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An article criticizing undergraduate business majors and defending the liberal arts: now that’s more than I can resist. 

I kid you not: someone else has blogged about backing into parking spaces. Many comments on the blog cite safety concerns, but I’m not convinced that’s the real cause. Read and see for yourself.

As part of my daily commute to Arlington, I park in a garage at the Largo Metro Station.  According to the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority this garage has 2,200 parking spaces.

As I occupied one of the few remaining spaces this morning,  I noticed something strange; I was one of the only commuters who hadn’t backed into my space.  This confused me quite a bit, motivating me to consider my own rationale for not backing in.  Here’s what I concluded:

• It takes as long to back in as it does to back out, but I would rather spend the extra time in the evening.  This is partly because I am often running late in the morning, but even on days when I am not running late I prefer to back out rather than in.
• Backing in disrupts other commuters in the morning more than backing out disrupts them in the evening.  This is because the garage is much busier at 7:40 AM than it is at 6:00 PM.    

This is a classic economic problem in diguise: intertemporal substitution.  I prefer expending time in the second period rather than the first because it is less costly.  This cost comes from two sources: social disapproval and my own preferences.  I don’t want irritate already angry commuters, but I also like saving a few minutes in the morning.

So here’s the question: why am I the only one?  Does this result generalize to other parking garages?  Most importantly, why is my life so boring that writing about parking garages amuses me?  I don’t think anyone has an answer to that last one…

The market for PCs has been marked by increasing competition over the years, resulting in much lower prices for IBM clones than comparable Macintosh computers.  Apple’s introduction of the budget-priced Macbook line of laptops seems like a wise move to attract that segment of the demand curve unwilling to pay a premium for aesthetics.  This is why I find it so curious that Apple charges $150 extra for a black Macbook than for an identical white one.  My prediction is that this is more than the market will bear; look for the price difference to evaporate in the coming months.

I saw an amusing analogy for one of the most common arguments in favor of the minimum wage over at Cafe Hayek this morning:

The market prices of most used-cars are too low for sellers of those cars to support their families.  This fact is especially true for poor people, who, when they sell their old cars, almost always have only old, high-mileage, often dilapidated used-cars to sell.  These people aren’t selling two-year-old Lexuses or BMWs.  They’re selling 15-year-old Chevys and 20-year-old Hondas.  So let’s enact legislation mandating that no used-car can sell for less than, say, $25,000.  That way, anyone who sells a used-car is assured that he or she will earn at least enough money to support a family for a year.

I’d love for someone to introduce minimum used-car-price legislation in Congress; it wouldn’t get a single vote.

It seems that every day now the media uncover new evidence of corruption by our elected officials, making a new study  by economists Peter Leeson and Russel Sobel especially timely.  Their explanation: corruption can be blamed on the weather. Before you start screaming “spurious regression!” I should clarify; the researchers don’t assert that bad weather causes corruption, rather that it makes corruption easier. Who would have thought? An economist, that’s who.   

An interesting note from the intersection of Economics and Politics:

Today I emailed the World Bank to find out why their database lacked GDP figures for Taiwan.  A response promptly arrived: “see this website.”  It seems China will not allow the World Bank to keep GDP figures for Taiwan as this implies that Taiwan is an independent nation.  Funny they don’t object to GDP figures for Hong Kong.

A recent Gallup Poll suggests that Republicans may have some trouble hanging on the the majority this fall. Only 31% of those surveyed plan to vote for a Republican candidate in the coming elections versus 51% who plan to vote for a Democratic candidate

Sure, but what do the markets think? The online betting market Tradesports.com offers two contracts related to the 2006 elections, each paying $10 if the Republicans maintain control of the House or Senate respectively. The trading price is an indication of the probability traders ascribe to a Republican victory; if you were sure the Republicans would win, you’d be willing to pay up to $10 for such a contract.  Here are the latest results.  The upper graph gives House contract contract prices, the lower graph Senate contract prices.

Clearly traders are split over whether the Republicans will control the House, but putting their money on GOP dominance in the Senate.  Who’s right?  The experts at Gallup or unbridled capitalism?  It’s up the the voters to decide. 

A very interesting news item: http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2157860/aap-science-publishers-club 

Here’s my initial reaction (possibly ill-concieved).  Basic research is supposed to be a public good, hence government funding.  It seems strange, then, that the results of publicly-funded research should be made excludable by allowing journals to charge.

The publishers seem to think that this legislation reduces incentives for publication and peer review, but I can’t see how.  As far as I know, the author of an academic paper never recieves monetary compensation, and reviewers are only occasionally paid (typically a pittance).  The main incentive for publication is really to gain recognition in scholarly circles.

Of course publishers would lose quite a bit of revenue under this law and I think this is why they’re making such a fuss.  Here’s a solution: stop printing physical journals.  This would substatially reduce costs, and I can’t see why researchers would object to pdf-only journals.