Emily Oster

Economists typically think that your happiness goes up as you get more money, but the more you have, the less each additional…

— Emily Oster

Much of what I do in my job is think about whether relationships we see in data are causal, as opposed to…

— Emily Oster

The enjoyment of work - to the extent that you have any - is likely highest in the first hours of the…

— Emily Oster

Lovingly crafted and super-creative cupcakes are not exactly on tap in my household after a full day at work, and I do…

— Emily Oster

No one likes doing chores. In happiness surveys, housework is ranked down there with commuting as activities that people enjoy the least.…

— Emily Oster

I've always loved doing research. I remember doing a research project on the Babylonian numeral system in the eighth grade and thinking,…

— Emily Oster

Adhering to budgeting rules shouldn't trump good decision-making.

— Emily Oster

I tell my micro students everything I teach them is important, but the truth is that some things are more useful than…

— Emily Oster

Almost every woman I have spoken to about pregnancy has a story about her doctor giving her a hard time about her…

— Emily Oster

One of the big take-aways from a lot of economic theory is that people should engage in consumption smoothing.

— Emily Oster

For many women - myself included - pregnancy brings on tremendous anxiety and confusion, along with the joy.

— Emily Oster

In short, humans are programmed to get bored.

— Emily Oster

Because economics is all about optimising, doing the best you can with what you have - it's usually the first place you…

— Emily Oster

I think we've moved to thinking of parenting and pregnancy as something in which you should lose yourself.

— Emily Oster

If everyone is good at something different, assigning chores is easy. If your partner is great at grocery shopping and you are…

— Emily Oster

Economics works great for planning your life when you don't have a work passion, since we tend to assume that your job…

— Emily Oster

You work hard for your income, and that hard work is what fuels the economy.

— Emily Oster

As people do a task, they improve at it.

— Emily Oster

Every time you have a carrot instead of a cookie, every time you go to the gym instead of going to the…

— Emily Oster

Nausea is a normal but unpleasant effect of pregnancy and a really good sign that it is going well. Women who experience…

— Emily Oster

I travel a fair amount, read on the plane, and I read fast.

— Emily Oster

My first summer in college I worked in a fruit fly lab where I had two jobs: dissect the fruit fly larvae…

— Emily Oster

The greatest moments are those when you see the result pop up in a graph or in your statistics analysis - that…

— Emily Oster

The value of having numbers - data - is that they aren't subject to someone else's interpretation. They are just the numbers.…

— Emily Oster

To put it mildly, I'm not crazy about the implication that pregnant women are incapable of deciding for themselves.

— Emily Oster