Virtual Economies Beget Virtual Economists, No?

The Freakonomics blog pointed out a good follow up to my last post, noting that EVE Online has decided to hire a full-time economist to give reports, analyses, and opinions about the state of their virtual economy.
The newly hired economist will publish reports quarterly on various economic indicators, inflation and price trends among them. [...]

Hedging Your Virtual Bets

Techdirt had an interesting piece a while ago, talking about the potential for online currency to replace real money in the event of a crisis.
It’s certainly an interesting thought. I mean, imagine if you could not only hedge your portfolio in real gold, but in virtual gold as well? Why even stop at currency? Why [...]

The Explanatory Power of Neoclassical Economics

Techdirt’s Mike Masnick recently posted an article about a group of economists who claim to be going up against the dominant economic school of thought. The post notes that when one looks closely, these economists, like many before them, aren’t really critiquing the theory of the heart of modern economics, the rational agent, but rather [...]

If Not Wal-Mart, Then Who?

Lately I’ve been turned on to David Bach’s The Automatic Millionaire. It’s not as gimmicky as it sounds, basically arguing that everyone should invest a small portion of their income automatically so people don’t have the option of losing our willpower and spending it. The implications for a young twenty-one year old like myself are [...]

iPod: Luxury or Commodity?

The Technology Liberation front recently posted an article discussing the economics of iPod Repairs. The article goes into a discussion of the logistics of Apple providing or not providing free support for old iPods, but what I find more interesting is the demand for iPod repair itself. I think it comes from a struggle in [...]

Leave it to the Government

Via Boing Boing, USA Today has written an article about how the metal used in nickels and pennies has become more valuable than the coins’ face values.

Soaring metals prices mean that the value of the
metal in pennies and nickels exceeds the face value of the coins. Based
on current metals prices, the value of the metal [...]

Some thoughts on the RIAA

Alright, I’ve been confused about this for a while now. If you read Techdirt or Ars for any length of time, you will invariably run across a story about iTunes, or DRM, or Microsoft’s upcoming Zune. But what will be mentioned in nearly all of these articles is how unhappy the record labels are [...]

Cost/Benefit: A Rolling Stones Article

I got an email from the organizers of a leadership retreat I’m going to this fall a few days ago. Among the suggested readings was a recently published story in Rolling Stone magazine. To summarize briefly, the article made me very angry and forced me to take a walk before I could think clearly about [...]

A Cheer for Comics and a Moan for America pt. 2

Now, I saw this at Duke during my last few days of the semester, before I’d started the blog. However, if it’s important enough for WIRED News, it’s important enough for me to glance over.
This comic book comes out of the Duke Law School, put together by three professors and named Bound by Law?: Tales [...]

Perfect Competition

Perfect competition requires five things according to answers.com:
1. All firms sell an identical product.
2. All firms are price-takers.
3. All firms have a relatively small market share.
4. Buyers know the nature of the product being sold and the prices
charged by each firm.
5. The industry is characterized by freedom of entry and exit.
Granted, it’s not really fair [...]