Dollar Dance: The Economics of the JK Wedding Video

On Friday and Saturday nights during my college years at Grinnell we would all head over to the Harris Center for dance parties. As Grinnellians grow older they don’t have as many places to bust a move, but when a wedding comes for a Grinnell alum the old Harris dance moves come out again. Jill Peterson who graduated one year after me and her husband, Kevin Heinz, took it to a worldwide level with their JK wedding dance video, which has been a Youtube sensation.

If you haven’t seen it, the video is along with this post. Now here is where the story could have turned sad. They used Chris Brown’s song “Forever” for their processional number. Many YouTube videos have been pulled off because of use of a copy righted song. But who ever controlled the rights to “Forever” realized that by posting the JK wedding video with links to iTunes for “Forever” more copies of the song will be sold. As the Google blog (which owns YouTube) documents this strategy has worked with “Forever” jumping to the top of the internet charts.

h/t to newmarksdoor

Grinnell Founders Day, Wedding Procession Dance, and Glee

When people ask where I went to undergrad I say a small school in Iowa, because if not the next question is where the hell is Grinnell?

Today is Grinnell founders' day. On this day in 1846 James J Hill laid a silver dollar down on a table and started Iowa College which a few years later would become Grinnell an awesome school with over 1 BILLION silver dollars in their endowment.

My favorite Grinnell Economics fact is that we are number 3 in economics PhD per student graduated. (link)


About a year ago a Grinnellian became an internet sensation as a bride in the famous J&G wedding dance. For those of you who don't remember it here is a previous post. In short her video used a song (Chris Brown's Forever) that was copyrighted. Instead of taking the video down they worked out an agreement with the song's copyright owners and the video stayed up and more people bought "Forever" on Itunes.

I was thinking about this when I read a recent Salon article on the show Glee. The article points out that the performances in Glee (a show about a high school show choir) would all be copyright violations or that the school would have to spend tons of money to get the rights to perform such classics as "Don't Stop Believing" & "Push It".

Glee has been quite successful as the Salon article points out selling over 4 million songs online. So if we go back to the J&G video we see that you can get around copyright problems if you are awesome.

And truth be told I've really been enjoying the first four episodes of Glee they really are good, although not as good as my four years at Grinnell.

Happy Wedding Anniversary

So today is our 4th wedding anniversary. I’m one happily married economist!

Although I do not work directly with the economics of marriage, I do have a paper on household decision making in Nicaragua. Economists typically, look at marriage and households in one of two ways. Either the household is a single unit making one decision, or the two married members bargain based on their power to influence household decisions to get the household to move more resources to things they like. My wife and I have similar, but slightly different preferences. I think the key to a happy marriage is to try to convince yourself your household is a single unit, while going through the bargaining process.

Some other thoughts on marriage from a couple of Econ bloggers

From Greg Mankiw:“Economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald have suggested that a lasting marriage produces as much happiness as an extra $100,000 a year in salary….”’

From Tyler Cowen Marginalrevolution.com:
“The secret to a good marriage, therefore is selective forgetfulness.”

Tim Harford from Slate“Joskow's explanation surely tells you something about when to be a freelancer—perhaps even when to stop playing the field and get married. Like East Coast coal mines, it can be attractive to be footloose and fancy-free as long as you always have alternatives and as long as you are not required to make serious investments that are specific to the relationship. My own marriage was swiftly followed by a relationship-specific investment. She's nearly 2 and a half.”

Evaluating Bar Rescue or Corporate Pirates in Silver Spring

Just blocks from my house a reality show called Bar Rescue has commandeered the Piratz Tavern, a local bar with a pirate theme. I had only been to the Piratz Tavern once in my 4 year in Silver Spring and that was on a lark after with an entire wedding party still dressed in formal attire. Piratz Tavern didn't seem to be doing well based on what I heard from friends, yelp reviews give it 2.5 starzzz,  and I never paid it much attention. Of course until Bar Rescue came and took over the bar. I'm not the only one interested as my favorite local bloggers Thayer Ave and Silver Spring Singular  also are covering the story. The Piratz theme has been sacked and the new name appears to be Corporate Bar and Grill, see the local blog stories for pictures.

I will start this post by saying that I have now only watched one episode of Bar Rescue and spent less than an hours research on it but I thought I would report my findings. It's a blog post about a reality show that rescues bars so take everything with a grain of salt and a slice of lime.

The goal of this study was to see how successful the show Bar Rescue is at turning a failing bar into a beloved bar.

The theory. By injecting a large amount of money into a bar. Providing some buzz and  some improvement in technique that bars could be rescued.

Sample Selection Bias. Ideally the bars would have been randomly selected from a pool of similar bars and we could compare to a control group. That didn't happen the though the goal is to entertain not evaluate the Bar Rescuers. One problem with a show called bar rescue is that any bar featured would likely be in need of rescuing therefore we would expect some bars to fails. However,  it could also be that the show picks bars in placed likely to succeed so we might not be able to compare the selected bar to those not being rescued. Since I'm not trying to publish this study in an academic journal I'm not going to worry about it but will acknowledge the problem.

Data Sources: So far Bar Rescue has had 10 episodes featuring 10 bars. I used the name of the bars in google searches to find the following information. If the bar was still open and it's current Yelp Reviews. I used Yelp since it seems to be the largest source of these types of reviews and Yelp reviews do show economic impacts.

Results:  Of the 10 bars featured last season 7 are still open. I determined this by checking yelp and checking bar webpage or facecbook pages for updates in the last month. It appears the bars featured in episodes 102, 104, and 105 (see data source) are now closed.  Of the 7 still open bars 6 have 3 or 3.5 stars on Yelp and none of those 6 has consistently great recent reviews after the show. The seventh bar The Bone in Framingham, MA  has four stars on Yelp and some pretty good recent ratings.

Conclusions: The best case scenario is The Bone a four star Yelp bar. For comparison Silver Spring has two four star yelp bars (Jackie's Side Bar and Quarry House), which are also my two favorite local bars (not that my ratings matter). I'm doubtful, we will get the best case scenario.  Since The Bone tweaked the concept they had while the change from Piratz Tavern to Corporate Bar seems bigger change. In short I think if Corporate Bar and Grill survives we are likely to see a 3 to 3.5 star bar, which does serve it's purpose McGinty's is a 3 star Yelp bar and it serves its purpose and a fine pint too. So good luck to owners!

I'm back and

I have decided to try to start bloging again. I was inspired by a recent book I was browsing in the library Strapped by Tamara Draut. I have not read the whole book, but it seems the major thesis is that it is more difficult for today’s young adults to get financially ahead. In particular, she points out large college loans, higher health care and child care costs, and today’s consumer driven consumption as causes.

So are costs increasing faster or income more slowly than other age groups. I cannot find separate inflation figures by age. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates the inflation rate recently calculated inflation for those over 62 years old and find from 1998 to 2005 (link here) and found in that 8 year period inflation for that age group was 24% compared to 22% for everyone else. This was mainly driven by increases in health care cost. If the BLS did the same thing for adult 25-35, my guess is we would find slightly higher, but not dramatically different inflation rates driven by increases in college tuition fees, which young adults are still repaying in loans. In that time period college costs increased 60% compared to medical expenses which increased 40%. My guess is there are not huge differences in terms of income either. It is probably more on the growth in loans/credit card debt to young adults, who might over extend themselves.

Unrelated, Strapped also suggested that debt was caused by overspending, but also by unexpected spending like trips to wedding and family gatherings. I never thought about how an unexpected trip can really throw someone off financially. Some tips to save you on your next outing can be found at The Simple Dollar, a personal finance blog I have been reading lately and highly recommend.