A classic story of price discrimination that textbooks tell is the appliance ‘dent and scratch’ sale in which an appliance store will deliberately create cosmetic damage on some of their washers and refrigerators so that they can sell them at…
Yearly Archives: 2018
Is there a better way to educate smart people?
Alia Wong at The Atlantic reports about a new Harvard study that surveyed roughly 500 economics Ph.D. candidates at eight elite universities, and found that 18 percent of them experienced moderate or severe symptoms of depression and anxiety. That’s more than…
Posted in Labor
VOX messed up: Amazon.com already has enormous monopoly power
Emily Stewart at Vox.com made a mistake about monopoly power in America. She wrote that Amazon… could eventually become so big that it can control what shipping companies such as FedEx and UPS charge it, and, in areas where it becomes…
Posted in Managerial Micro, Public Finance
Can stadium owners increase profits by imposing a price ceiling on their hot dog vendors?
How about these prices for food at NFL games: “$35 for a (large) cocktail? $19 for cheese curds? $18 for essentially a Doritos taco?” Although it is tempting to blame stadium owners for the high prices and bad quality, the…
Posted in Managerial Micro
Did democracy end when Jeff Sessions was fired?
Jeff Sessions was the first US Senator to support Donald Trump early in his campaign at a time when Trump’s campaign was regarded as a joke by most Americans who just thought that the billionaire was enjoying the media attention…
Posted in Pence2018
The irrationality of obsessing about gun violence
Once again, Vox Media gets the importance of gun violence all wrong. Brian Resneck says, “America’s teens are [right to be] extremely stressed out about school shootings”. No, no, no. Schools are extremely safe places and mass shooters are extremely…
Posted in Violence & Peace
“no other nation has the equivalent of American college sports.”
College football might be in the news because of CTE lawsuits that might end the game, but Saahil Desai at The Atlantic points out other problems with college sports. He argues that college athletics are sucking resources out of our…
Posted in Labor
Medianism 