The Inspiring Tale of Joab

Here is a very nice article about my former office mate and current WVU econ PhD student, Joab Corey, and how he uses his cancer treatment to teach economic principles. Surprisingly, it is not a set of depressing or grim lessons, but instead he puts them in a way that come across as very funny. My favorite story is when he, in order to receive financial assistance from the hospital, needed a rejection letter for financial support from the state. When he went to the state office to apply for the aid, the office worker simply asked if he just needed the rejection letter, which they then just pulled out and handed to him without bothering him with filling out the forms.

One thing that can't be missed is how good of a teacher Joab is, on the days he hands out teaching evaluations the students give him standing ovations (seriously). These kind of rave reviews has led the WVU econ department to allow him to develop an undergraduate behavioral economics course. He's working on his dissertation under Russ Sobel on the topic of economic freedom and the resource curse. Additionally, he and I have been crunching data to determine the effect of cost-of-living adjustments on measures of income inequality.

One day in the near future, I will post a blog outlining his arguments for why economists are too dismissive of sunk costs and why it is irrational to fear ghosts (assuming they exist).