John Kruggel

2025-26 College Football Playoff Field

No. 1️⃣2️⃣ Seed: James Madison

#CFBPlayoff 🏈🏆

Sen. Rand Paul claims food stamp spending doubled "an alarming trend." But this relies on 4 mistakes. 1. Graph can't replicate. 2. Need to adjust for Inflation 3. The economy is now bigger. 4. Share of Pop on Food Stamps Actually Declined. Conclusion: There is no trend.

JMU 14 - Louisville 0 - Refs 20

Excellent JMU goal line stand to limit Louisville to 3.

End of the year. You've definitely earned the 4th beer.

Let me know if you need anything. Happy to help.

Most students take just one econ course. A Literacy-Targeted approach meets their needs—focusing on fewer concepts they can actually use.

The best part? It doesn’t hurt econ majors.

That makes it Pareto improving: better for most, worse for none.
Learn more: economicsforlife.ca/pareto-impro...

Movie tariffs won't work. 1) Box Office is hurting due to tech/streaming, not foreign competition. 2) Foreign films improve art. Star Wars was inspired by Kurosawa. 3) Successful film industries have historically embraced free trade. Ex: S. Korea

#trade #economy #economics #art #film #starwars

Not All Price Hikes Are Created Equal Egg prices are still high, even though bird flu cases are down and production costs are falling. So why aren’t prices falling, too? And why does it all feel a little unfair?

Consumers accepted high egg prices during the heaviest wave of the bird flu outbreak.

But now that the bird flu has eased—and Cal-Maine just posted record profits—those same prices feel unfair.

Economists explain this using dual entitlement theory.

www.mondayeconomist.com/p/egg-price-...

Teach Economics: If Students Only Take One Econ Course, What Should They Learn? In this episode, Wendy Stock, a professor of economics at Montana State University, talks with St. Louis Fed Economic Education Officer Scott Wolla about how her own curiosity led her to economics and...

New Teach Economics pod is out! 🎙️
Wendy Stock from Montana State shares why she tosses the syllabus on Day 1—and asks students what they care about. Then she shows how econ helps explain it all. A powerful approach to teaching through curiosity.

🎧 Listen here: www.stlouisfed.org/education/te...

Why Some of Us Never Switched Back to Regular Eggs When $2 eggs jump to $5, suddenly $7 eggs don’t seem so crazy. Economics has a name for that.

When $2 eggs turned into $5 eggs, $7 eggs started to look… reasonable.

Some shoppers switched to pasture-raised and organic eggs during last year’s price spike—and they’re still buying them, even as prices fall.

www.mondayeconomist.com/p/blue-eggs

The Toll Road Text Scam and the Economics of Fraud Have you also been getting a lot of text messages lately about unpaid tolls?

Getting scam texts about unpaid tolls? There’s a reason they’re everywhere—and it’s not just spam. It’s economics.

This week’s newsletter breaks down how automation, AI, and game theory made toll scams explode.

📬 Read it here (real link, no tolls): www.mondayeconomist.com/p/why-scam-t...

Been getting scam texts about unpaid tolls? You're not alone—and there's an economic reason they're everywhere.

Tomorrow's Monday Morning Economist breaks it down.

📬 Sign up here (real link, no tolls, I swear): mondayeconomist.com

There’s No Such Thing as Free Checked Bags Southwest’s decision to charge for checked bags feels like a loss, but in reality, passengers were always paying for them—just in ways they didn’t see.

Southwest is ending its “Bags Fly Free” policy, and people are furious. But here’s the thing: checked bags were never free—the cost was just hidden in your ticket.

Why are people so mad? Behavioral economics can explain it. Read more: www.mondayeconomist.com/p/southwest

Southwest is ditching its free checked bags policy, and people are furious. But were those bags ever really free?

Get the full story in your inbox tomorrow morning: mondayeconomist.com

‘Eyes on the Prize III: We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest 1977-2015’ Review: Landmark Docuseries Remains Essential Viewing in New HBO Chapter The Million Man March, the birth of Black Lives Matter, urban renewal projects in the Bronx and the aftermath of the Los Angeles Uprising get spotlights in the six-parter.

I'm genuinely disheartened by the lack of reviews/coverage for "Eyes on the Prize III," which premieres on HBO tonight.

Sigh. This is, I guess, a "me" problem. But nothing you could watch this week is better.

Anyway... ICYMI, my review:

#k12teachers, still plenty of time to register for this Econiful PD "Dispelling the Myths about the Econ Immigration." Get activities made w/ research to back all content & chance to win Bryan Caplan's Open Borders or Boustan/Abramitzky's Streets of Gold #teachecon #immigration #econsky link below

The Penny Problem Isn’t Solved—It’s Just Moved to the Nickel Do you remember the last time you paid for something with cash?

The U.S. might finally ditch the penny—but is that actually a cost-saving move? Not when nickels cost over 11 cents to produce. If demand for nickels goes up, taxpayers might end up spending more, not less.

So are we fixing the problem, or just shifting it?

www.mondayeconomist.com/p/penny

Dispelling Myths About the Economics of Immigration | Econiful Discover the academic research that dispels several economic myths related to immigration. We will apply that research in ready-to-use, active learning exercises for teaching students about immigratio...

#k12teachers, I am leading an online workshop for my friends @econiful on February 25th chock-full of activities you can use to address the various myths about the econ of immigration. Join me if you are looking for ways to discuss w/ your students. #teachecon link here:
search.app/9878qCRsRYJ6...

I keep envisioning the Simpsons teenager telling people they can't stay or use the restroom.

New reading for my principles courses! #teachecon #econsky

Tragedy of the Starbucks Commons Starbucks’ new policy turns shared spaces into private goods to combat the overuse problem associated with common resources

Starbucks recently announced that bathrooms & seating will now be reserved for paying customers to tackle the tragedy of the commons.

These resources may no longer be overused, but are we losing another “third space” where people can gather and connect?

www.mondayeconomist.com/p/tragedy-of...

Monday Morning Economist | Jadrian Wooten | Substack Monday Morning Economist is your weekly guide to understanding pop culture and current events through economics. Subscribe today for a deeper understanding of how economics shapes our everyday lives! ...

Calling all teachers! Make economics fun and accessible with the Monday Morning Economist. No payment is needed for weekly content, just pure learning!

Use your unique referral URL on the Leaderboard tab to invite your students. 25 sign-ups earn you a special gift box!

www.mondayeconomist.com

I’m forming an “economics education writing group” for this spring. Such groups work as a commitment device to help academics write more.

We’ll meet on Fridays on Zoom from 9am to 1pm (eastern). We’ll start on Jan. 17 & end on May 2.

For more information, please e-mail me at bill.goffe@psu.edu .

I have an exciting resource for those teaching international trade this semester! I teamed up with @mikecoonomics.bsky.social for this pedagogy note on using Tradle, a fun and insightful geography-based quiz game from the OEC.

Check it out here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Slashing the Federal Workforce Won’t Solve the Budget Deficit The recommendation scores political points and resonates with those who believe government is inherently inefficient. But would it work?

Cutting federal jobs might sound like a bold solution to government overspending, but does it really make a difference?

Federal salaries account for just 5% of the budget and massive cuts wouldn’t meaningfully reduce the $1.7 trillion deficit.

www.mondayeconomist.com/p/doge

Projected high school graduates by state. Good for Tennessee, bad for Illinois.

WICHE is projecting a 13 percent decline in the number of high school graduates by 2041, with big differences by state. Tennessee has the largest projected increase of any state right as my kids hit college age.

www.wiche.edu/knocking/

Hard to overstate how revelatory this paper was for me — one takeaway I had from it was "small fixed costs can really deter people from optimizing."
Which made me think about a few other recent papers where fixed optimization costs are a key ingredient:

Are People Born Wicked—or Shaped by Their Roommates? Uncover how the people closest to us—like roommates—shape our behaviors, achievements, and even our destinies

What do roommates, Wicked, and economics have in common? 💚🩷

www.mondayeconomist.com/p/are-people...