Halfway through her second glass of champagne on Monday night, my wife sheepishly suggested that perhaps we should hold our own emergency Budget. If George Osborne feels obliged to pronounce gloom and make swingeing cuts, shouldn’t we do our bit too? She took a guilty-looking sip.

I admonished her not to feel the weight of the champagne on her conscience, partly because it was our anniversary, but mostly because, in buying champagne and tipping the Polish waiter, we were selflessly doing our bit to stimulate the economies of our fellow Europeans.

That said, the idea of a household Budget is intriguing. I have recently taken to dividing Budget numbers by 60m, roughly per capita, or by 25m, roughly the number of households in the UK. The effect is bracing: Britain is borrowing £6,000 per household this year. This is, to use a technical macroeconomic term, a fair whack.

Continued at ft.com

Today’s More or Less (Fridays 1.30pm BST and Sundays 8pm BST – and online via bbc.co.uk/moreorless) covers the fascinating evidence on the gender pay gap. Claudia Goldin and Amalia Miller are our contributors. Also, Ruth Alexander resorts to mathematical trickery on the streets… well, we’ll see what else makes the cut. Enjoy.

The More or Less 5000 is not invited, although I think it might be stalking me.

Today’s More or Less tries to sketch out the Laffer Curve with help from the IFS and Harvard Business Review’s Justin Fox. Alex Bellos reports from the mental calculation world cup. The all-powerful More or Less 5000 makes an unwelcome appearance, too.

And we answer the Tuesday Boy problem: “I have two children, one of whom is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that I have two sons.” Not as easy as it looks – and it doesn’t look that easy…

As always, the website is http://www.bbc.co.uk/moreorless, the podcast will be available soon, and the program will be broadcast today at 1.30pm (BST) on Radio 4, repeated on Sunday at 8pm.

…although this paper seems to imply that gay marriage itself is bad for savings rates.

IZA DP No. 4961

Brighita Negrusa, Sonia Oreffice:

Sexual Orientation and Household Savings: Do Homosexual Couples Save More?

Abstract:
We analyze how sexual orientation is related to household savings using 2000 US Census data, and find that gay and lesbian couples own significantly more retirement income than heterosexuals, while cohabiting heterosexuals save more than their married counterparts. In a household savings model, we interpret this homosexual-specific differential as due to the extremely low fertility of same-sex couples, in addition to the precautionary motives driving cohabiting households to save more than married ones. Evidence from homeowners’ ratio of mortgage payments to house value exhibits the same pattern of savings differentials by sexual orientation and cohabiting status.

I would list a number of caveats at this point but who cares? Thoughtful people will know exactly what they are and trolls will do what trolls do.

So say these guys:

Jan C. van Ours, Martin Van Tuijl
Abstract: This paper investigates whether there are country-specific characteristics in goal-scoring in the final stage of important international football matches. We examine goal-scoring from 1960 onwards in full ‘A’ international matches of six national teams: Belgium, Brazil, England, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. We analyze qualifying matches for the European Championship and World Cup and the matches at the final tournaments of these two events, the Copa America and the Confederations Cup. We find that the national teams of Germany, England and the Netherlands are more likely than the three other national teams to score in the last minute — including stoppage time. However, for Germans this comes at a cost. Germany is more likely to concede a goal in the dying seconds of a match than other countries. During our period of analysis, the national teams of Brazil and Italy only conceded one goal in the last minute. As to winning penalty shootouts, Germany outperforms the other five countries.

I’m saying nothing.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities remains one of the most remarkable books ever written. If you haven’t read it, you must. It is not dating in any important way.

I came late to Jacobs, after I discovered that John Kay, Robert Lucas, Martin Wolf and many other people who you might think had no opinion about her all thought she was quite brilliant.

I’ve been sent a book titled “What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs”. Interesting. The book is a series of essays; contributors include Saskia Sassen. There are some economists involved but not names I had yet encountered. It looks essential reading for serious scholars of Jacobs. Here is Seth Roberts on the book.

Here are two of my columns mentioning Jane Jacobs, who also features in The Logic of Life.

Tomorrow’s More or Less interviews David Willetts, one of the new cabinet, about evidence based policy. Are evidence and politics strange bedfellows, and will Mr Willetts promise to pay attention to the evidence even it says something uncomfortable?

Plus: ugly criminals and the new – or is it the old – practice of anthropometric statistics. And better living with the 80-20 rule.

That’s More or Less, 1.30pm BST on Friday, and podcast on the More or Less website.

Tom Ellis, who developed a problem that is even harder than the hardest logic problem ever, writes with some puzzle-thoughts that may be of interest:

The beginning of this story may seem familiar.

Continue reading: “Thoughts on the Monty Hall problem”

It’s called “The Upside of Irrationality” and it is a faithful sequel which will appeal to the many fans of his “Predictably Irrational” – I am one of them. As before, it contains many entertaining write-ups of Dan’s experiments.

Dan Ariely was vey badly burned in an accident as a young man and although he described his long and agonising convalescence in “Predictably Irrational”, here he writes much more about how that experience made him feel – for example, about pain, dating, and sex. The writing is dispassionate – neither heartbreaking nor cloying. There is also more of Dan’s advice here, and it’s superior to the odd policy prescriptions he was dishing out in the first book.

Ariely is a hugely likeable writer and a relentlessly inventive experimenter. One fascinating study was spurred by discovering that both Ariely and Hanan Frenk (a double-amputee after driving over a landmine) refused painkillers for dental work (why bother?). Frenk and Ariely studied whether people who had suffered traumatic injuries had a higher tolerance for pain. They do. And the terminally ill, it seems (this is more speculative) have a low tolerance for pain.

That said, I have my usual objection about over-interpreting laboratory work. An example: Ariely advises us to take breaks during enjoyable experiences and to get unpleasant experiences done in one sitting. (The thinking is that we adapt to both experiences, and we adapt less if the experience is interrupted.) That’s fine, until he reveals the experimental work behind this recommendation – which involved playing subjects annoying noises for 40 seconds, with or without breaks. That’s suggestive but a 40-second experiment may not tell us how we react to interrupting experiences that last an hour, a week, or a year.

If you’d like to see me and Dan argue, here’s our debate for Amazon (start at the bottom). Here’s Dan’s website; he’s about to start a book tour in the US. This book is strongly recommended, especially if you enjoyed “Predictably Irrational”.