Market Power

College Vs. High School

Here are 25 differences between college and high school.  My favorites (with comments in italics) include:

25. In high school, you do homework. In college, you study.

22. In college, the professors can tell you the answer without looking at the teacher's guide. (that's because we have lots of training in our fields)

17. In high school, you're told what classes to take. In college, you get to choose; that is, as long as the classes don't conflict and you have the prerequisites and the classes aren't closed and you've paid your tuition.  (which is one of the reasons why I prefer teaching college - another being that to a larger extent, students have more choice of where to go to college)

16. In high school, if you screw up you can usually sweet-talk your way out of it. In college, you're lucky to ever talk with the professor. 

14. In college, any test consists of a larger percentage of your grade than your high school final exams ever did.
 
13. In high school, when the teacher said, "Good morning," you mumbled back. In college, when the professor says, "Good morning," you write it down. (Damn straight)

11. In college, weekends start on Thursday. (and the good administrative folks at Minnesota State thought this only occurred here.)

3. In college, when you miss a class (or two or three), you don't need a note from your parents saying you were skip... uh, sick that day. (or that gramma died, or that your dad is taking the entire family to [insert place name here] on the day you are to take a final - and he's already bought the tickets]
 
2. In high school, you can't go out to lunch because it's not allowed. In college, you can't go out to lunch because you can't afford it.

If It's Bad, Ban It

From The New York Times:

Most people who pay attention to their diets know that partially hydrogenated oil contains trans fat that clogs the arteries and reduces the "good" cholesterol that helps unclog them. Beginning next year, companies must disclose trans-fat amounts on food labels. But it is already clear that the Food and Drug Administration is going to have to do more to protect the public from heart-threatening fats. ...

The ultimate aim, however, should be to end the widespread use of partially hydrogenated oils. As things now stand, the F.D.A. acknowledges that trans fats are unhealthy at any level, and yet maintains that the partially hydrogenated oils that contain them are basically safe. The agency can't have it both ways. Public health would be greatly improved if the F.D.A. prohibited their use.

Of course that's the all-too common answer/reaction to these sorts of products:  ban them!  Ban them, as if they have no benefits whatsoever to the user.  Ban them because we know doing so stops their use**.  It's never enough to make consumers aware of the problem.  Ban them because we the consumers are not smart enough to make our own decisions. ***

**Update 1.  Note the sarcasm
*** Update 2.  Kip Esquire chimes in here.  Thanks to John Palmer for this link.

MIT Survey

Some folks at MIT are undertaking a weblog survey.  If you have a few minutes, click on the image below to take the survey.  I looked at the survey results and, for the most part, I'm pretty typical.

List of Eminent Domain Takings

The Strata Sphere is keeping a list, for awhile at least, on some recent eminent domain takings.

HT to the Coyote Blog.

Choice Overload?

From lucky Western Illinois University's newest economics faculty member, Bill Polley, comes this:

Do consumers have too much choice?  Stacy Schiff seems to think so. (NY Times)

In taking cluster analysis and its classifications to the logical extreme, are we not building a superfinicky society? Five minutes in any Starbucks line will answer that one. We used to be one nation, undivided, under three networks, three car companies and two brands of toothpaste for all. Today we are the mass niche nation. This is a country in which 40 percent of the eligible population doesn't vote, but can be expected to maneuver its way through a sprawl of options every time it heads out for tooth twine. Increasingly the brick-and-mortar world resembles the virtual one: an infinite landscape of microscopic subcategories, in which one loses oneself, twice.

A friend in Seattle - I'll call him Mitch, because that is his name - reports a full-scale identity crisis in the toothpaste aisle. There he stood, two coupons in hand. Was he ready to become a rejuvenating-effects, tartar-protection kind of guy, or was he wed to the fight against tobacco stains? And to think it all used to boil down to squeezing from the bottom.

The transformative power is dizzying. The pressure is on; the paralysis sets in. It's like a torture session with a demonic optometrist. If A is better than B, and 2 is better than 3, is A better than 2? How to choose among tartar-control and whitening and breath-enhancing? And moreover - this is America - why should we have to? I want it all. Darwinistically speaking, shouldn't "whitening" have automatically ceded to "extra whitening" anyway?

I happen to think consumer choice is good.  In fact, I can't get enough.  Russ Roberts (Cafe Hayek) agrees in this NPR interview from back in March.

I've had discussions with people on this very thing, and it amazes me (although it shouldn't) how many think people have too many choices.  Of course, when pressed, they don't seem to think they *personally* have too many choices, it's just too bad that other people have to have so many choices.  It's always easier to spend other people's money.  I guess it's also easier to restrict other people's choices.

The fact that we have so many choices shows how efficient production processes have become.  Back in the day of Henry Ford, anybody could have a Model T in any color, as long as it was black.  Nowadays, we can get cars in multitudes of colors with multitudes of options.  So what if those options are where car dealers/companies make their profits?  I have a good idea of what my choices are and what prices I'll have to pay.  If I want to include a stereo installed at the factory along with a sun roof and heated seats and, in the process, lift the profits of the car dealer, so be it.  It's my choice and I am responsible for it.

Tonight I went to the store to get bread, and the store had dozens of different styles of breads from several different companies.  I didn't stew over the varieties.  Instead, I merely chose some 12 grain, some potato bread, and some whole wheat bread.

I like variety and choice.  With choice comes competition and with competition comes a higher standard of living, and the higher the better.  And via Coyote Blog, comes this from Radley Balko:

Critics of capitalism once predicted that free markets would wreak mass starvation, depletion of resources, pollution, and death.

They're now reduced to bitching about too many flavors of mustard.

We've won the debate.

Unfortunately, Bob Geldof doesn't know that the debate has been won yet.

New Blogger at The Sports Economist

Stefan Szymanski has joined the ranks of the bloggers over at The Sports Economist.  Stefan joins Skip Sauer (managing director), Rod Fort, Brian Goff, John Palmer, myself, and many, many thoughtful commenters in the discussion of the economics of sports.  Stefan's first post, here, is about a sport that has received little attention over at TSE, rugby.

Pondering Eminent Domain

The Coyote Blog has this post about the recent decision by the SCOTUS on eminent domain.  He concludes:

While Bush, sometimes rightly, gets bashed by the Left for trying to create a corporate state, it is in fact the left side of the Supreme Court that has struck the strongest blow now in that direction.  This decision in a stroke gives local authorities nearly unlimited ability to engage in Soviet-style planning of their local economy.

The nation is a combination of local economies.  Unless state governments enact laws to restrict local (ab)use of eminent domain (why would they do this?), then we'll simply have little more than a planned economy.  It won't be federally planned, but planned it will be.

Tornado Fatalities

Between 1985 and 2003, more deaths due to tornadoes occurred in mobile homes than in any other type of structure or place.  During this time, 40% of all tornado-related deaths occurred in mobile homes.

According to Census 2000, mobile homes made up only 7% of all occupied housing units in the US and the proportion of people who live in mobile homes was also around 7%.  Since most tornadoes occur in tornado alley, I looked for statistics on mobile homes in the states in tornado alley.  While a bit larger, the numbers do not differ that much from the nation.  For example, roughly 10% of Oklahoma's housing units are mobile homes and roughly 8% of Texas' housing units are mobile homes.  Kansas' proportion is less than 7%.

But in 2000, 68.3% of all deaths attributed to tornadoes occurred in mobile homes. 

The lesson that many already know but that these data underscore:  mobile homes are dangerous places to be in storms.

Tenure Track Jobs

After graduation from the University of Missouri, I joined the faculty as a non-tenure track assistant professor.  I also joined the staff of the Economic and Policy Analysis Research Center (EPARC) where I did, oddly, macroeconomic forecasting (I'm a micro guy who focused on theory in my dissertation research).  After 3.5 years, I left Mizzou for a tenure-track job at Minnesota State.

As a non tenure-track faculty, I was part of a growing number at Ol' Mizzou.

From 1995 to 2004, the number of tenured or tenure-track faculty dropped from 1,262 to 1,159. During the same time, nontenure-track faculty increased from 1,345 to 2,102.

Mardy Eimers, MU’s director of institutional research, shared the numbers at the MU Faculty Council meeting last week. Faculty at the meeting asked for more numbers, including the numbers of students and administrative staff during the same years.

The student population went from 22,175 in the fall semester of 1995 to 27,003 in the fall semester of 2004, Eimers said yesterday. About 2,000 students are part of the 2004 count because of a new way of counting since 1995 that includes students in nontraditional off-site and Web-based courses.

Two of my  graduate school buddies have joined faculty at large midwestern universities as non-tenure track faculty.  One in particular is not fond of doing research, but he loves to teach.  By and large, to keep his position he needs to be a good teacher.  But the problem for him is, for the sorts of classes that he teaches (Principles classes, mostly), they fill up regardless of who is teaching them.  So if the budgetary winds blow right or if a dean comes in who wants all professors to be tenure-track, he may find himself out of a job.  On the other hand, this can motivate him to continue to be an excellent teacher (which he is and will have no problem showing over the years).

No Injuries, Thankfully

I came off the DL tonight to play a full game.  Since I'm still not comfortable throwing (I broke my elbow in practice before the season began), I was the extra hitter.  I went 1 for 1 with two walks and a run scored and, most importantly, we won 10-8.  It was a windy night with the wind blowing from left to right, so the pitcher threw everything inside to me. 

Does he know that I'm not a big fan of hitting inside pitches at this moment?  Nah. 

Anyways, only 2 of the 9 pitches I saw were swingable.  One I took for a strike and one I nubbed off the end of the bat for a single.  On my walks, one ball hit me in the toe.  Another hit me in the ass. 

Most importantly, the only injury I suffered tonight was a scrape on my elbow for the half-assed slide I took into third.  On a ball hit to right center, I tagged up to go to third.  But the fielder threw a strike to the thirdbase man, who tagged me out.  I was so surprised the ball beat me (not because I'm fast.  Lord no.  The fielder was so deep that I had no inkling he'd throw it that far.  In my league, the best arms play left and left center, not right center).  Anyways, I slid late and tumbled over the bag.  I imagine it looked pretty funny, like an elephant rolling down a hill.  But the damned East German judge only gave me a 4.

Next week, when I run the bases, I'm wearing this for protection.