Information Failure
The external costs of food waste
Over 4 million apples and over a million and a half bananas are thrown away in Britain every day. This video from Newsnight is excellent on the external costs of the food we throw away - estimated by some to be worth around £8 billion a year. Should we actively encourage food scavengers? What are the strategies we should be adopting to reduce the amount of food thrown away? This is a good topic to use to teach evaluation skills for AS microeconomics.
Information Failure: Solariums
I dont usually listen to Women’s Hour, but during a lazy morning just before the start of our summer term, I latched onto a really interesting discussion about the dangers inherent in using sun beds and other solarium machines - not least from younger people whose skin is not yet mature enough to cope with intensive sun-showering. I was alerted to this issue last week with this article on the BBC news website about a 13-year-old boy who suffered severe burn blisters to his face after visiting a tanning salon three times in just one day. We can expect teenagers not to understand fully the dangers of AV tanning treatments but the problem is more widespread than that. Indeed, earlier on this month, Cancer Research released a report warning of the risks - this BBC news video might be a good resource to use if you are teaching the topic of information failure in a market. Should the industry be left to regulate itself or is there a case for government intervention e.g. enforcing a minimum age of 18 or 21 for using sun bed machines? The discussion might be broadened into looking at why people are willing to pay for such services and the availability of substitutes.
Learning Lessons from: Dan Ariely
On Monday Dan Ariely gave an engaging lecture at the LSE on behavioural decision theory. Here was a branch of economics which borrowed aspects of neural psychology in order to investigate the reasons for human behaviour. Geoff already gave a detailed summary of the event here but I’d like to highlight and discuss some of the most interesting points Dan put forward. This entry might be more of an intermittent running commentary, and it would be extremely helpful if you listen to the podcast first, here.
read more...»Depreciating lemons and peaches
The prices of used cars are falling faster than ever before.
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