Results for “markets in everything”
1878 found

The Limits of Tying

by  Tyler Cowen in

A pen may refuse to dispense ink unless it’s being used with licensed
paper. … A shoe may refuse to provide some features, such as high-tech
cushioning of the sole, unless used with licensed shoelaces. …Will
these things actually happen? I can’t say for sure.

So writes Felten, channeled through CrookedTimber.  This world sounds like fun, but it is unlikely to come about.  Most people wouldn’t buy a pen like that, and even a monopolistic pen supplier (hardly the case) would maximize profit by offering a more valuable product.  Tying has three primary rationales:

1. The main product actually works better with certain accompaniments.  The supplier wishes to either avoid complaints, liability, or damage to reputation.  Your local Denny’s won’t mash together french fries, blueberries, and coffee for you.  Not even if you beg, offer a large tip, or whine about "Markets in Everything."

2. Price discrimination.  Make them buy the printer with a specified printer cartridge.  People who use the printer more need more cartridges.  Under certain conditions, the cartridge can be priced so as to charge the high-value users more for the entire package.  That leads to higher profits than charging everyone the same price, at least if the right conditions are satisfied.  This is usually welfare-improving, I might add, as it leads to higher output.

3. Desire to use one monopoly position to take over another newly opened, declining-cost market.  Tying can give you a first-mover advantage and discourage entrants.  The model here is complicated but it can work out to support this result.  Try this one too, and here.  The iTunes case may be an example here.  Apple wants market power in both the on-line songs and the hardware market, and thinks it can leverage one into the other.  But notice that both markets must be susceptible to monopolization on the cost side, namely the presence of increasing returns for the first and dominant supplier.

In any case, I doubt if iTunes (as we know it) will be the industry standard ten years from now.  And if so?  "Let them listen to Cake!" I am willing to say.

The bottom line: Our pens and paper are safe.

Round-up

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. How to make "The Long Tail" work.

2. The economics of orchestras.

3. The TradeSports.com dispute over the North Korean missile launch, and more here.

4. Another interview with Milton Friedman.

5. Betting markets in everything.

6. Farm subsidies and Africa; counter the conventional wisdom, by DSquared.

7. Interview with Charles Murray.  Btw, I don’t think human achievement has declined.

8. Review of the new Adam Phillips book, his kissing and tickling book is wonderful.

Trudie’s advice to would-be economists

by  Tyler Cowen in

Trudie responds:

It is not foolish to want to become an economist, but it is foolish to be attracted by this blog.  Yes we have serious posts about the option value of gold.  But graduate study in economics will not sample "Markets in Everything" (remember the Whizzinator?), not consider whether teenage Thomas Jefferson would have a crush on Veronica Mars, nor will it ask "Why Don’t People Have More Sex?".  Liking this blog, on average, is a sign that you have broad interests and thus are ill-suited for graduate study in economics.  There is also, dare I say it, a chance that you are simply a silly goose with time to kill.  On the other hand, Greg Mankiw is now reading Jacqueline Passey, so anything is possible.  Welcome, Bizarro Universe.

Two core groups of people are well-suited to be economists:

1. You math GRE score is over 800, you are totally focused, you love working long hours on your own, and you have good enough letters of recommendation to get into a Top Six or perhaps Top Ten graduate school.   Note that white Americans from this category have been partially preempted by competition from foreigners.

2. You could be happy as an academic without much of a research career.  Working at a teaching school is a rewarding life, albeit a poor one relative to your investment in human capital.

There is a third category, although you will fall into it (or not) ex post:

3. You do not fit either #1 or #2.  Yet you have climbed out of the cracks rather than falling into them.  You do something different, and still have managed to make your way doing research, albeit of a different kind.  You will always feel like an outsider in the profession and perhaps you will be underrewarded.  But you will have a great deal of fun and in the long run perhaps a great deal of influence.

Sadly, the chance of achieving #3 is fairly low.  You need some luck and perhaps one or two special skills other than math.

Did I mention that if you have a clearly defined "Plan B" your chance of succeeding at #3 diminishes?  It is important to be fully committed.

Greg Mankiw is a classic #1.  Brad DeLong started off as a #1, although he has been evolving into a #3.  Maybe he was a #3 in hiding all along.  I’ve been a #3, although with a dose of #1 from having gone to Harvard.  Alex is a classic #3.

Another thing: Don’t expect any classes to be interesting.  How should I put it?  "Most professors suck."  But a good professor can make almost any topic interesting.  So your reaction to the courses is just a reaction to the instructors you have sampled.  Treat that as noise, although I will ask why you are worse at picking teachers than at picking advice columnists.

Should you become a legal academic?  You will have a greater chance to work with ideas and concepts.  A greater chance to write books and also to read them.  You are more likely to strut, wear three-piece suits, and speak in stentorian tones.  If I were starting out today, perhaps I would take that route, although I would fail at the strut and the suits.  The pay is higher and upward mobility is easier to accomplish.  But overall the quality of intellectual debate is higher in the economics profession.  In economics the return to rhetoric is lower and you can’t get away with blather.  Your articles are refereed by your peers, and not by graduate students (well, it depends what journal you submit to…).  The academic world of law has weaker quality filters, which of course also makes it more open to new ideas.

Your choice, but note that many would-be legal academics end up lured by the private sector or government work.

And by the way, buy her roses, ask her to marry you, and live happily ever after.  The rest probably won’t matter so much for your happiness and life satisfaction.

Assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Economists agree that stadium subsidies don’t pay for themselves.  I am on board though I worry that not all these studies account for the indirect benefits of having a team in your area to root for.  Go, Gilbert.

2. Markets in everything: Flushable toddler urinals, why make them sit?  Thanks to Carrie Conko for the pointer.

3. Robin Hanson’s recent talk on the economics of robots.  He is speaker number three, skip ahead if you wish.

4. The most expensive cars, $440,000 and up.

5. AARP list: the sexiest people over 50.  But where is Mitsuko Uchida?

Caught my eye

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Incentive pay to make the buses run on time in Chile.  Addendum: See also this paper.

2. A review of the new Judith Harris book.

3. Markets in everything: a torso goes for $3,000.

4. James Surowiecki defends pricing neutrality for the Internet.

5. $1000 prize for repressed memory evidence before 1800.  Or was it all just made up?

6. The Dutch show a movie of naked women and homosexuality (tulips too) to potential Muslim immigrants, to make sure they understand the Netherlands is about tolerance.  In Iran only a censored version of the movie — without nudity and homosexuality – is shown.

7. Europe’s free riders, and why the Euro may be headed for trouble.

These caught my eye

by  Tyler Cowen in

Dan Akst on how best to spend a dollar to help the world.  He suggests micro-finance as the most potent means of charity.

James Hamilton and Mark Thoma and Martin Feldstein on why higher oil prices have not created a recession.

Fatalities from sharks may be falling because people are fighting back and punching the sharks.

Here is a new book on how to fight back if the robots rebel.  Hint: go for its "eyes" (cameras), punching is not the key.  Don’t give them the security codes to your defense computers.

Why email communication is so problematic, and how we overrate how much others understand us in that medium.

Markets in everything, magazine edition, courtesy of Cynical-C blog.

Forbes magazine, short essays on money and happiness.

Why Americans are fatter

by  Tyler Cowen in

…Americans are not consuming more carbohydrates and trans fats because McDonald’s is super sizing our dinners.  Nor is our diet changing because Uncle Sam is subsidizing corn.  Rather, Americans are eating poorly because of a much more fundamental change in how we eat, specifically, the rise of snacking.  In fact, the amount we eat and drink between meals accounts for nearly all the growth in our consumption of carbohydrates and fats over the past thirty years.  Perhaps the biggest source of America’s recent weight gain and sugary diet is not so much the value "meal" but the simple snack.

…the free market has caught up with American food culture…With snacking, food is no longer about sustenance or even sociability: it is about amusement and self-medication.  We now eat to relieve our stress, to alleviate our boredom, or simply make ourselves feel better.  Food, in short, has become our drug of choice.  And the types of foods that are best suited for these psychological tasks are the very ones that cause us so many health problems, that is, sweets, fats, and refined carbohydrates.  In other words, the ultimate source of the changing American diet goes beyond McDonald’s, corn syrup, or the food pyramid; the ultimate source is the American way of life.

That is from J. Eric Oliver’s excellent Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic.  Here is Steve Levitt’s positive review.  Here is an LA Times review.

What about me? I am not going to exercise beyond my current levels of tennis, basketball, and walking are enough.  So I could become thinner in three ways.  First, I have recently switched from Raisin Bran to Spelts cereal in the morning.  Second, I prefer mineral water to Coke, but Szechuan restaurants do not serve the former.  I am waiting for Markets in Everything, and in the meantime I am not willing to give up Dan Dan Noodles or eat them with plain ice water or tea.  Third, in the last year I have started snacking on high-quality dark chocolate.  I have yet to decide whether I wish to fight this new source of additional calories…

Addendum: Comments are now open…

Guero and Crunchy Frog

by  Tyler Cowen in

Amazon.com lists Beck’s new album —Guero — as coming out next week, but today I found copies in my local Starbucks, bless their hearts.  The sound is muddier and murkier than usual, with plenty of rhythm changes and scratching. On first listening it is at least as good as Odelay (and similar in style), but not quite up to my favorite, Mutations.  But then again, I’ve underrated every other Beck album on first listening, so why should this one be any different?

While we are off the topic of economics, Entertainment Weekly lists the 20 Best Monty Python sketches.  Most of the picks are on target but "Miss Anne Elk" and "Summarize Proust" are conspicuous for their absence.  And "The Argument Clinic" (the original inspiration for "Markets in Everything," I might add) deserves to be way higher than #20.