Today’s exercise in everyday economics: Brian Stelter and Amy Chozick making the case that cable and satellite TV subscribers are paying a “sports tax” (ht: Jennifer R.). Writing in the New York Times, they say: Although “sports” never shows up as a line item on a cable or satellite bill, American television subscribers pay, on average, about [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Microeconomics’
Will New Technology Help People Escape the “Sports Tax”?
Posted in Microeconomics, Technology, tagged Microeconomics, Pricing, Sports, Television on December 16, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Why Are Restaurant Dinners Pricier Than Lunch?
Posted in Microeconomics, tagged Microeconomics, Pricing on December 15, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Over at Quora, restaurateur Jonas M. Luster explains why he charges more for items at dinner than at lunch: Lunch isn’t prepared and served by my A-team. Many times waiters and cooks have to prove themselves during lunch before being allowed on the dinner line. This means I pay less in payroll. Lunch doesn’t usually serve [...]
Cuddle in Coach, But Don’t Get Too Comfortable
Posted in Business, Microeconomics, tagged Airlines, Microeconomics, Pricing on December 9, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had a fun article about Air New Zealand’s latest innovation: Cuddle Class. As “the Middle Seat” columnist Scott McCartney describes it: Steve Metz of Houston cuddled up with his wife Jackie and slept as they flew to New Zealand on a small futon. This flying couch wasn’t in a private jet [...]
The Supply and Demand for War
Posted in International, Microeconomics, tagged Microeconomics, Supply and Demand, War on July 13, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Wars are becoming more common. Writing at History Today, Kathryn Hadley reports (ht: The Browser): New research by Professors Mark Harrison from the University of Warwick and Nikolaus Wolf from Humboldt University has revealed that between 1870 and 2001, the frequency of wars between states increased steadily by 2% a year on average. “Steadily” might be [...]
Yahoo’s Self-Inflicted Winner’s Curse
Posted in Auctions, Internet, Microeconomics, Technology, tagged Auctions, Microeconomics, Yahoo on April 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Over at Managerial Econ, Luke Froeb highlights a nice example of the winner’s curse. Like Google, Yahoo uses automated auctions to sell ads. One wrinkle is that some advertisers prefer to pay for impressions, some prefer to pay for clicks, and some prefer to pay only for resulting sales. Yahoo thus needs some mechanism to [...]
Taxi Medallions in DC: Who Would Win and Lose?
Posted in Microeconomics, Regulation, tagged Microeconomics, Regulation, Taxi on April 10, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Today’s lesson in political economy: the looming battle over Washington’s cab market. Three members of DC’s City Council (Marion Barry, Harry Thomas, Jr., and Michael Brown) want to require every taxi to have a medallion. The number of medallions would be much smaller than the number of cabs on the streets today. As I noted [...]
The Rising Risk of Antibiotic Resistance
Posted in Microeconomics, Regulation, Technology, tagged Drugs, Externality, Microeconomics on April 3, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Scary theme of the week? Rising antibiotic resistance. Megan McArdle highlighted this challenge in her presentation at the Kauffman bloggers event on Friday; if you have a moment, check out her chart at the 2:00 mark, showing that resistance to new antibiotics has been developing faster and faster. You’ll hear more about resistance later in [...]
Thanksgiving Reading
Posted in Business, Microeconomics, Nature, Politics, Technology, tagged Microeconomics, OpenTable, Politics, Tragedy of the Commons, Voting on November 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
So many fascinating economic issues, so little time to blog. Here are some of the fun items that I would have discussed in recent days if I had infinite time: How OpenTable uses its market power. Over at Incanto, Mark Pastore describes how OpenTable uses its dominant position in online restaurant reservations to get as much [...]
Economics in Action: Is Groupon Worth It?
Posted in Microeconomics, tagged Business, Microeconomics on November 23, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Over at the New York Times You’re the Boss blog, Jay Goltz provides a great example of economic reasoning (ht: Jack B). His topic: how should small businesses think about the costs and benefits of participating in daily coupon sites like Groupon? Participants can see big spikes in traffic, at the expense of slashed margins. Is [...]
DC’s New Mayor Should Say No to Taxi Medallions
Posted in Microeconomics, Regulation, tagged Microeconomics, Regulation, Taxi on November 9, 2010 | 18 Comments »
I love taxi medallions. As an example for my microeconomics students, not as policy. Just last week, I used New York City’s medallion system to show how an entry barrier — the requirement that each yellow taxi have one of a limited number of medallions — could create profits in an otherwise viciously competitive industry. [...]
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