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The orbifold Euler characteristic of the moduli space ℳ g ; 1 of genus g smooth curves with one marked point (g ≥ 1) was calculated by Harer and Zagier: χ (ℳ g ; 1) = ζ (1 − 2 g) = − B 2 g / (2 g) , where ζ is the Riemann zeta function and B2g is the (2g)th Bernoulli number. We give a shorter proof of this result using only formal power series and classical combinatorics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]