It has been a while. Actually, I am not sure anyone reads this blog anymore and even if they did how they might find out about a new post.

Anyhow, your economist parent blogger took some time this weekend to launch a T-Shirt business. Why? It was really just for fun.

The business is "My Other Kid" and if you go to this link you will get the idea pretty quickly.

It has been a while since I have published here but today was Child No.3's Bat Mitzvah and, by tradition, I post her speech and my speech here. (Here is Child No.1 and Child No.2).

Child No.3's speech was light-hearted and focussed on her Torah portion.

There are parts of the Torah that are quite exciting — like an action movie or even a drama. This part is not that. If I had to classify it, it would be a romantic comedy except without much romance nor really comedy. Anyhow, you know the deal.

I know it has been a while since you have seen me post here. But I've been busy with teenagers.

GeekDad opened up its platform to more bloggers and I am trying my hand there. My first post on digital free-range parenting is up.

I know it has been a while but something came up that I should link to. Here is a new paper by Matthias Doepke and Zilibotti. It argues that the choice of parenting style is itself driven by incentives -- something that stands in contrast to the usual thought that culture plays a big role. 

I am not sure what to make of it all but here is a column by the authors with their take. They relate trends in parenting to trends in inequality.

There was an interesting article in Slate today about one kid's fight to have Happy Meals with less gender bias in their toys -- or at the very least the presumption that the toy should match the gender. This is an issue that I have seen first hand. It is actually quite tough to have girl's receive the boy toy if they choose. I'm not sure about the other direction but I suspect that would be an issue too.

What happens if you take Parentonomics, you substitute an economist for a sociologist, keep the Australian mother (without changing the first name), add empirical social science, subtract economic theory and lose one child? The answer is Parentology a book by Dalton Conley a NYU sociology professor.

I have just finished danah boyd's new book, It's Complicated: The Social Life of Networked Teens. danah was (and still is) a researcher at Microsoft Research when I was there in 2011. I didn't interact with her too much as I was focussed on other matters but it always struck me that her investigations into the behaviour of teenagers would prove very interesting. The book does not disappoint in that regard. I couldn't put it down.

While most of the world think that Flappy Bird is fairly useless and without redeeming value, some think there is opportunity.

Folks, thanks to my son, I bring you Flappy Economist. In it you control the money supply but you have to balance between the economy going between disastrous unemployment or rampant inflation. Of course, if you fail then the economy dies.

Over at Medium I have written my take on The Lego Movie. I am not posting it here as there really are spoilers and you shouldn't read it unless you have seen the movie.

Last Saturday, Child No.2 celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. We are not a religious family but like Child No.1, he elected to do it and got lots out of the process. He also managed to sing quite well which was a relief for us and certainly a benefit for the audience.

As part of all of this, Child No.2 had to make a speech related to his Torah portion. Ultimately it reflects his personality and what he thinks of his parents very well including a very dry sense of humour. Here it is.
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