This has been going around the Internet for the past couple of days…(HT to Gizmodo and others…)
My first thought was “the guy on the right must be an economist.” Also, I’m surprised that no one popped up to offer $52. The comments on the sites that were running this, however, got me thinking [...]
Tags: Buyer Beware · Incentives · Just For Fun
Try this quote on for size:
On our assumptions, the extended warranty is a product that simply should not exist. If Humans realized that they we paying twenty dollars for two dollars’ worth of insurance, they would not buy the insurance. But if they do not realize this, markets cannot and will not unravel [...]
Tags: Behavioral Econ · Buyer Beware · Markets
I came across the following picture yesterday with the caption “When PCs Stand Out…”
(HT to Business Pundit.) Upon seeing this, my cynical economist mind went to a different potential caption of “Incentives: They Work, B*tches.” (In fairness, monetary incentives don’t ALWAYS work, but it’s important to know when they do and when they [...]
Tags: Buyer Beware · Incentives
It took almost a year of pestering, but I finally got my best friend to take me to the neighborhood bar in the town he grew up in. As any good dive bar should, it had a bunch of Keno screens, and I am not surprisingly intrigued by animated numbers, so he asked me [...]
Tags: Behavioral Econ · Books · Buyer Beware · Decision Making
Hello, I meant BJ’s the wholesale club…what on earth were you thinking you dirty people? You know, these places:
I’ve posted a few times before about economies of scale, relating the concept to things like whisky and real estate. Technically, the term “economies of scale” refers to the case where production gets cheaper for [...]
Tags: Buyer Beware · Econ 101