Dr. Gerrit Stahn

Background

As a child and teenager, I hated it when teams had to be picked at the beginning of P.E. class. Not only did it take forever (first, captains were appointed, then they had to figure out among themselves - via Tip-Top - who goes first, and only then did the picking start). Even in my low-birth-rate year, the process took ages, with the result that the group of last-picked kids was already mentally humiliated before the starting whistle. Only those who were already good at the game were in good spirits afterwards, and thanks to a fair amount of various forms of early-childhood nepotism¹ and the teachers’ dedicated lack of interest, the resulting matchups were absolutely unbalanced. Awesome (not).²

Context: Having just moved to Vancouver, Canada without a steady flow of monthly remuneration, I’ve been leaning on my accumulated wealth to smooth out my current consumption.¹ Those savings are split between an overnight account and a money-market fund, which left me with a very practical question: which pot should I draw down first? Being an economist, I naturally reframed this as “which option carries the higher opportunity cost in forgone interest for the rest of the year?” — and decided to treat forgone interest as the full measure of that cost.

Background

A couple of months ago — near the end of my PhD — the last five brain cells not taken up by my thesis came up with a tricky question: What will you do after your PhD? Immediately, I came up with the only good answer: I don’t know. My brain cells responded: Hmm - OK. But where do you want to live?. Dammit, good question! - I replied. As the good man I am - I of course sought my girlfriend’s help for this question and after some thought we decided to move temporarily to Vancouver, BC. Question solved!, I thought at first. Oh no - question postponed…, my five brain cells replied. Since my girlfriend and I settled on an agreement (mainly forced by our parents), that we will return to Germany some time in the future, the question was not answered yet.