Econo-war in SPAAACE

It's actually thrilling to see economics debated in public. Especially when it involves Jedi! Mankiw is right too! [you're not agreeing with him because he's quoting Star Wars are you? no. because he's part of the conservative establishment, which would make him Darth Vader. I'm not talking about that. Star wars geeks support each other? Exactly.]

MSRP

Everyone (do you mean every economics blog you read? that too) is talking about a possible rollback of the anti-trust laws. Specifically allowing manufacturers to set price floors. Even Mankiw thinks it's a good idea.

To which I can only say: Are they nuts?

The electronic stores that are the most expensive, generally speaking, have terrible service. Unlike the bored and/or indifferent help at a lower end retailer their sales help is uninformed and pushy.

Assume the producer sets a price floor, and you now can afford to spend more on sales staff. You have three options
1. Do nothing pocket the extra cash as profit
2. Hire aggressive sales staff and give them bigger commissions
3. Hire knowledgeable and polite sales staff and reward them based on the quality of service they provide

It is -possible- that retailers will choose 3. but I'm doubtful.

The battle for tenure rages on (over crabs)

Recently I got interested in talking about tenure again.

On Friday we joined an real-live-academic for butter crabs. I postulated that

• Tenure isn't necessary to protect people from producing controversial work. Controversial work is its own reward.

I cited Levett, the Dixie Chicks, and the-lady-who-wrote-the-Nanking-Massacre as people who benefited professionally from taking controversial positions (if not immeadiately). My point was basically that people who disagree with the CW are subject to criticism, but they will profit from cutting edge work.

He argued that

• Tenure is part of an overall system for protecting people developing progressive ideas
• The majority of research isn't for popular consumption
• Iris Chang, who wrote the Rape of Nanking, wasn't a professor and didn't have tenure, but did commit suicide

He mentioned an Australian professor he knew who, during the whole 拉致問題, got the ambassidors from Japan, North Korea and South Korea into a room during a conference and told them that all three of their governments had engaged in terrorist activities.
Specifically the professor mentioned

• Japan's insistance on looking at the kidnappings in isolation without considering past actions (i.e. the invasion).
• S. Korea's suppression of student protests during the formation of the government after the Korean War (I think...)

My friend, who was fairly young at the time was very impressed by this man's courage and, they met later, asked him where he got it.

"Tenure" was the reply.

[This post needs a subheading. Something about intellectual light-weights and heavy-weights. Or maybe the value of knowing what you're talking about. ed. I looked up who Iris Chang was. Your cookie is in the mail. ed.]

Econo-war!

Mankiw takes on Levitt. ['takes on' is a synonym for 'politely discusses' now? ed. I'm exciting my readership. They want you to punch it up. you don't have any readership. ed. Thus the punching!]

But who's right? Disagreeing with Mankiw is rarely a brilliant idea, but it there could easily be other solutions than the corporate-style environment he seems to be imagining.

5 year 'terms' with standardized student evaluations* and peer review of research would address the cesspit-of-departmental-politics and rise-of-the-heirarchy arguement.

Did you know that?

There are twice as many deaths by suicide as homicides (link to pdf -- see the second page). All my good links come from Freakonomics. [this is your sixth post. ed. It's a predictive statement.]

The thing people don't get about the PS3...

In case you haven't noticed some people hate the PS3's price point. There are whole blogs about it.

It's basically just price discrimination (note the second paragraph -- not talking about discrimination against people). The holy grail of the producer. Some industries -- such as private colleges in the US -- have been doing it for years.

For years people (Ok, mostly people on slashdot, but anyway) have been talking about how much you could charge "hard-core" gamers. Sony went ahead and did that.

In a classic case of marketing-people-don't-get-it Sony has been pushing it as a mainstream console. It would probably have worked better as Premium Product. Are you hard-core enough? etc. etc. Make the first line of products collectors editions. Then in a year when the next Final Fantasy comes out drop the price 100 dollars and watch the moolah come in.