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To Discriminate You Need to Separate

Price discrimination — charging different prices for the same product or service — requires preventing people who pay a high price for an item from being able to buy it…



Episode 463

How to Get Anyone to Do Anything

The social psychologist Robert Cialdini is a pioneer in the science of persuasion. His 1984 book Influence is a classic, and he has just published an expanded and revised edition….

Older Economists Want the Oscars

The Society of Labor Economists, a professional organization, gives awards to worthy scholars. One is for lifetime achievement, the other to a scholar who finished his/her education within the past…



The Upside of Procrastination

The free newspaper on the London tube has this front-page advertisement: “From 10 a.m. tomorrow, £10 ($15) hotel rooms, on the web site lastminute.com.” For an economist this is a…



The Rich Drink Better Beer, Not More

The average item bought by the average buyer has an income elasticity of nearly one: most people roughly double their spending when their income doubles. But everything we buy consists…



Manipulating Yourself for Your Own Good

Standard economic theory implies that we maximize our happiness if we have more choices. Yet we limit our choices — impose self-control mechanisms — voluntarily in order to improve our…



The Army's Not Coming Up Short

NPR reported last month that, for the first time in five years, the U.S. Army had more than met its recruiting goals. This happens every time unemployment rises, and it…



Football, Sex, and Parking

An old adage is that a university is a happy place if the administration provides football for the alumni, parking for the faculty, and sex for the students. I assume…



Would a Porn Tax Hurt Sales?

A California state assemblyman has proposed dealing with the state’s huge budget shortfall by taxing pornography, including the production and sale of pornographic videos — by 25 percent. To an…



How Far Should Your Sympathies Go?

Over the past few months, the press has deluged Americans with weepy stories about people who are in danger of losing their houses because their sub-prime mortgages now exceed the…



Time vs. Fortune (Not the Magazines)

Nancy and Harry Chapin’s song, “Cat’s in the Cradle,” is one of my favorites, partly because of the beat, and partly because it illustrates one of the essential trade-offs in…



Who Changes the Kissing Rules?

A female friend who I hadn’t seen in several months and I greeted each other yesterday with the usual hug and one-cheek kiss. If I had done this in 1970…



An Ounce of Pleasure, a Gallon of Pain

Lecturing on divorce today, I was reminded of the refrain in Clay Walker‘s song, Then What: “Then what, what you gonna do, when the new wears off and the old…




Getting the Cheapest Ride

I’m trying to decide what to do about train travel during our 5-month sabbatical in Germany. For $55 I can buy a card that gives me a 25 percent discount…




Why Doesn’t the U.S. Care About Convenience?

For a number of years I’ve been impressed with the wireless credit-card machines with which many European restaurants equip their wait-staff. This substitution saves workers time (and also that of…



The Estate Tax Stays

The Wall Street Journal recently published a front-page story about the estate tax. Under current law (passed in 2001), the tax is scheduled to disappear next year (but come back…



Do Easier Affairs Help Divorce Lawyers?

A column by Meghan Daum in the Los Angeles Times reports on the dating service Ashley Madison, which matches up married women and men who wish to have a quick…



Worthy of a Bike Statue

My Dutch co-author and I biked to his office this morning, with very nice new bikes he owns. I remarked on them, and he said his university gives him the…



Should Thinner People Fly Cheaper?

A story on Yahoo news mentions that the Philadelphia newspapers are running advertisements for a fake airline, Derrie-Air (get it?). The airline advertises that it is carbon-neutral, and that it…



A True Pareto Improvement

We economists love to talk about Pareto optima and Pareto-improving changes. Frankly, though, when the group of interested parties is considered broadly enough, there are extremely few changes that are…



Which Majors Make the Most?

When we choose a major in college we are to some extent choosing a series of future wage rates. The amount of human capital in which we invest is to…



You’ve Got a Drive-Thru; You’re Not Green

Starbucks prides itself on how green it is. No negative externalities here — and it proudly advertises on its website its commitment to “Environmental Stewardship.” I wonder, though, about its…



How Much Does a Free iPhone Update Cost?

This morning I downloaded an update on the software for my iPhone. As so often happens with software updates, it completely screwed up the device, requiring me to spend an…



What’s the Point of Bailing Out the Auto Industry?

Governments intervene in markets all the time — and they should, in order to make markets more competitive; to solve problems of externalities (which are ubiquitous); to resolve difficulties caused…



Not Enough Dirt to Go Around

News of the Weird has a depressing economics story this week about food prices in the poorer sections of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which is perhaps the poorest country in the Western…



Why Tourists Pay More at the Beach

I’m on our annual beach week with the extended family in New Jersey and the beach patrol comes by insisting I buy beach tags for everyone 12 and over. The…