Will snus, a possible replacement for cigarettes, ultimately lead to more smoking?
Get rid of the dollar bill and the penny.
What happens to dealers when marijuana is legalized?
Are imports from low-wage countries driving technology advancements in the U.S.?
Economist George Johnson passed away this week, at age 70. He and his work are remembered fondly.
It’s Passover. That means eight days of eating matzoh, which gets me thinking about products that are complements with or substitutes for matzoh.
Yet another airline pricing puzzle.
A magnificent dinner, but once again I feel discriminated against.
Economics departments in the U.S. and the U.K. use very different hiring processes for senior tenured positions. Which way is better?
Transactions costs are involved in most small-scale activities we engage in. Living in a country, and coping with its institutions, also involves transaction costs.
Dan Hamermesh discusses an unusual pricing model for valet parking.
A shame-based dieting technique.
Two interesting airplane externality incidents occurred this week.
My fourteen-year-old grandson tells me that he got the iPhone app GraphCalc for free a few months ago. When he looked recently, he noticed that Apple is now charging $0.99 for this now very popular app.
My colleagues laughed at me today when I mentioned I was doing my taxes. They argued that, given the price of my time – my wage rate – I should hire a professional.
We tend to think of recent technological change as a complex process involving huge amounts of capital and labor (large numbers of researchers and developers). Yet the Winter Olympics should remind us that it is still possible to improve output with a little thought, luck and experimentation.
I earned two free one-way coupons on Southwest Airlines. I tried to redeem them for a round-trip flight in March, but there were no coupon seats on the return flight. So I redeemed one coupon, and have one left over. That’s a clever strategy by Southwest, as I will now use the other coupon as part of a second round trip.
Labor economists use the term “superstar” very specifically, based on a wonderful paper by the late Sherwin Rosen: A superstar is one of the very top people in an occupation offering huge pay because performances are widely reproducible (through recordings, TV, movies, books, etc.). (By this definition it is hard to imagine an economist superstar!)
An Associated Press article reports the settlement of a class-action suit objecting to eHarmony’s separation of its straight and gay dating services. The company has agreed to link its two services and allow participants to use both websites for one registration fee.
The price offered to coffee growers who turn in their “cherries”-ripe coffee beans-at Greenwell Farms in Kona, Hawaii, is $.90 per pound if they are paid weekly and $1.05 if paid monthly.
I’ve heard of product differentiation by location, and of differentiation arising from slight differences in physical product, but never one obviously based on a combination of these two. Honolua Surf Company is a clothing line, selling in its own and other stores. It originated in Maui, as the name implies, and is really popular on the island.
My siblings, cousins, and I were talking about our paternal grandfather recently. He was very bright, but uneducated (immigrated to the U.S. at age 10). He worked in the garment industry, his best job being as a cutter — figuring out how to waste the least amount of cloth in creating a garment.
Karen Donovan‘s book V. Goliath: The Trials of David Boies discusses an interesting set of incentives that Boies insisted upon as lead counsel for a class of plaintiffs who were suing manufacturers of vitamins for overcharging.
Same for Nigerians seeking to transfer millions of dollars to me (if I give them my bank account number).
I haven’t gotten one of these in a year, after often getting several a day. I assume that the spammers realized that the return per period of time — the price of the activity — was less than its marginal cost: the opportunity cost of their time.
Who owns the rights to an air space and to a view? What are property rights in such cases? An article in our local paper discusses complaints of residents in a luxury condo complex who are insisting that the City Council help pay the $75,000 it would cost an outdoor advertiser to move a billboard that blocks their view and lowers their property values.
In the original Star Wars movie (Episode IV), Luke Skywalker pleads with Han Solo to help the Rebel Alliance battle the Empire, but Han refuses and a disgusted Luke storms off. Chewbacca, being a student of game theory, lays out the payoff bimatrix to Han in their “conversation”:
Is there price discrimination among iPhone apps that translate between languages?
Great monopoly example: a student writes that his family was fortunate to have the Bumper Dumper, produced by the Uncle Booger Company, attached to their SUV on a recent trip.
Our new study poses a conundrum: in a professional market (for economists), having more scholars pay attention to your research raises your reputation and your salary. Conditional on that attention, though, writing more papers lowers your reputation — but it raises your salary!
The last two years I’ve run an “externality” contest in my giant intro class, offering $5 to the student who comes up with the best example.
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