An unexpected Freakonomics lesson

Walter Park, an associate professor at American University in Washington, DC sends along the following story:

I’m using your book as a required reading in my principles microeconomics class (of 300 students). The students enjoy the book and are better appreciating the course as a result.

Interestingly, as I gave a lecture on “Price Discrimination”, using an example of the demand for textbooks (relatively inelastic) vs. novels (relatively elastic), the students pointed out that in our campus textbook store, “Freakonomics” is on sale at the regular price in the textbook section (1st floor) and at a 30% discount in the General Reading Section (2nd floor). Same college. Same store. Same hardback. Just a floor apart. I don’t know how long before the textbook store manager realizes this. At least the students got to observe some economics principles at work.

When we set out to write a book about economics that would be relevant to everyday life, we didn’t actually expect that the lessons would be this literal.