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Komen Foundation Pilloried for Planned Parenthood Policy - and Rightly So
Earlier this week the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation said they'd be eliminating their grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings. The resulting social media uproar, however,...
View ArticleThe value of flexible labor markets
Three stories in the news today highlight the importance of labor market mobility.The United States has had some good news lately. With job spurt, US economy races ahead of Europe:Some 1.9 million US...
View ArticleNetflix original programming: trying to stay ahead of the competition?
Netflix has been through some hard times lately, and the industry is evolving in ways that will continue to challenge their core business model. A combined deal between Redbox and Verizon has been...
View ArticleCigarettes, a case study in price discrimination (China vs. U.S.)
Economists predict there will be price discrimination when there is a monopolist supplier (or at least some degree of market power) and arbitrage between different groups of customers is costly. The...
View ArticleWhat is law?
Early in my Law & Economics course, taught by Don Boudreaux (professor and former chair of the economics department at GMU, blogger at Cafe Hayek) he made a controversial point about the nature of...
View ArticleLight bulbs and implied discount rates
What does your choice in light bulbs say about your attitude toward the future? In terms of discount rates, quite a lot.An incandescent 60W bulb costs around 50 cents to buy, while a 15W CFL costs...
View ArticleThe Durable Goods Problem in Software
Being a monopolist isn't all it's cracked up to be. Produce a durable good, and you're functionally competing against yourself.For a Durable Goods Producer with Market Power:Problem 1: durable goods...
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First Textbook in Social Media Marketing
Blatant self-promotion, but I can't resist.(c) Cengage Learning 2013.The book that I helped write is now in print. Find it here. Many thanks to my co-authors as well as the professionals at Cengage...
View ArticleFish and Game Dept. targets Asian Supermarket - Flawed Economics in Action
A daring sting operation has brought down another set of dangerous criminals in our midst. The proprietors of Great Wall supermarket (located about 20 minutes from where I live) have been arrested for...
View ArticleNew Blog Section
I added another section to the blog, titled "Other Writings." It contains links to my (currently sparse) published works, as well as other papers I've written over the last two years that haven't been...
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Farm Subsidies: A Picture Worth 1,000 Words
Who ever said there's no skiing in Iowa? Source.In other news, the Institute of Medicine is advising the government to adopt a series of policies to control the American "obesity epidemic." One such...
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Fun with Twitter Metrics
Using tweepyI've been looking at the characteristics of my Twitter following. I found these histograms pretty interesting.The first shows how many people my followers are following and followed by....
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Promoted Accounts on Twitter, the Great Enigma
For a class project (CSS692/ECO895, Social Network Analysis) my group - Kevin May, Echo Keif and I - took on a project a almost bigger than we could chew: identifying astroturf on Twitter. It turned...
View ArticleDon't interact with strangers' children.
The way current law is set up, being a Good Samaritan and trying to rescue someone else's kid can only get you in trouble.Browsing the Internet, I've found a few anecdotes which support this view. I...
View ArticleDiablo III and the Newsvendor Model
How does a long-awaited sequel, which became the fastest selling PC game of all time, still end up with a 2-star rating on Amazon? Probably because so many people were excited to play it and then...
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Are Twitter Lists another social network?
Twitter has a "List" feature, which allows users to organize their followers, or view tweets from only a select group. Until recently, the number of lists following each Twitter account was visible on...
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Twitter List Networks, Part 2: Spammers
As a point of comparison with my last post, here's another network of Twitter lists.Instead of using my main account, this was built from a separate "follow-back" account I check on occasionally, which...
View ArticleZoos and Endangered Species -- trade-offs in everything
Take a look at this article by Leslie Kaufman for the New York Times, "Zoos’ Bitter Choice: To Save Some Species, Letting Others Die." An excerpt:As the number of species at risk of extinction soars,...
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The Conservative/Libertarian Echo Chamber on Twitter
Lately I've noticed many many free market think tanks showing up on my "Suggested People to Follow" list on Twitter. I'm not sure if this is because the Twitter suggestion algorithm has improved to...
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Paycheck Fairness Act is anti-womens' employment
Scheduled to come to a vote in Congress tomorrow, the Paycheck Fairness Act is a bad solution to a statistically trumped-up problem.The most frequently cited statistic is that women earn 77 cents for...
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Obesity: Class Warfare, Imperfect Information... or both?
Saw this on CNN today: Poor and fat: The real class war, by L.Z. Granderson. Some figures from the article:Ground beef that is 80/20 is fattier but cheaper than 90/10. Ground turkey breast is leaner...
View ArticleIntrade and hedging your bets in life
The prediction market Intrade is a neat contribution to economics as well as everyday living. It offers odds on a variety of important world events occurring, and allows users to buy or sell "shares"...
View ArticleWill Xbox Gold be Set Free? Doubt It.
This post today on Gizmodo, It’s Time for Xbox Live Gold to Be Free by Brian Barrett:Why would I go to the club that has a cover charge when there are three right next door—each almost exactly...
View ArticleNew legislation responding to old EU crisis
From BBC Business News on the status of Spain and a potential bail-out:On Wednesday, the European Commission unveiled proposals designed to stop taxpayers' money being used to bail out failed banks.The...
View ArticleI'm changing blog titles.
New updates will now be found at Suspicious Heuristics. I think the name is a better fit (and much more fun to say!) All the old content will stay here to avoid confusion, but please join me at the new...
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