Michael Giberson Robin Hanson observes that prospects are not promising for health-case cost containment, in part due to a normal reluctance to give up on sacred values in exchange for money. I wonder if this same psychological factor is activated in emergency conditions which present opportunities to trade the sacred for cash, and if it …
Michael Giberson Post-earthquake in New Zealand, a battle emerges over the best system for rebuilding: Supremo vs. the Invisible Hand. Supremo has its backers: [Construction economist John Jackson said:] Rebuilding should be led by a “supremo”, such as a senior military officer with engineering corps experience, as was chosen for Darwin, and New Orleans after Hurricane …
Supremo Vs. Invisible Hand: Battle over New Zealand Earthquake Recovery Approach Read More »
Michael Giberson Complaints about online clothing resellers “preying” on their customers prompted one reseller to open up about the costs of doing business: A reseller friend of mine bought a dress at Anthropologie on first cut sale. The dress originally retailed for $138 and was marked down to $69.95. She listed the dress on eBay …
Michael Giberson I don’t know the answer, so someone let me know if you do, but has the President of the United States ever declared a state of emergency over a local water main break before? According the the announcement, “The President’s action authorizes … Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate all disaster relief …
Michael Giberson Ticket scalping, like price gouging, is a usually pro-social market activity that is stuck with a pejorative name. At Swifter, Higher, sportswriter Kyle Whelliston writes about his experience picking up a cheap ticket into the first hockey game of the Vancouver Olympics. It wasn’t as easy as he hoped, but at a cost …
Michael Giberson Bryan Caplan, in How Wise is Repugnance?, questions Leon Kass’s argument that “repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom.” (From Kass’s essay, “The Wisdom of Repugnance.”) Kass runs through a list of things that he thinks the reader will accept as obviously repugnant (incest, bestiality, mutilating corpses, cannibalism, and so on) and …
Michael Giberson Al Roth, at Market Design, points out an inadvertently amusing column from The Guardian a few weeks back, “Our speechless outrage demands a new language of the common good.” The writer, Madeleine Bunting, asserts that economists of a certain sort (namely, Friedrich Hayek and his associates at Chicago in the 50s) came to …
Michael Giberson The post title was extracted from the conclusion of Henry Neilson’s article, “Price gouging versus price reduction in retail gasoline markets during Hurricane Rita” (Economic Letters, October 2009), but I’m not sure the evidence supports the conclusion of altruism. Neilson collected gasoline price data in the Byran-College Station, Texas, area for several weeks …
“Gas Station Owners Were Surprisingly Altruistic During That Time of Crisis” Read More »
Michael Giberson Vero Beach, Florida, could become a hothouse of dynamic competition in retail electric power, if only the city would follow the recommendations of economist Dom Armentano. According to the Vero Beach [Florida] Electric Utility, they aim to provide “reliable, cost competitive electrical energy and services to our customers in a manner that exceeds …
Michael Giberson From the Buffalo, New York, BusinessFirst: In a letter sent May 13 by FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz to Higgins, the agency said after a careful and extensive investigation, regulators could not find any evidence of illegal activity in gasoline markets in any of the affected cities. The agency monitored prices in Buffalo, Jamestown, …
Congressman to Western New York Gasoline Retailers: We Will Be Watching You Read More »
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