Is Batman a good economist?

We all know Batman, the superhero alter-ego of Bruce Wayne. Mr Wayne is the heir to a huge fortune which he uses in his quest to catch the crooks of Gotham City. But could Bruce use a few economics lessons? Is he making best use of resources? Might he achieve more if he put his resources into other uses?Ask yourself these questions:

If you had vast (but limited) resources and plenty of time, how might you go about crime fighting? If you’re a good economist, you’d be looking to get the best possible return on those finite resources.

According to Ben Adams and Matt Crespi, estimates of the Wayne fortune vary, but we can safely put it in the neighbourhood of $5bn-$10bn. According to this estimate, the fortune would be substantially larger than all but one of the biggest criminal organisations in the world, much less the richest criminals. So why doesn’t Bruce just buy off the hoodlums?

Hmm. Was becoming Batman really the best way to fix Gotham City? It’s entirely possible that the benefit of providing Batman-related services to Gotham might be outweighed by the benefit that could be produced if he provided different services to Gotham.

This takes us to what economists refer to as opportunity cost. Being Batman is expensive. Might there be a better return on the investment elsewhere? I often get students to think about the Copenhagen Consensus, which asks how could we spend $75bn to make the world a better place? Shockingly enough, they didn’t come up with “vigilante justice”. Instead, they argued that the best way to spend money is in the area of childhood nutrition, particularly a focus on a particular bundle of micronutrients and medicines. They also recommend spending on malaria treatment, immunization for children, and deworming – estimating that for every $1 spent, you get nearly $35 in benefits.

So maybe that’s what Wayne should be doing – traveling the world and providing malaria treatments and immunizations to children everywhere. Admittedly, it’s probably harder to make a billion dollar movie about that, but hey, it’s probably a much better way to save a bunch of lives than anything involving a batarang.

Wayne spends years training himself to become a ninja, then spends millions and millions of dollars turning himself into The Bat Man. How else could he have spent that time, and could he have got a better return on that investment of his time? Read the funny article, which ponders the following points:

• Inefficiency: Batman has to spend a huge amount of time and resources concealing his identity and hiding from the police. And the police waste even more resources trying to catch the Bat Man. This means a lot of Wayne’s hours and dollars actually have a negative return on investment!
• There’s only one Batman. Even at top-speed, you can only be Batman for 12-16 hours a day. Perhaps more people should be employed. Batman can only be in once place at a time. He spends tens of millions on things like Batmobiles and Batjets and Batbikes and Batboats, but there’s really only one person who’s likely to be driving them. This means the utilization time for all of these vehicles is extremely low – for the most part, they sit idle.
• Training time: Bruce Wayne spends years learning to be a ninja, honing his martial arts prowess. We already know that Wayne is essentially a super-genius that can master almost any task – imagine if he split his time between a) growing his fortune (so he can do more good with it) and b) learning how to maximize the public good that his fortune can generate.
• Building business: Batman has to spend his time in the shadows – which doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for networking. Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, can leverage his vast wealth to get even MORE wealth helping fix whatever problem he sets his mind to.

Read the article and see if you can come up with better proposals for the way Bruce Wayne uses his resources to make Gotham a better place.