I bought a crappy USB wireless adapter made by this rebate vampire at MicroCenter. Gigafast was offering a $25 rebate, obviously necessary to get anyone to buy the aforementioned crappy $35 USB wireless adapter since no one in their right mind would pay $35 for it, but $10, hmmm….. I do need one for my extra desktop…. so the cycle of rationalization began.
Had I known I would never receive my $25, had I known that Gigafast gets an F Rating from the Better Business Bureau, I likely would have spent a little extra on a quality component from a reputable manufacturer. However, I didn’t know these things at the time of my purchase. Gigafast, I believe, knows exactly what percentage of rebates it will honor. (Ed Foster claims the return rate for one rebate house was less than 30 percent.) This is a classic information inequality resulting in (1) a deadweight loss to society inflicted by this rebate regime in terms of wasted postage and administrative costs for all parties and (2) loss due to the opportunity costs of buying something for a certain (so we think) price, when, had we known the true price, we would have bought something else. This is a market inefficiency, and there are few things that I hate more than market inefficiencies.
Long story short, I e-mailed MicroCenter and relayed my complaint. They were very responsive and a manager offered to apply the amount of the rebate towards another purchase. Great customer service. I’ll shop there again. From Gigafast I heard nothing but a loud clanging silence.
great question. we’ll put it in the hopper. thanks for writing, sjd
It occurred to me that ‘the hopper’ could be a circular filing cabinet reserved for the rather obvious ideas contributed by intellectual pygmies like myself, but I prefer to think they’re debating the finer points of my suggestion right now at this very instant.
Yet another idea that I was just not quick enough to have first - Selling options on tickets (at face value) for sporting events that are likely to be sold at a heavy premium by scalpers.
I thought everybody kind of knew this already, but the best way to buy books is now officially used and online. Apparently the statistics are starting to reveal the extent of the evolution of book-buying as the NY Times notes in a recent article:
In barely a decade, online booksellers have grown to account for two-thirds of the market for general-interest used books, a trend that calls into question the future of brick-and-mortar stores devoted to used books, according to a study financed by the publishing industry and released yesterday.
The authors’ and publishers’ guilds have been throwing a fit about this trend, directing a special petulance toward Amazon.com for the devious act of allowing its users to purchase new and used books on the same page. Since I believe supply is supply and demand is demand, I find it fairly ludicrous to get upset about something like this. Perhaps the publishing industry should follow the lead of their MPAA brethren and join them in developing technology to thwart and alienate their customers, perhaps some form of IED that explodes the book if read more than once or a biometric security mechanism that allows only the retina of the authorized owner of the book to see the words on the page.
All in all, there are some very good economic reasons for the dodo-ization of the neighborhood used-book store. Most center around market efficiencies - vastly larger inventories online, greater incentives for bookowners to sell when they connect directly to buyers and cut out the middleman, lower search costs for buyers, shorter time for books to make it onto the secondary market - and all point to the used book store going the way of the travel agent.
So where to buy? The best of the best, in MHO - Amazon.com, click the ‘used and new link’ below the ‘Add to Shopping Cart’ button to see used book prices and descriptions, and the ‘Sell Yours Here’ button if you have one you’d like to get money in exchange for, also Alibris.com if you’re like me, have a wee bit of a book fetish and it matters if the books you buy are quarto, cloth-bound, with that cottony feel to the paper (pre-1940’s).
James Surowiecki has a great article in the New Yorker this week (does he ever not have a great article in the NY any given week, love that guy) on the state of Hollywood’s current identity crisis “Disk Averse.”
What’s becoming increasingly clear is that the people who buy DVDs are, for the most part, not the people who go to the movies on opening weekend. According to research from Fox Home Entertainment, DVD buyers tend to be older than your typical theatregoer. More of them are women, and most of them don’t see movies in theatres before buying them. Most important, the new DVD audience is so diverse that companies can target niche markets and still sell millions of disks. Because specialized markets are more predictable, the risk of failure is much lower, and so small-to-mid-budget movies can be very profitable indeed.
Sounds like a long-tail argument to me. If there was any fundamental change in business practice to emerge from the dot-bomb shenanigans, this is it. In the words of an Amazon employee, “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.”
So part of the movie industries problem is that each film is competing not only with its contemporaries but with all the great films that have come before it. Why would I want to see one ridiculous knock-off after another, when I can get the real deal on DVD for $9.97 and $8.98 respectively?
Hal Varian of the NY Times has written an excellent analysis on the effect of Amazon’s used-book sales on the general market for books.
While Amazon is best known for selling new products, an estimated 23 percent of its sales are from used goods, many of them secondhand books. Used bookstores have been around for centuries, but the Internet has allowed such markets to become larger and more efficient. And that has upset a number of publishers and authors.
The publishers and authors may be unduly upset, he points out, due to the countervailing effects of the used-book market
When used books are substituted for new ones, the seller faces competition from the secondhand market, reducing the price it can set for new books. But there’s another effect: the presence of a market for used books makes consumers more willing to buy new books, because they can easily dispose of them later.
Applying the authors’ estimate of the displaced sales effect to Amazon’s sales, it appears that only about 16 percent of the used book sales directly cannibalized new book sales, suggesting that Amazon’s used-book market added $63.2 million to its profits.
Apparently not everyonoe shares my enthusiasm about this article, judging by the dazed look I got from the co-worker I just accosted outside the bathroom. That may suggest either high boredom-elasticity among heterogeneous consumers of the article or a poor choice of venue.
Incidentally, the Times article links to an SSRN paper with empirical research. My spidey-sense is telling me that there’s been a bit of an about-face on the part of editors who some months ago would never allow an article to link to another source on a 3rd party’s website. Tech rags such as Wired have done that for a while, but it seems the Grey Lady has finally (and only recently) started wising up to the tao of the internet.
Oh and since we’re talking about books and this is a helluva long post any way, why not read my lonely little essay Hot Wet Book Love. I promise I’ll get around to writing another <fingerscrossed>one any day now</fingerscrossed>…
The New York Review of Books just published what is ostensibly a review of Thomas Friedman’s paean to globalization The World is Flat. It’s quite possibly the most bizarre bit of economic journalism I’ve come across, which doesn’t so much review Friedman’s book as use it as an excuse to revisit the ghost of Karl Marx. As far as I can tell, Gray asserts that Friedman was specifically inspired by Marxism but consistently gets most of it wrong, leaving us with statements like this:
The centrally planned economies that were constructed to embody Marx’s vision of communism have nearly all been swept away, and the mass political movements that Marxism once inspired are no more. Yet Marx’s view of globalization lives on, and nowhere more vigorously than in the writings of Thomas Friedman. Like Marx, Friedman believes that globalization is in the end compatible with only one economic system; and like Marx he believes that this system enables humanity to leave war, tyranny, and poverty behind.
followed by statements like this:
It is an irony of history that a view of the world falsified by the Communist collapse should have been adopted, in some of its most misleading aspects, by the victors in the cold war. Neoliberals, such as Friedman, have reproduced the weakest features of Marx’s thought—its consistent underestimation of nationalist and religious movements and its unidirectional view of history. They have failed to absorb Marx’s insights into the anarchic and self-destructive qualities of capitalism.
I’ve more to say about the piece, but frankly I’m dazzled by having to confront so many bizarre notions at once, as well as its many ambiguities and tautologies. We’ll see if some of the other blogging economists pick up the thread. In the meantime, read “The World is Round” for yourself. If nothing else, it will introduce you to the rather fascinating character that is John Gray.
James Suroweiki has a fantastic piece in this week’s New Yorker, “A Farewell to Alms” -
In 1985, when Bob Geldof organized the rock spectacular Live Aid to fight poverty in Africa, he kept things simple. “Give us your fucking money” was his famous (if apocryphal) command to an affluent Western audience—words that embodied Geldof’s conviction that charity alone could save Africa. He had no patience for complexity: we were rich, they were poor, let’s fix it. As he once said to a luckless official in the Sudan, after seeing a starving person, “I’m not interested in the bloody system! Why has he no food?”
Whatever Live Aid accomplished, it did not save Africa. Twenty years later, most of the continent is still mired in poverty. So when, earlier this month, Geldof put together Live 8, another rock spectacular, the utopian rhetoric was ditched. In its place was talk about the sort of stuff that Geldof once despised—debt-cancellation schemes and the need for “accountability and transparency” on the part of African governments—and, instead of fund-raising, a call for the leaders of the G-8 economies to step up their commitment to Africa. (In other words, don’t give us your fucking money; get interested in the bloody system.) Even after the G-8 leaders agreed to double aid to Africa, the prevailing mood was one of cautious optimism rather than euphoria.
As Suroweiki notes, American aid in Asia, particularly South Korea and Taiwan played a major role in revitalizing the economies of those countries. Not only have they emerged from third-world levels of poverty, but they have become productive trading partners and manufacturing hubs for high-tech enterprise. Foreign aid has had some stunning successes in recent years, not to mention the overwhelming effect of the Marshall plan on Germany and the restructuring of the Japanese economy after WWII.
One of the assignments for the St. Anthony’s team members who went to Mexico was to read Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty in order to guide our discussions of the role St. Anthony’s could play in the communities in which it is active.
There are a lot of wonderfully well-meaning people out there who give sacrificially to important causes, but there is a difference between charity and investing in community with the expectation of tangible improvements in quality of life and economic development. While many economists treat problems of economic development with the clinically detached interest of someone performing an autopsy, Sachs’ approach is that of a doctor (his wife is a pediatrician) underlining this approach by making a differential diagnosis for each country in which he works. If you’re interested in getting informed and involved in charitable activity in developing countries, this is a great place to start. A number of Sachs’ articles are available through Project Syndicate.
the amazingly appractive brunette in a rather short skirt reading Freakonomics while waiting for the bus on 2nd Ave between 56th and 57th…I went directly to Borders to pick up a copy so I might have something to initiate the conversation next time I see you…
However, if this is just Julia Bannon doing more sneaky-smart marketing I may have to disavow my professed faith in the honest to goodness of humanity.
I generally avoid posting on political matters, but I couldn’t resist this one. I dedicate this one to all the my Houston friends who have drunk the Republican Party kool-aid… the Cato Institute ’s latest Federal budget analysis, The Grand Old Spending Party
President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years. His 2006 budget doesn’t cut enough spending to change his place in history, either.
Total government spending grew by 33 percent during Bush’s first term. The federal budget as a share of the economy grew from 18.5 percent of GDP on Clinton’s last day in office to 20.3 percent by the end of Bush’s first term.
Yes, that’s right, the Steves are blogging. Some of the posts are initialled, some aren’t. I’m starting to think of the two Steve’s as a single organism, kind of Norman-Batesy Econojournalist (in a nice way, though) or perhaps a better analogy would be a symbiotic relationship such as the oxpecker and the hippopotamus (I’ll tactfully skirt the issue of who is which;-). It’s a very necessary relationship, I think. Levitt can certainly write well enough for an economist, as evidenced by his papers, but economists are evolutionarily inclined to be enamored of details the rest of us generally find inane (we rather prefer just to consume the stunning conclusions that inevitably result from giving those seemingly inane details a good working over). Journalists are think are the hermit crabs of this little ecology metaphor (I really should have paid more attention in biology) and need someone’s ideas to crawl into and inhabit for a while. What results is a beautiful synthesis of ideas and communication rarely achieved by either on their own. Did I mention you should buy Freakonomics? You should.
#1 Should I buy this book? Yes, yes you should. You should buy it this instant. Put down this blog (figuratively), get up and go to Amazon.com (again figuratively), and buy the book (literally). It pays back every penny, particularly if you’re unfamiliar with Levitt’s work. Truly a brilliant and original thinker in economics today.
#2 If I trust you and I buy the book, will I be disappointed? Hmmmm…. depends. A blurb from Malcolm Gladwell features prominently on the cover and much of the tone and structure of Freakonomics is clearly inspired by the success of Blink, which has crowned Gladwell the current king of long-form journalism and will no doubt inspire many imitators, some flattering, some not so much. Many people, however, have a problem with the fundamental proposition of such a book. Despite his name being listed first on the cover, Levitt seems less the author than the source material. (This is the only way I could reconcile the numerous flattering references as anything short of megalomania) Freakonomics is in many ways an extended version of the NY Times Magazine article. It’s journalism, in other words, so if you’re looking for the real meat on these bones with equations and everything head straight for the notes and check out the original papers, most of which are available online from NBER (nominal $$). That being said, it’s very good journalism, so if you find equations a bit scary or just not so much fun to read, then this is an extremely lucid and accessible snapshot of Levitt’s thinking to date. Let’s say you’ve already read some of Levitt’s papers, as I had; Freakonomics will be a lot of deja vu all over again. They’ve assumed you haven’t read them, and they’re probably right for 99.9% of you, and you 99.9 percenters will find a lot to think about in Freakonomics.
One thing that bugs me: and this may be my own conceit, but I find the term “freakonomics” really annoying. Every time I see it, I want to say, no, it’s just freaking economics, there’s no real break with tradition here. He’s just got more imagination than most. If anything, Levitt is a throwback to the days before the equations took over. Economists, when they’re good, tend to come up with really unusual ways of looking at a problem. Levitt is no different than Smith or Keynes or Ricardo in this respect.
Steven Levitt and Roland Fryer are quickly becoming my two favorite economists to read for pleasure, mostly due to their willingness to apply their considerable analytical talents to touchy social issues, a practice that invariably draws condemnation from the overly politically correct.
I first noticed Steven Levitt after reading a piece in the NY Times Magazine (which now requires a subscription to read) and Roland Fryer after reading “Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School.” on which he collaborated with Levitt. Both have posted a large number of papers on their faculty websites, (also available on everpresent NBER) and write well enough to make it well worth wading through the calculus and econospeak.
. It’s quite possibly the most bizarre bit of economic journalism I’ve come across, which doesn’t so much review Friedman’s book as use it as an excuse to revisit the ghost of Karl Marx. As far as I can tell, Gray asserts that Friedman was specifically inspired by Marxism but consistently gets most of it wrong, leaving us with statements like this:
in order to guide our discussions of the role St. Anthony’s could play in the communities in which it is active. 