Derek Thompson calculates the economic cost of hangovers:
Excessive drinking costs the economy more than $220 billion — or about $1.90 per drink, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which studies the negative externalities of alcohol consumption each decade. Seventy-two percent of the costs came from lost workplace productivity, according to the 2006 survey, which suggests that the economic drag from hangovers is about $160 billion (… also the total cost of natural catastrophes in 2012.)
Brad Plumer is suspicious, noting that “when you add up all the different studies on lost workplace productivity over the years, it starts to seem like a miracle the United States even has a functioning economy”:
[M]any of these estimates are outright silly. The idea that coffee breaks or or a little Internet browsing cost billions in lost productivity is highly questionable. As Jack Shafer pointed out back in 2010, many people are likely to waste time during the workday no matter what. The fact that they might do so by playing fantasy football rather than, say, taking a leisurely trip to the water cooler doesn’t seem terribly important. …
[N]o one’s ever done a rigorous analysis of all these supposed productivity-killers. The findings are usually just large numbers tossed around to draw attention to pet issues. A new study finding that spam or yawning or picking your nose costs billions of dollars in lost productivity might make for good headlines. But it rarely tells us anything useful about the economy.
The Dish 