Beauty in the academic labour market

The labour market returns to "beauty" have been studied by various authors. However it is not something that you might expect to be a feature of academia. But Hot or Not: How appearance affects earnings and productivity in academia by Sen, Voia & Woolley demonstrates a surprisingly large wage premium to academics judged "hot" by students in the well known ratemyprofessors.com site. Why? Because they're worth it, I suppose. No sniggering at the back, please.

Four weddings and a discount rate

At the recent Canadian Economic Association meetings in Toronto, David Laibson have a nice overview of recent work by himself and others on hyberbolic discounting. He reported an interesting experiment, which 'though clearly similar to the sort that's reported in the literature, is different. Participants were offered the choice of watching a high-brow movie or a low brow movie.I can't remember the name of the former, the latter was Four Weddings and a Funeral. When the movie was to be watched that night, about 60% chose the low-brow movie but when the time horizon was a week, the proportions were roughly reversed.
I guess there are implications for those of you who like to "nudge" people into good behaviour.My own choices would not be so time inconsistent, that's all I will say.