TVHE

Via Dim Post there is an article from the Herald discussing competition in the illicit drug market.  The main point is:

Ecstasy dealers are competing “like Pepsi and Coke” to sell their drug

Now, after reading this statement my first reaction was “good!”

Why?  Well, if their is competition in the industry it will improve quality – ensuring that the current information problem in the market, that leads to a lower quality and possibly more damaging product, are being circumvented by the competitive process!

Of course, the article doesn’t take this tack.  It says something about blah blah blah, people are taking drugs, blah blah blah, drugs are bad, blah blah blah, talking about drugs is immoral, blah – I don’t know, I sort of got bored of the article once I realised it was talking a load of sh*t.

So, in conclusion, competition for the provision of drugs is good – long live sites where people can compare experiences and provide information for future potential drug takers, so that they are fully informed and can make a sensible decision.  Furthermore, long live competition in the industry – ensuring that we get a more efficient allocation of drugs in society.

Eric Crampton translates a NBR article on the introduction of compulsory cameras in taxis.  My favourite bit:

“In-vehicle cameras are widely supported among the industry as a way of preventing competition by new rivals, and while drivers can never be 100 percent safe, these measures will make a significant reduction to the risks competition that drivers face.”

I cannot understand how the government convinced itself this was good regulation – I suspect the industry told them that it would “look like” they were saving lives, a political win, and so they just went for it.  Fail.

That is what the title to this article is suggesting right?

My impression is that Telecoms rivals want two things to continue happening:

1. Telecom to be ineligible for broadband subsidies that they are getting from government,
2. Telecom to be regulated in a way that:  Reduces Telecom’s ability to increase downstream costs.  Likely increases Telecom’s marginal costs in retail markets.

As a result, is this really surprising?  By increasing the relative marginal costs of a competitor, you can improve your own profitability in the end.  I wouldn’t really trust Telecom’s competitors as an objective analyst of how telecommunication policy should take place in NZ

Via the Freakonomics blog comes the following picture:

Source.

At first glance this seems weird, they are charging different prices for the same thing!!!  However, as anyone with experience of vending machines and universities knows, these puppies provide a lot of service to students late at night.  In fact, it is typical for sections of the machine to sell out before nightfall.

As we know that the first people to the machine will pay the lower price, we can also say that once the cheap chips sell people will have to pay more.

Now, given that the local tuck shop will be closed by night time we know that the number of substitutes to the vending machine falls at night.  As a result, this pricing system ensures that the owner of the vending machine can charge more for the same chips at night time (assuming of course that the cheaper chips will sell out during the day time when substitutes are available) – when people value them more highly and are willing to pay more.

Excellent stuff.

Over at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Nick Rowe suggests that central banks should find something else to discuss instead of interest rates.  The analogy provided is that of oligopoly competition: namely how the Cournot-Nash and Bertrand games have exceedingly different outcomes, even though the only superficial difference is that one game involves choosing output and the other game involves choosing price.

However, in the same way I don’t believe the difference in these games is just the product of “framing”, I am not sure if the call to arms against using interest rates as a focal point is necessarily that compelling.

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The California Energy Commission, in all their wisdom, have decided that the best way to encourage energy conservation is through imposing compulsory energy efficiency standards on TVs – in other words they are banning what they deem to be ‘energy inefficient’ TVs. They are the first state in the US to implement such a measure.

The aim of the intervention is to reduce electricity demand and hence avoid the need to build new power plants to meet this demand. In this sense, the Commission perceive the building of power plants to be a negative externality, presumably as the cost of building is reflected in the per-unit price of electricity for all users.

I take issue with this ‘externality’. For example, if a lot of consumers suddenly started demanding ‘Thierry Henry is God’ t-shirts, such that the price increased, should I feel aggrieved that the action of others is affecting the price I must pay for such a worthy product? No, that is how the market works.

Putting aside my scepticism, let’s assumes that the externality is a genuine one. What might be a superior way of discouraging consumption?

Bans are a blunt tool. From an economic efficiency perspective, you should first try and use prices to incentivise behaviour. High demand for electricity is only ever a problem over relatively short periods. For example, in New Zealand the peaks occur on weekdays in the morning as people wake up and in the evenings as people go home. In hotter climates, the peak typically occurs at the hottest part of the day as air-con works its magic. Hence one might try to charge higher prices at times of high demand to discourage consumption (and hence avoid the need to invest in new power plants). There are electricity meters that are capable of facilitating such differentiated pricing and indeed they are being rolled out in California as we blog.

Under the differentiated pricing scenario, consumers are paying the ‘true’ cost of electricity, so even if they continue to consume at high levels, one should be indifferent to building a new power station as the externality has been internalised.

The obvious perverse incentive that arises from the ban is that consumers will simply purchase their televisions out of state, knowing that they can get a better range of TVs to better suit their individual needs at more cost-effective prices.

It is far more preferable to keep consumer choice open and simply make consumers fully pay for their choice through efficient pricing (assuming that an externality exists in the first instance).

According to Kiwibank, the other banks profit maximise:

Most banks are only interested in making as much money as possible out of their current customers, Kiwibank chief executive Sam Knowles says.

Now the actual stuff Sam Knowles says, for example the context of the above quote is really that Kiwibank is trying to build market share (since there is a significant transaction cost for consumers moving around the market) while the other banks are satisfied with their share, and so will be extracting surplus – in other words Kiwibank is keeping prices lower now to “invest” in the future.  Furthermore, I agree with him when he says:

New Zealand should work towards customers having a bank account “for life” and if they want to change banks “you can go and get it done” without any hassle,

As this would improve competition.

However, I just thought it was funny that the quote at the start of this post was the first paragraph in the article.  It is as if the newspaper thought there was something novel in the fact that banks act like everyone else.

Is someone trying to be ironic when they say that a new chain store that sells close to expired stock cheaply is a bad idea because it will “cause obesity”. Adolf at No Minister is right here when he says that these guys are doing the right thing, and that the critique on the grounds of obesity seems out of place (ht Kiwiblog).

If people want to eat enough and put on some weight that is their decision. After all WTF is an “obesity epidemic” – I didn’t realise people could gain weight just from looking at me after I’ve eaten

Say that there is an externality from obesity – well then we should try to solve that, not regulate the supply of food. No the idea of an externality may lead to a “fat tax“. Poor information for consumers might drive us to label foods in better ways. But there is no value to be gained from refusing to allow competition in supermarket sales.

Truly, these people that focus on obesity DO NOT CARE about the happiness of people – they only care about the fact that they don’t like obesity. It makes me sad

And if you try to defend these claims on a basis similar to “people don’t know what’s good for them” I suggest you just write down what you just thought and read it …

It seems that the debate about the fundamental “theory of the firm” is going on. Now there are issues with the theory of the firm, things that economists have been busy plugging away on for a long time now – but the critique that Steve Keen has put forward is not one of these issues. In this post I will attempt to discuss his push to change the Cournot model, which I don’t agree with. This will give us scope to discuss perfect competition another time.

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In a recent post, Paul Walker criticises the idea that “deadweight loss wouldn’t exist if we had a government monopoly”. He is right but in another idealistic sense the idea of no dead-weight loss is also correct right.

If the government acts as a monopoly we will still have dead weight loss, as it comes from the “loss of surplus” relative to the situation where “surplus” is as large as possible (given demand and the monopolies cost structure).

But if government blatantly sets price equal to the marginal cost of the last unit dead weight loss will melt away. This does not imply that profit is dead weight loss in any sense of the word, and it does not tell us that the solution will be “dynamically efficient” (where is the incentive to invest, to develop), but it does tell us that a government that is behaving this way could achieve the “perfectly competitive” price and quantity.

However, this is all 100 level stuff that I don’t particularly care about. My interest lies with the “debunking of microeconomics” that Steve tries to achieve on Paul Walker’s blog.

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