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In a recent video Gulnara gave us some background of haggling in the former Soviet Union, and we tried to understand some of the way we could evaluate whether it is “good or bad” beyond the standard “haggling allows for optimal price discovery” vs “haggling adds transaction costs to trading”. The video can be found […]
In a recent video we’ve chatted about why cold and flu medication may be cheaper in winter than in summer – something that may seem a bit counter-intuitive. This was an issue discussed back in 2008 here and here. For those who aren’t keen on listening to videos, I’ve popped the transcript just below 😉
Last time I discussed how the cash rate influenced the interest rate. But what happens when the cash rate goes negative? This is the focus of today’s post. After recent discussions about “negative interest rates” across Australasia I thought it would be useful to talk about how these rates appear mechanically at a high level […]
In this post I am going to talk about price rigidities/stickiness. What do economists mean about price rigidities and how do we test them? On the face of it this sounds pretty simple – if prices change often then there doesn’t seem to be much scope for them to be sticky. But when we think […]
I have been hearing anecdotes from my friends in Europe that prices in supermarkets have increased since the last couple of months. Interested I had a look online and found a number of articles outlining this around the world. According to the media, NZ shoppers have faced this as well. “Some customers have taken to […]
Toilet paper has been running out all around the world, with Australian’s genuinely fighting over it in supermarkets – and there has been a big show about it in the news. This leads to some interesting thought experiments such as: And yet, here I am in a big Wellington supermarket. It has: lots of toilet […]