Data Explainer - CWRU Journal of Economics

The Rising Cost of AI: How the Data Center Boom is Reshaping America’s Power Grid

When you think of the center of the digital world, one’s mind is quickly drawn to Silicon Valley. Yet, that title arguably belongs to the third most populous county in Virginia. Loudoun County boasts the largest concentration of data centers in the world, handling roughly 75% of the world’s internet traffic through what the industry […]

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Baseball’s Rising Costs and Uneven Payrolls

Data Explainer / Ishaan Solanki

Going to a Major League Baseball game costs much more than it did a generation ago, even after adjusting for inflation. But higher prices do not automatically drive fans away, especially in a market where teams set prices in response to expected demand. Indeed, attendance has not collapsed as tickets have become less affordable; league-wide

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The Economy Moves. The Music Doesn’t.

Data Explainer / Isabel Haytayan

Popular wisdom has long held that hard times make for sad songs. When jobs disappear and markets fall, so the story goes, listeners reach for melancholy ballads; when confidence rebounds, the dancefloor fills. The intuition is tidy, culturally resonant, and, according to a systematic analysis of Billboard Hot 100 chart data matched against six macroeconomic

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The Hidden Tax: Data Centers and Your Electricity Bill

Data Explainer / Eli Davis

Ashburn, Virginia, an affluent outer suburb of Washington, DC, is known for highly rated public schools and high household incomes. It’s also home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers—massive warehouses full of computers that support online services like cloud computing, streaming platforms, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence systems. Those facilities require enormous amounts of

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Does a State’s Education Level Predict Its Sports Betting Activity?

Data Explainer / David Smith

Does education predict how much a state bets on sports? After analyzing handle, population, and education data across every legal market in the country, the answer is no. In May, 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting, handing individual states the power to legalize wagering on athletic contests. What followed

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