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Robert Frank points to new evidence he was right all along:

According to a new survey by Prince & Associates, voters worth $1 million to $10 million are favoring Sen. John McCain, while voters worth $30 million or more are favoring Sen. Barack Obama. …

The reason? Taxes.

(via Ideas)

The Independent has a rather long grouping of excerpts from Robert Frank’s The Economic Naturalist. They’re essentially questions answered with straight-forward but verbose (and sometimes questionable) economics. An example:

Why are DVDs sold in much larger packages than CDs, even though the two types of disc are exactly the same size?

Making the CD cases a little less than half as wide as the album sleeves they were replacing thus enabled retailers to avoid the substantial costs of replacing their storage and display racks.

Similar considerations seem to have driven the decision regarding DVD packaging. Before DVDs became popular, most film rental stores carried videotapes in the VHS format, which were packaged in form-fitting boxes that measured 135mm wide and 191mm high. These videos were typically displayed side by side with their spines out. Making DVD cases the same height enabled stores to display their new DVD stocks on existing shelves while consumers were in the process of switching over to the new format. Making the DVD package the same height as the VHS package also made switching to DVDs more attractive for consumers, since they could store their new DVDs on the same shelves they used for their VHS tapes.

(via Gems Sty)