jamesz

More smoking in public

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I’ve talked a lot before about hyperbolic discounting, time inconsistency and smoking. Reading a paper by Gruber and Koszegi on the topic yesterday, I came across an interesting little aside.

They point out that, for an addict, smoking in different periods is complementary. That means that taxes to overcome time inconsistency problems are substitutes: if your tax in one period is too low then you can compensate by raising it in another period. The same holds in a spatial sense: if you can’t prevent smoking in the home then this rationale suggests that over-regulating smoking in public places is optimal. It’s an interesting way to look at banning smoking in public places because it is specifically targeting the welfare of the smokers, not considering externalities to third parties.

jamesz

Unwanted pregnancy and default options

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It is well known that the default option for a choice hugely influences the outcome of peoples’ decisions. Governments exploit this regularly by, for instance, using opt-out rather than opt-in schemes for pension plans. The idea here is to encourage people to choose the ‘right’ thing without actually constraining their decisions making in any way. People tend to be comfortable with an arbitrary choice of default option for a new scheme. For existing schemes, a decision to change the default option from the status quo might meet with considerable opposition. However, using the power of the default option to influence peoples’ choices could potentially have a huge impact on problems that our society currently faces. Read more

jamesz

Charitable ignorance, part II

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A couple of weeks ago I asked why people might avoid finding out how worthy a charity is. People know that they’ll give to worthy charities and yet they shy away from finding out that a charity is worthy so that they avoid giving. Why might this be?

There aren’t many situations in which rational agents choose to avoid obtaining information costlessly. The times when they might are when it gains them a strategic advantage. However, you’re not playing a game against anyone else when you pass a collector on the street. The only person that you could be said to be playing against is another temporal self. Carillo and Mariotti’s paper on strategic ignorance explains how a person might choose to avoid information in order to gain an advantage over their future self. If you’re keen to get quasi-technical about it, read on. Read more

jamesz

Sony backs down on Fresh Start

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Apparently Sony has backed down on it’s proposed $50 charge for removing the junkware that usually comes preinstalled on computers. The new Fresh Start option when you buy your Vaio laptop allows you to choose to have a clean OS, without all the usual trial software and other adware, for an extra $50 over the usual price. If you look at Gizmodo’s comments you’ll see the predictable outrage of consumers over having to pay more to avoid something, rather than paying to gain something. However, to an economist, this looks like a simple case of price discrimination much as you see with business class flights on a plane. What’s the difference here? Read more

jamesz

iTunes: friendly or foxy?

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It seems Apple’s thinking about giving iPod owners free access to the iTunes download service! Are they just good souls or is there a more sinister, profit-seeking motive behind their announcement (tongue firmly in cheek)? The first thought of every economist when they see something like this is to scream “price discrimination”. It looks like a classic case of a two-part tariff where the marginal cost of providing the tunes to a customer is zero; which it probably is, since Apple will likely pay a lump sum to the record companies rather than a per track sum. However, this is only half the story here. Read more

Matt Nolan

Is wanting less money irrational?

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The Standard links to an interesting LA times article on loss aversion. Now loss aversion in itself is a very interesting issue, something Rauparaha may like to write about ;). However, my focus is going to fall on the same result that The Standard was interested in namely that people would rather earn $50k when everyone else earns $25k than earn $100k when everyone else earns $250k. The article calls people ‘irrational’ for doing this – but is this the case?
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