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Category Archives: Economics
Standing Rock Map
Does the standoff over the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline falsify the Coase Theorem? In any case, we think Ronald Coase’s analysis of property rights on page 25 of his contrarian but essentially correct 1959 FCC paper might be relevant to … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Economics, Law
2 Comments
Negative tipping?
What’s up, doc? As you may be aware of, a growing number of establishments are beginning to flat out ban the practice of tipping. But what if, instead of abolishing tipping, patrons had the option ex ante of giving a “negative tip.” In … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Economics, Game Theory
2 Comments
Pari-mutuel sports betting
State anti-gambling laws pose an existential threat to the business models of sports betting companies like FanDuel and DraftKings. (See, for example, pages 26-33 of this treatise by law professor Marc Edelman.) But what if you were to bet on … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Probability, Sports
2 Comments
Trump against the world
In our previous post, we mentioned that a small number of scholars (about 150 intellectuals at last count) have openly declared their support for Donald Trump. According to their public statement, the 150 are voting for Trump for the following reasons: … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Deception, Economics, Law, Politics
2 Comments
Presidential Meta-Poll (updated)
1. Will the results of this year’s presidential election confirm or disprove the median voter theorem? 2. Further questions: (a) How do we determine who the “median voter” is in the real world, and along which policy dimension do we … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Economics, Mathematics, Politics
6 Comments
Is price-gouging immoral?
Gregory Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard, wrote this ringing economic defense of ticket scalping and price-gouging generally. In his essay, Prof Mankiw revisits the laws of supply and demand from his Econ 101 course to explain why he was more than happy to … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Law, Philosophy
4 Comments
Why doesn’t Starbucks recycle?
Shout out to Elizabeth Drivas, a student in my undergraduate business law class at the University of Central Florida, who posed this provocative question to me during office hours on 21 October. In other words, when a successful firm like Starbucks touts its commitment to … Continue reading
Legal probabilities
In this post, we build on the work of Dixit & McAdams (see our previous two posts) in order to create a general bargaining model of civil litigation. Let’s consider a civil case for our model. Specifically, let’s assume the case has … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Game Theory, Law
2 Comments
prior probability 