jamesz

Have Radiohead shown us the future of music?

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As everyone knows, Radiohead recently released their album ‘In Rainbows’ online for a nominal sum. It was suggested to me today that perhaps that is the future of the music industry and record labels will soon be obsolete. I agree that a release similar to Radiohead’s could be a good move for some groups, but I don’t think it will signal the end of labels as we know them.

I like Radiohead’s strategy because it shows some smart third degree price discrimination (although I think the internet price could have been higher). Read more

Matt Nolan

Discretion vs Rule: The eatery edition

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What do the Reserve Bank and eateries have in common? Both implement rule based policies instead of discretionary policies and both suffer criticism from their clientèle for doing so even though it is in the clients ultimate interest.

I noticed this today when I went to get some food for lunch. A man in front of me was trying to get cash out, when there is a sign that says “no cash out” at the counter. The man was irritated by this rule, he wanted cash and there was cash in the till. The service person tried to explain to him that if they let people get cash out, then they ran out of change in the counter, which causes delays later in the day – furthermore, if they give him cash they run the chance that other people may begin expecting that they can get cash out, and employees would feel more obliged to. As there was a cash machine just outside, the cost of getting the cash somewhere else was very low for the man, however the delays later in the day would have been costly for both the firm and the consumers involved. In this case, the rule improved the social outcome – any deviation from this rule may change peoples beliefs and lead to a case where most people are worse off.

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jamesz

Household chores: are men really slackers?

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In houses all around the world women are cleaning and doing chores right now while their husbands sit in front of the TV. Depending upon which you are it’s either a pretty sweet arrangement, or a manifestation of the oppressive patriarchal regime into which you were born (or something more moderate and boring sounding in between, I guess). Now Bryan Caplan has stirred up a hornets’ nest with a post supporting the couch jockeys:

Look at the typical bachelor’s apartment. Even when a man pays the full cost of cleanliness and receives the full benefit, he doesn’t do much. Why not? Because the typical man doesn’t care very much about cleanliness. When the bachelor gets married, he almost certainly starts doing more housework than he did when he was single. How can you call that shirking?

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jamesz

The future of the music industry

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The Economist laments the death of the music industry as we know it:

the results from 2007 confirm what EMI’s focus group showed: that the record industry’s main product, the CD, which in 2006 accounted for over 80% of total global sales, is rapidly fading away. In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before… More worryingly for the industry, the growth of digital downloads appears to be slowing.

So perhaps it’s time for the industry to develop a new business model, but what are its options? Read more

Matt Nolan

Is policing some crimes optimal?

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When someone gets robbed there are some direct costs and benefits. Firstly, the perpetrator receives the goods and or services, and may also derive some pleasure from the activity itself. Secondly the victim suffers the loss of goods and services, and is hurt by the fact they have become a victim.

If this crime is reported to the police and solved successfully then there are a number of losers. Society has to pay the police to solve the crime, the criminal loses any goods and has to pay/go to jail, and the victim loses a significant amount of time making statements etc. Most people that have a criminal case against them try to get a criminal defense lawyer, I suggest talking to Chambers Legal or the criminal lawyers Roanoke. In some cases, the time cost to the victim turns out to be greater than the benefit from having the crime solved (these are the people that regret having taken their case to the police). The folks at Liberty Bell Law criminal attorney Los Angeles CA, though, make it a point that crime is brought to books and justice delivered as quickly as possible.

In some cases, this type of outcome is quite common (eg for small traffic accidents), and the only reason people initially go to the police is because they don’t realise how large the effort and time cost will be (often as a result of mis-information). If this is the case, then everyone loses from a crime being reported and solved, implying that it would have been better if the crime was never reported.

However, this logic feels like it has something missing. Why would police be trained to under-sell the costs associated with reporting these crimes unless there was some good reason for it?

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jamesz

Biased impartiality in the media

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Half the internet seems to be talking about the US Presidential primaries at the moment, so Jeremy Burke’s work on media bias seems particularly pertinent. I might talk about his other papers another time but the one that’s captured my attention today addresses the myth that balanced media coverage is equivalent to fair coverage.

It is usually accepted that the media should provide unbiased coverage of events and issues. Unfortunately it is difficult for the reader to tell how biased the coverage is if they have no prior information about the issues being reported. In the absence of further information it can appear that coverage which reports both sides of a contentious issue is the least biased. In the competitive world of large media conglomerates a reputation for accurate, unbiased coverage is essential. The competition drives reporters to appear impartial by simply reporting the arguments provided on each side of a debate. Of course, providing both sides of an issue and reporting it in an unbiased fashion are not always the same thing.
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