Category Archives: Economic Analysis

Book Review: Weapons of Math Destruction

Posted on June 4, 2017 by

Epistemic Status: Minus One Million Points Shortness Status: Long (this is a proposed new norm I want to try out, in the sense of ‘apologies for writing a long letter, I did not have enough time to write a shorter … Continue reading →

Posted in Death by Metrics, Economic Analysis, Personal Experience, Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

Short Termism

Posted on March 4, 2017 by

Epistemic Status: Metrics look good Original Post: Larry Summers: Case Still Out On Whether Short-Termism is a Problem There is a long-standing hypothesis that corporate America focuses too much on short-term results. Larry Summers looks at a new study by McKinsey (McKinsey’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Death by Metrics, Economic Analysis | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Self Service Roundup

Posted on June 11, 2015 by

Follow-up to: Full Service Before moving on to other topics, I thought I would round out my thoughts on self/full service itself (for some good follow-up on the drugstores, see the comments of the previous post) about the History of Self-Service, … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Analysis, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

What If It Rains?

Posted on May 29, 2015 by

Follow Up To: Full Service Gas stations in New Jersey do not have awnings to protect customers from the rain. Let us presume for the moment that due to some combination of inertia, regulations and initial costs, it is not … Continue reading →

Posted in Death by Metrics, Economic Analysis, Impractical Optimization | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Full Service

Posted on May 24, 2015 by

New Jersey has a law that says that you are not allowed to pump your own gas. They have had this law for 70 years. This is, of course, absurd. But if it is so absurd, why do 63 percent … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Analysis | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

TPP is about as good as it is supposed to be

Posted on May 19, 2015 by

Tyler Cohen stakes out quite a sensible position on whether or not we should approve the trade deal called TPP: What would convince me to oppose TPP if is somebody did a study showing the following: when you use a … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Analysis | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Private Firm vs. Public Firm Earnings

Posted on May 5, 2015 by

Robin Hanson asks: Interesting that private firms have 67% of employees yet only 20% of profits. Is this mostly because owners take “profits” off the books to avoid taxes, or because owners attend more to growing firm value than to … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic Analysis, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments