Matt Nolan • Oct 15, 2013 •
At the moment, many of my friends are getting married. At the same time some of my other friends who are not married are telling me they don’t understand why people get married. While I am not married, I think the idea of marriage is grand. I think it is a great way of dealing […] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Aug 09, 2013 •
Netflix makes a lot of money from understanding your viewing preferences and one thing they’ve learned is that ratings don’t matter, only viewing behaviour is predictive: Why do I see Continue Reading → … Read More
Matt Nolan • Jul 17, 2013 •
I woke up this morning with a headache, and the only thing I could think about was Olympic athletes taking drugs. After all, why do we have such a problem Continue Reading → … Read More
James Zuccollo • Feb 18, 2013 •
Education, particularly at the tertiary level, is usually viewed as an investment by economists. It’s a voluntary cost that you pay to get skills and qualifications that will increase your future wealth and prosperity. That metaphor is reflected in the wealth of research into the ‘rate of return’ on university study and the discussions of [...] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jan 13, 2013 •
Why shop online? Avoid the embarrassment of mispronouncing foreign words or being viewed as a giant fattie! Nom nom nom nom… Abstract: We show that social interaction reduces the diversity of products purchased by consumers in two retail settings. First, we consider a field experiment conducted by Sweden’s monopoly alcohol retailer and find that moving [...] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jan 13, 2013 •
Interesting that movie downloads haven’t had a significant impact on video rentals. That will probably change as video streaming services like Netflix become more common. Abstract: The music industry has struggled during the past decade due to file sharing and movie business executives fear the same fate. This paper seeks to provide measurements of the [...] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jan 10, 2013 •
We’ve written a lot previously about cigarette taxes as a precommitment device that can increase welfare. However, while those models fit the stylised facts, it’s hard to know for sure if people are better off. For that you’d need to make a prediction about their increase in subjective wellbeing and test it. Now a couple [...] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Jan 09, 2013 •
Cory Doctorow has written a thoughtful and interesting article for the Guardian, which argues that pricing externalities will inhibit the creation of public value. …the infectious idea of internalising externalities turns its victims into grasping, would-be rentiers. You translate a document because you need it in two languages. I come along and use those translations [...] … Read More
James Zuccollo • Nov 28, 2012 •
Tim Harford points to a paper on the EMH showing that: …after an anomaly has been published, it quickly shrinks – although it does not disappear. The anomalies are most likely to persist when they apply to small, illiquid markets – as one might expect, because there it is harder to profit from the anomaly. [...] … Read More