Random Articles

• When Do We Throw It All Away? First off, I’m all for minimizing landfills and maximixing the use of our resources. But, I’ve been thinking more and more about the economics of ‘recycling’ since listening to Mike Munger on EconTalk in July. Right at the start of the podcast, Munger asks, “I have something in my hand, I want you to guess, is it
• Why Buying Local, Frontier House, and the Trade Deficit are All Silly Russ Roberts’ EconTalk is consistently interesting and engaging podcast covering economics as a perspective and a practice. I spent the first half of this week listening to his hour long conversation with colleague Don Boudreaux on the economics of buying local for the sake of buying local. Boudreaux and Roberts expand on many of the same points
• You Expect What You Pay For Recently - a collegue recounted his experience selling a fully-capable product with a price less than half its competitors. “After the presentation, the customer turned to the sales representative and asked, ‘What’s wrong with it?’” This, more than 78 years after J. Walter Thompson’s research for Pond’s Cold Cream proved that price and quality are directly correlated
• They Probably Paid Off Their Student Loans Faster, Too “It turns out that most CEOs of major US companies did not attend Ivy League schools, but rather their local state university or a smaller, less-known college.” - Peter Klein
• Only Do “We are not good at knowing, we are not good at planning, we are not good at forecasting, we are only good at doing.” - Nassim Taleb, author The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable