Lifetime is one of the most precious assets. People are paying huge amounts of money to extend their lifespans, sometimes for gaining only weeks or months. And imprisonment and the death penalty is so widely applied punishments throughout all cultures and ages because people are scared off by the prospect of losing their life.
Would you like to buy in a supermarket where the supermarket owner decides what you will get for your money after you made the payment? Such a supermarket would arguably not attract many customers.
Many countries in the world run their public pension systems under the so-called pay-as-you-go (PAYG) scheme, where pensioners receive their money from those who are currently working.
Consider yourself in Germany in 1923, entering a bar for drinking a beer. How much would you have had to pay for that? Well, the average price for a glass of beer in the autumn of 1923 was four billion Marks.
This blog post is a sequel to “Price of a Woman: Economic Rationale behind Marriage Payments in Georgia”. I recently found very interesting data about bride prices in the Georgian highlands and the North Caucasus, which I am now going to share with you.