Twitter: Joshua Gans- @jodiecongirl Actually, it says more about you that you've heard of them!
- @jodiecongirl I think it says that economists don't just assume rational agents but are attracted by them too. Talk about a value conflict.
- @jodiecongirl Why uninteresting? Think of Alex P. Keaton, Quark , Sheldon and Dogbert.
- RT @freakonomics: Freakonomics Movie is released via iTunes tomorrow: http://bit.ly/9YveA3 [I'm gathering the kids for a Friday night movie]
- Am I to understand that we are now in the path of a Hurricane? http://bit.ly/daitO9 This aint the tropics.
Readership
Dec
31
Game Theorist: Holiday Posts
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Parenting | Comments Off
Over at GameTheorist I have been posting recently on:
- how to manage mess
- the controversy surrounding Happy Feet
- road trips in the 21st century
- quirky and mathematically-oriented books for children
Dec
31
Useless Red Carpet at Hoyts
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | 6 Comments
One of the joys of having a blog is that when some corporation screws up with your own customer service you can complain about it instantly. In this case, the corporation was Hoyts cinemas. Read more
Dec
31
Tivo and TV programming
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics, Television | 3 Comments
Simon Anderson and I have been researching on the impact of Tivo on broadcast television (here is an earlier post describing that research). One of our predictions is that Tivo will cause broadcasters to favour mass market programs over niche ones; the reason being that Tivo owners both like the television they watch alot as well as disliking ads. The combination means that broadcasters will choose programming that appeals to a mass market which like television somewhat in order to capture a broader advertising base.
Stephen Speicher has an interesting article that shows this potential. Read more
Dec
29
Germany’s super-baby bonus disruption
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Behavioural Econ, Economics | Comments Off
We know what happens when you give parents a $3000 incentive to delay their births. But what about $39000? Read more
Dec
28
Births and Deaths in the Canberra Times
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Behavioural Econ | 1 Comment
Peter Martin in Tuesday’s Canberra Times does a comprehensive review of our unusual days research. He also takes on face value that the baby bonus has also increased the birth rate overall. I am still sceptical and would prefer to analyse the actual data rather than take the Treasurer’s word on this one.
Dec
28
The cheapest DVD player
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Technology | 6 Comments
A question: suppose you wanted to buy a DVD player that was (a)incredibly cheap (to make it worthwhile not to pay for a hotel movie), (b) from a store in Chatswood, Sydney, no more than 5 minutes walk from your hotel; and (c) the store was open at 7:30pm on a Wednesday. Could you do it?
Answer: yes, indeed. From JB Hi Fi for only $38! I am now to proud owner of an Okano DVD1000. A compact DVD player that is perfectly adequate for watching Season 1 of House. Includes remote and cables and is so small it will pack easily. Thank you China; now globalisation provides competition for in-house movies in hotels.
Dec
27
Slate looks at why iPods all seem to sell for the same price. And the answer: because Apple want them to. (By the way, the same question can be asked of game consoles which like iPods always seem to be excluded from storewide sales in Target and K-mart). Read more
Dec
27
Stiglitz on IP
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under IP | Comments Off
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize winner in economics, lets loose on our system of intellectual property protection of medical treatments. There is nothing new in the argument — patent monopolies might stimulate research but this could be on marginal efforts, existing treatments and create a by-product of monopoly promotion through advertising. The person saying it gives it weight this time around. Stiglitz argues for a complementary system of prizes as a better way than patents to stimulate research.
I have said it before but government procurement of medical treatments is another way of having our cake and eating it too and the Australian PBS is a prime example (click here for a review).
Dec
27
The unexpected complementor
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | Comments Off
Sometimes you see products bundled together and you can’t think why. Today I went to a chemist to purchase some nail clippers and the only ones they had were bundled with a ‘retractible lip brush.’ This was presumably some new product but who could tell. It was certainly worthless to me. Indeed, it cost me time as I looked on the shelves for an unbundled clipper.
At the checkout counter, an elderly lady was asking for a price check. What on? Well, the bundled clippers-brush. At $7.50 it was too much for her blood as she only wanted the little brush. Just like two opposing one legged shoppers in a shoe store, I seized the opportunity. I offered her my brush. The complementarity was seized and it was only because the spurious bundling that it existed. Moreover, the chemist was potentially out one sale.
And what price did I cement this deal? Well, $0; relinquishing all of my bargaining power this time around for a whole bunch of altrustic and entrepreneurial utility (and a blog post idea). Win-win-win.
Dec
24
Tivo shuts down TivoDownUnder
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Technology, Television | Comments Off
An announcement from TivoDownUnder today that Tivo is shutting it down:
As of 31st January 2007, tivodownunder.com will be no more. TiVo, the company in America had a problem with our use of their registered trademarks, and to cut a long story short we have agreed to shut the site down. They have actually been pretty good about it, and have allowed us some grace time to get rid of remaining stocks. After the 31st January 2007, the tivodownunder.com domain will be handed over to TiVo (so no email will work after this date, and our web site will no longer work).
This is sad as they were a supplier of refurbished Tivos to the Australian market; complementing the OzTivo community. The concern had to be the brand name as altering electronic products is legal in Australia.
I have a refurbished Tivo and can swear by it. It is the best solution out there as a digital video recorder; especially for recording pay television.
But what would be better is if Tivo brought the official product to Australia. With hundreds of OzTivo users, surely the market is established as viable.
Dec
23
GameTheorist: Recent Posts
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Parenting | Comments Off
It is holiday time again, so it is likely that my blogging attention will move away from this one and on to Game Theorist. Some recent posts include an award for the Tupperware Birthday Party idea, my daughter’s intuition on bundling, vision statements for parents and car seat safety.
Dec
21
Quiggin on TV and broadband
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Broadband, Economics | Comments Off
In today’s AFR, John Quiggin laments government planning over technology and the unrealistic nature of its digital television push. He contrasts this to broadband which shows the problems of a lack of planning. Read more
Dec
21
Free Download TV
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Television | 2 Comments
The BBC announced today that they will be giving away old programs such as Doctor Who and Red Dwarf using the very same technology and programs responsible for illegal TV downloads.
What they are just giving away that TV programs they currently provide for free over the broadcast network? Well, that just … makes complete sense. How strange?
What would happen if other broadcasters followed suit and just gave away shows with ads embedded? Too much sense, I guess.
Dec
21
Christmas baby bump in the US
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Behavioural Econ, Economics | 2 Comments
The New York Times has a nice article today about the baby boom that occurs in the last week of December each year [HT: Greg Mankiw]. Read more
Dec
20
The Wonderful World of Andrew Odlyzko
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Broadband, Economics, Innovation | 1 Comment
Every so often you are researching some different topics and the same name crops up. That had happened to me this year, and the name was Andrew Odlyzko. Read more
Dec
20
Remembering Carl Sagan
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | Comments Off
Today, 20th December, is the 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan’s death. As a commemoration, a blogothon is being held calling on bloggers to record their thoughts. Here are mine. Read more
Dec
20
The Season for Deadweight Lossing
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | 2 Comments
In Slate, Joel Waldfogel writes more about his research into gift giving; namely, just how bad it is. Specifically, using large surveys, he has consistently demonstrated that a dollar spent own ourselves gives more satisfaction than the satisfaction that dollar would bestow if spent on another. Read more
Dec
19
Labor is planning some radical reforms to childcare if it wins the next election: Read more
Dec
19
Orson Scott Card on copyright
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under IP | 3 Comments
I just came across a very nice essay by science fiction writer Orson Scott Card on music copyright. It is from 2003 but it is still relevant. His point is that the artists aren’t getting the money and so that is no reason to extend copyright for the publishers. Card’s solution, limit copyright terms to 20 years when the owner is a corporation.
This is an interesting idea. Let’s think about what might happen for a moment. First of all, there would be a big disincentive for corporations to own copyright. This means that artists will have more power by virtue of their continued ownership and will be able to appropriate more profits when copyright material is put to new uses. The flip side of this is that it will be more difficult for artists to ‘cash out.’ But then again, why preserve copyright for their life if it wasn’t some sort of annuity? Hmm, this could work.
Dec
19
Not surprisingly, the publicity surrounding my report on broadband brought with it lots of contact with folks who are already putting local solutions into practice. Some of these were outlined in the government’s broadband blueprint. Read more
Dec
18
There was been lots of recent news around the Melbourne Business School in the past couple of weeks.
- MBS will host a conference on the RBA’s review of payment system regulations in 2007. I have blogged about these issues before and even appeared before Parliament on this stuff.
- Another issue of the Melbourne Review has appeared.
- The University of Melbourne has finally finished its review of management and business education and decided that the current state of affairs is worth continuing. So MBS will continue to run the MBA (as it should do) and the Faculty of Economics and Commerce will continue to run undergraduate programs. As for the rest, there will be a coordinated effort and buildings all round.
- And, apparently, I won an award for doing my job.
Dec
18
Big Conference Announcement
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Academia, Economics | Comments Off
On the 14th and 15th of March, the University of Melbourne is staging a conference in honour of Sir James Mirrlees (our Laureate professor) called the Information Economics Revolution. You can access information about the conference here. The conference is being organised by myself and Jeff Borland.
The guest speaker list is one of the finest ever assembled in Australia (in our opinion anyway). Including Mirrlees himself, the other keynote speakers are Bengt Holmstrom, Oliver Hart and Jean Tirole. But in addition, John Asker (NYU), Luis Garicano (LSE), Jon Levin (Stanford), Niko Matouschek (Northwestern), Steven Tadelis (Berkeley) and our own Catherine de Fontenay are all presenting. It promises to be a great couple of days. If you can be in Melbourne, the cost is only $110 (GST inc). (There is also some travel funding for PhD students available).
Dec
16
An environmentalist against Kyoto
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics, Environment | 3 Comments
Warwick McKibbin is a professor of economics at ANU. For years he has been against the Kyoto protocol; not because of its motives but because he was concerned that it locked governments into a process with improper incentives. (His website on these issues at www.notwrong.com). Peter Martin profiles him here.
Instead of Kyoto, McKibbin wants to outlaw carbon emissions from business entirely. Read more
Dec
16
Working with turkeys II
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics | 2 Comments
Hot off the heals of a study showing academics produce more when their colleagues produce more comes a similar effect in supermarkets. As Tim Harford writes: Read more
Dec
16
Childcare rewait
by Joshua Gans | Filed Under Economics, Politics | 1 Comment
The Australian government offers a 30 percent tax rebate on childcare expenditures. Suppose you sent your child to childcare on the 30th July 2004. All you have to do to receive your 30 percent is to earn money in 2004 and 2005 (I think), make sure that day was registered for another scheme that offered some money back on childcare, make sure your centre was registered for it, do your tax return for 2004-2005 but be careful not to think that that has anything to do with the rebate, wait one year (or so), do your tax return for 2005-2006 being careful to have stored your receipts and proof of registration (for the other government scheme) , send your tax return in with a claim for the rebate, have it sent back because in fact it is your spouses’ name on the registration (for the other government scheme), do your spouses tax return again, then wait and you receive a rebate (but not for everything) because it turns out that the registration for the other government scheme had some other issues that I will spare you. The good news is that in two years time when you claim for childcare in 2005-2006, you might know what to do unless someone changes something somewhere.
Somehow despite the glaring vote winning nature of this government scheme, the Labor opposition believes that they can win voters by giving the rebate on the spot without its current tight integration with our tax system and the 17 other rebates for childcare. This is clearly a political fallacy as it is difficult to imagine that they lost any votes when the government put in this scheme in the first place. Indeed, just leaving people to work out what the current scheme would be would surely be enough to win power.
Of course, a little more seriously, how about some big rationalisation that recognises that lots of rebates the government offers are family based and so (a) either they should come through providers; or (b) we should have options of family-based tax returns.