an internship in a discipline that really interests you. In the long run companies will hire you for the skills you can offer them and this decision will not be based on the reputation of the company where you did your summer internship.  Work experience in a local unknown NGO in Congo is as valuable as an internship at the Big 4 consulting firms in New York. Bottom line, do something you are good at, pick out solid skills you can apply in life and don´t make a company´s reputation the top factor in your decision.

Lesson 2: Building expertise or versatility?

You can stick to the same area of interest as you proceed or you can be versatile in your choice of internships! There is no golden rule about what works.  However, anecdotal evidence suggests that sticking to one area of interest builds a certain credibility of expertise in that area and may lead to brownie points for you from recruiters who want specialists. Having said that, I firmly believe that while in university, one should have full freedom to taste different worlds and thereby realize with experience what they would ultimately like to do. As long as you can explain your path and give convincing reasons for the choices you made, no experience is inferior to another.

Lesson 3: The money will come as you get better!

I remember vividly how unpaid internships were looked down upon during my university days. People make you believe that you are selling yourself too low if a company where you intern does not offer you remuneration. Please do not believe this especially if you are at the start of your internship phase in university! As a natural progression, I can guarantee you that the money will come as you get better at what you do, i.e. chase excellence and not money and sooner or later, money will chase you for your excellence. In fact, sometimes the companies that offer you the best training and work experience do not have the budget to support interns. However, with what they teach you, your skills might be worth a lot once you do enter the real job market.

Lesson 4: Most important: Do not compare!
I am going to repeat here what granny said all along. Do not compare yourself with others! Though it sounds cliché, this is crucial.  While I was in love with Development Economics and not particularly fond of the mathematical methods of economics, I made myself go through several unnecessary and painful processes of applying for finance based positions in leading investment banks all over the world. Why? Peer-pressure in a top economics college of India where everyone blindly runs behind big brand names offering high salary packages! Of course, the outcome was repeated rejection- not good for one´s self esteem and also not worth it in the long term, as I can see today in retrospect.
In conclusion, I would like to say that what you make out of an internship experience and how much you leverage from the social network you make depends on you. Every experience contributes to who we are as people and professionals. Make sure you take time to dig into the details of what you want, what you learned from a given experience and share it with the recruiters in an authentic way as you go along. At the end of the day, recruiters want authentic people with authentic experiences and real life skills. Gather those and move ahead with confidence!
Good Luck.

 Image credit:  taniawillis

Blog Inomics

McDonald's no sabe explicar como hacen para vivir sus empleados con sus bajos salarios

McDonald's Can't Figure Out How Its Workers Survive On Minimum Wage

In a financial planning guide for its workers, the company accidentally illustrates precisely how impossible it is to scrape by making minimum wage.

JORDAN WEISSMANN

The Atlantic

Well this is both embarrassing and deeply telling.

In what appears to have been a gesture of goodwill gone haywire, McDonald's recently teamed up with Visa to create a financial planning site for its low-pay workforce. Unfortunately, whoever wrote the thing seems to have been literally incapable of imagining of how a fast food employee could survive on a minimum wage income. As ThinkProgress and other outlets have reported, the site includes a sample budget that, among other laughable assumptions, presumes that workers will have a second job. 

As Jim Cook at Irregular Times notes, the $1,105 figure up top is roughly what the average McDonald's cashier earning $7.72 an hour would take home each month after payroll taxes, if they worked 40 hours a week. So this budget applies to someone just about working two full-time jobs at normal fast-food pay. (The federal minimum wage is just $7.25 an hour, by the way, but 19 states and DC set theirs higher). 

A few of the other ridiculous conceits here: This hypothetical worker doesn't pay a heating bill. I guess some utilities are included in their $600 a month rent? (At the end of 2012, average rent in the U.S. was $1,048). Gas and groceries are bundled into $27 a day spending money. And this individual apparently has access to $20 a month healthcare. McDonald's, for its part, charges employees $12.58 a week for the company's most basic health plan. Well, that's if they've been with the company for a year. Otherwise, it's $14. 

Now, it's possible that McDonald's and Visa meant this sample budget to reflect a two-person household. That would be a tad more realistic, after all. Unfortunately, the brochure doesn't give any indication that's the case. Nor does it change the fact that most of these expenses would apply to a single person. 

Of course, minimum wage workers aren't really entirely on their own, especially if they have children. There are programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and the earned income tax credit to help them along. But that's sort of the point. When large companies make profits by paying their workers unlivable wages, we end up subsidizing their bottom lines. 

Inflación (normal) en el mundo

Inflation (April 2013 Update)

by Geoff Riley

Keeping actual and expected inflation under control is one of the key objectives of macroeconomic policy. The rate of inflation in the UK is calculated using the Consumer Price Index. For many years data on the Retail Price Index (RPI) has also been published but from March 2013, the RPI is no longer regarded as an official national economic statistic. Please be aware of this when writing your exam. This revision blog provides updated figures on the latest CPI data for a variety of countries - it reminds us that inflation rates vary quite a lot. Think about what persistent differences in inflation rates can have on macroeconomic stability and performance.

UK inflation, measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), remained positive throughout the recession. Other major economies, including the US, France and Germany, saw deflation (negative inflation, or falling prices).

Latest inflation rates (February 2013):

• UK 2.8%
• Euro Zone 1.8%
• Germany 1.8%
• Greece 0.1%
• Spain 2.9%
• USA 1.7%
• Japan: -0.6%
• Brazil 6.3%
• China 3.2%
• India 12.1%
• Russia 7.3%

Latest Bank of England Inflation Forecast

La deuda americana fue estabilizada para los próximos 10 años

Sorry, Deficit Hawks: The Debt Crisis Ended Before It Could Begin

The debt has already been stabilized for the next 10 years.

MATTHEW O'BRIENThe Atlantic

Reuters

The debate is over, and the deficit hawks lost. After years of warnings about trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye could see, it turns out they just couldn't see far enough: the budget is moving quickly -- too quickly -- towards balance even without a "grand" bargain. 

In other words, we are not Greece. The debt doesn't need to be "fixed." And dancing to Gangnam Style (or the Harlem Shake) will not change this.

This isn't how it was supposed to be. There was supposed to be a fiscal crisis. That's what budget-cutting superfriends Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson said would happen in around two years time ... over two years ago. Salvation from our fiscal sins would only come if we repented and cut social insurance programs like professional deficit scold Pete Peterson has been saying we urgently need to, well, for decades now. Of course, revenues also needed to go up to make this a "bargain" both sides could support -- and that's where things fell apart. Republican anti-tax absolutism made any kind of actual deal impossible.

But deficit hawks dreamed a dream of a grand bargain, and don't want to admit it was just that -- a dream. Just look at the Washington Post editorial board's recent call for a renewed focus on the deficit. Now, replacing the sequester with a backloaded mix of spending cuts and tax hikes would be good policy, but the deficit itself is solved for now. As you can see in the chart below from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), we only need $900 billion more of savings to stabilize the debt over the next decade -- and that's assuming the sequester and its $1.1 trillion of additional cuts stop after this year.

Our $600 billion of new savings mean the debt is already stabilized. Wait, what $600 billion of new savings? Well, that's how much less the Congressional Budget Office figures we will spend on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid over the next decade compared to what it figured back in February. And that's how the $1.5 trillion of additional savings the CBPP said we needed half a year ago turned into $900 billion now.

In other words, we can definitely afford to wait. Now, it's true that even if we keep the sequester, the debt will start rising at the end of the decade as more Boomers hit their golden years. We're going to need some combination of tax increases, benefit cuts, or, when it comes to Medicare, price controls, to get the debt back on a downward trajectory. But we don't really know how we'll need to do to do so. Indeed, the big fiscal story of the past few years has been the slowdown in healthcare inflation -- and the big fiscal mystery is whether it will continue. If it does, Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post reports it could save us $2 trillion the next ten years. That's about as much as the Budget Control Act and the sequester saved together.

Sometimes kicking the can is the responsible thing to do.

¿Microsoft está cayendo en pedazos?

Microsoft Is Down 8.6% As The World Realizes The Windows Business Has Collapsed (And Probably Isn't Coming Back)

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

JAY YAROW

Microsoft is down 8.6% this morning. 

The stock has been doing worse and worse since the company released earnings. Initial reaction to the release sent the stock down 2.5%. Then it was 5%, then 6% ... and now it's down over 8%. 

Microsoft's Windows business is finally feeling the effect of the collapse of the PC industry, and the failure of Windows 8 to slow the iPad. 

The Windows division's operating income was down 55% on a year-over-year basis, which dragged down the company's EPS. It also took a $900 million charge on the Surface RT, its iPad-wannabe tablet. 

After posting earnings, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood told Dina Bass at Bloomberg, "it will take a long time" for Microsoft to make enough off tablets to erase the losses in the traditional PC market. 

Microsoft's enterprise businesses remain strong, but that's not enough to keep investors happy.

Business Insider