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September 4, 2012 • 4:48 pm 0

News and analysis: Lego Friends sells well, Organic food is no healthier, Bulgaria nixes EU membership plans

Lego’s Friends line has been a huge success. I’m mostly pleased by this, but I have somewhat complicated feelings.

I have a daughter, and it’s a little frustrating that the opportunities provided for girls to play a career include a beautician, a veterinarian, a horse trainer, a baker, a fashion designer, and a rock star. I’m glad they included the inventor but it smacks of tokenism. It’s also frustrating that there’s a bunny house and a pet patrol and a horse trailer and a puppy house–it’s bunnies and puppies and kittens and pink and purple. I’m just as offended, I suppose, by the violence in a lot of the boys’ kits, but with the inclusion of molded figures that don’t match minifig scale, the City and Creator Lego sets don’t seem intended to integrate into the Friends’ world.

My hope is that the crazy success of Friends’ means that they’ll release new models annually–and you can’t build a beauty shop every year. Here’s hoping we get to see ambulance drivers and astronauts and architects this go-round (and that’s just the A’s).

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August 28, 2012 • 2:21 pm 0

News and analysis: Tampa has more than its share of poverty; Space elevator group LiftPort is back in business; Apple v. Samsung, ugh.

Republican political types are gathering in Tampa, Florida for the Republican Convention, and most people are talking about either the election, or about Hurricane Isaac. Not so many are talking about Florida’s still-depressed housing and job markets, or about the 25% poverty rate.

Part of being a society is deciding how we solve the economic problem–the problem of scarcity, and a big part of that is who gets what.

I don’t claim any particular insight into how we ought to do this: some people focus on fairness of process, and some people focus on fairness of outcome. In a broad sense, people seem to think both are important. Maybe a process is acceptable until it produces an outcome that is not, or outcomes are acceptable until it becomes clear how unfair the process is. Societies have to decide how to distribute goods; the consequences are ultimately borne by the societies as well.

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August 24, 2012 • 9:34 am 0

News and analysis: Foxconn raises wages but keeps long hours, Nike sells $315 shoes, Herr’s makes 5-6 tons of chips/day

So FoxConn workers are making more than they used to. They’re still working 60-hour weeks in violation of government labor laws.

So the wages are going up, changing relative wages against both the U.S. and against other developing nations. What’s going to happen? Well, we should expect that some manufacturing jobs will move back to the U.S. We should also expect higher value items and higher value brands to be established as more important parts of China’s economy.

The downside: prices on consumer goods–which have been depressed for a long time due to the 2000s explosion of labor due to the expansion of western firms into China–are likely to rise.

The upside: China will start buying more stuff, particularly higher-value items, in which the U.S. has a comparative advantage, so U.S. wages–which have been depressed for a long time due to the same explosion–are also likely to rise.
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August 23, 2012 • 2:24 pm 0

Principles of Microeconomics – news video feed and some commentary

So the Fall semester has begun. I show YouTube clips in my class and discuss them. If you’re interested in following along, the playlist is here and will expand as the semester goes:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7B5C6A1491718E93

In the first class, I talked about texting campaign contributions, Rio drug gangs banning crack, and football players going on diets.

First, texting campaign contributions. The goal here, presumably, is to drive down the transaction cost of contributing–or at least the psychic transaction cost borne by the contributor.

A few things worth noting: this is probably aiming at people for whom texting is a regular activity–so read: younger.

Second, the contributions are for $10, which is not very much, so this is probably aiming at some kind of “warm-glow” giving, which when aggregated can really add up; the danger being that if people are substituting texting donations for $25 checks, then the campaigns are in trouble.

Finally, the transaction costs here are actually really high–the video said 40% if I recall. That means that even if these are substituting for $7 checks, the campaigns are in trouble. Unless there are some sort of external benefits of voter engagement or something, but yeah…I’m curious whether this is a flash in the pan or a new way of giving that pans out. Read the rest of this entry »

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March 2, 2012 • 1:20 pm 0

How do people decide what they like? Atlanta commute with and without train tracks and decision under risk and uncertainty.

So I’m trying to put something together here with some coauthors and I thought it might be useful to put down some really back-of-the-envelope thoughts to see if I can get some of this articulated, as well as any comments or criticisms anybody might like to offer.

The question I/we are grappling with is this: how do people decide what they like?

The anecdote that got me interested in this particular question is this: when I lived in Atlanta, I would regularly (2x a week) have to drive from my friends’ house in Clarkston, where my daughter would stay for the day, to the train station at Edgewood/Candler Park. There are two routes between the two locations (clearly there are more, but let’s say there are two routes). One of the routes is shorter but has a set of train tracks across it. The other is longer, but manages to circumvent the train tracks by going under a railway bridge. Read the rest of this entry »

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February 29, 2012 • 10:19 am 0

Price controls in the market for gasoline. Could Gingrich push gas prices lower? Should we actively make gas more expensive?

Gingrich says gas should cost two dollars and fifty cents. When markets and politicians disagree, the market usually wins. Still, every time gas prices creep higher, there’s political hay in claiming you can fix it.

Thomas Friedman has a whole different idea on how to handle the price of gas: push it up and let it stay there. Ivan Eland calls it mercantilism.

Some crazy guy still thinks we should peg the dollar to gold. I say crazy because that’s crazy.

What would happen to the market for gas with price controls? Check the video:

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