Everyday economics from the University of Puget Sound
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Conventional economic theories suggest that as supply and demand act in negative correlation with one another. The Giffen good defies these market forces, whereby an increase in the price of a good correlates with an increase in its consumption. The only problem is that this sort of economic behavior is rarely, if ever recorded however, University of Pennsylvania Economist, Dr. Robert Jensen, pointed out several conditions that would have to exist in order for Giffen behavior to occur in food. The first assumption is that households must be heavily impoverished, to the degree that they face regular concerns about where Continue reading Economic Food for Thought: Are we about to see the rise of Giffen goods?
Most people probably know this feeling: a movie makes hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, even though you did not like it; a painting sells for a record amount at auction, but you cannot tell much of a difference between it and its contemporaries; radio stations keep playing the same five songs even though there are plenty of others that are just as good (if not better); something becomes popular and you just don’t get it. It is easy to make this complicated, to assume that there must be something in the subtleties of the popular thing Continue reading The Cost of Making Judgements