Dismal Science

Economics is called the dismal science. Despite the recent popularity of Freakonomics and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, I've always assumed it was called this because 1) the quality of economic writing was so dreadful and 2) because the content of economic analysis was often so dreary. Maybe its just because its just so rationally depressing...as seen in yet another study showing that there is nothing economically sound about philanthropy. Read a review here and download the paper here (click on link, "recent experiment")