Chick-fil-A Economics

Economics is tied heavily to chain restaurants. We have the Big Mac index (which is an incredibly accurate estimate of exchange rates) and the Waffle House index (which is used by FEMA to assess how bad a disaster is). So, to turn to the chain restaurants as allegory is almost natural for economists.

Recent headlines about Chick-fil-A and their opposition to gay marriage have brought about calls for boycotts, and defense of the company, but I have not seen a very important word yet, “externalities.” In fact, when I used a search engine to find the string of “Chick-fil-A” and “externalities” together, there was only one result, a blog from CanadianBusiness.com and it has nothing to do with the current cultural topic.

Why are Zombies so Popular?

Image via kevin dooley

There are a million zombie games, movies, and TV shows out right now it seems. The term “zombie” dates back to African and Haitian cultures with Voodoo/Vodou myths of reanimation of the dead into brainless beings. The film The Night of the Living Dead popularized the current version of the zombie, where an infection is involved and they crave eating flesh.