Sound Economics – Page 37 – Everyday economics from the University of Puget Sound

Brandless Part 2: Tasteless Or Ostentatious?

Posted on October 12, 2017 by Abigail Rawson — 2 Comments ↓

This week’s post will be about my review of the food I ordered from Brandless, along with my revised thoughts on this quirky online company. For context, my previous post about Brandless can be found here. My classmates and fellow writers on this blog helped clarify for me why this website gives us such an odd feeling, and what it says about the consumption behaviors of millennials today. But first, my review. Last Wednesday, I made an order on Brandless’s website. They offer a $3 shipping cost on your first order, compared to the regular $9 shipping. (Once I placed Continue reading Brandless Part 2: Tasteless Or Ostentatious?→

Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem: Can We Hit a Societal Bullseye?

Posted on October 11, 2017 by Max Coleman — No Comments ↓

Many students have expressed discontent with our current voting system, especially as it relates to the ideas of “choosing between two bad options” or “wasting your vote” on a third candidate. Many articles, bills, and petitions have called for electoral reform, along with celebrities such as Lady Gaga. In this article I will go over the economic idea of a social choice rule, or mechanism which describes how we can move from individual preferences to group preferences, or social preferences. For a primer on the economic idea of preferences, see last week’s post, Accounting for Taste: Ice Cream Preferences. One of the best articles Continue reading Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem: Can We Hit a Societal Bullseye?→

Demand Without a Brand: Online Grocery Store Eliminates “Brand-Tax”

Posted on October 5, 2017 by Abigail Rawson — No Comments ↓

You may have heard of Brandless, the e-commerce startup launched this year. The San Francisco-based company, founded by entrepreneurs Tina Sharkey and Ido Leffler, flaunts online groceries and essentials with an enticingly simple pricing model: everything is $3 or less. Why is it called Brandless? The inspiration for this online grocery store, Sharkey says, was the so-called “brand tax” (additional costs for shipping, warehouse space, etc.) on traditional consumer packaged goods (CPGs). In addition, Sharkey makes the claims that millennials don’t want to buy their parents’ brands and that there is an overwhelming variety of choices in grocery stores today. Continue reading Demand Without a Brand: Online Grocery Store Eliminates “Brand-Tax”→

Accounting for Taste: Ice Cream Preferences

Posted on October 4, 2017 by Max Coleman — 2 Comments ↓

As a social scientist, I would just like to come right out and acknowledge my bias. Between chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream, chocolate is my favorite, followed by vanilla, then strawberry.This article is intended to explain a fundamental concept in microeconomics, consumer preferences, using a sweet example. To model consumer behavior, economists look at how consumers make comparisons between goods. Briefly, some notes on notation. If I said, “I like chocolate better than vanilla ice cream,” it would be written as Chocolate ≻ Vanilla. (Note, ≻ is not the same as >, which is used for ordering preferences) If I Continue reading Accounting for Taste: Ice Cream Preferences→

Intellectual Property Laws in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Facilitating Monopolies or Catalyzing Innovation

Posted on October 2, 2017 by . — No Comments ↓

“Wherever the Art of Medicine is Loved, there is also a love of Humanity.” -Hippocrates Typical notions of healthcare and medicine are intrinsically linked to benevolence. After all, the modern Hippocratic Oath states that, “I will prevent disease whenever I can.” It seems strange then that the total nominal spending on medicine in the U.S. exceeds $450 billion annually while the global pharmaceutical market is predicted to reach an annual value of $1.12 trillion by 2022. This paradoxical relationship between medicine and profit-maximizing firms begs some interesting economic questions, specifically how the drive to maximize profits impact the consumer’s well-being. Continue reading Intellectual Property Laws in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Facilitating Monopolies or Catalyzing Innovation→

Tesla’s Battery Update: Price Differentiation Tactics Revealed

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Madeleine Elliott — No Comments ↓

In early September, 2017 the car manufacturer Tesla released an update that would extend the battery life of some models of its cars for customers in the hurricane Irma evacuation zone. According to a report by NBC News, the update would give owners of certain Tesla models the ability to drive an additional 30 to 40 miles without needing to charge. The aim of the upgrade was to help people escape the effect of the hurricane during a period when electricity and time for charging would be difficult to come by. Initially, this upgrade appears to be a great benefit Continue reading Tesla’s Battery Update: Price Differentiation Tactics Revealed→

Up to Date: Market Thickness in Dating

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Max Coleman — No Comments ↓

The motivation for this article came from a heterosexual, female friend saying, “Why are there no good guys here [at UPS]? All the good guys are either already dating someone or not interested in women!” One explanation for the seeming lack of “good” guys could be due to the general gender imbalance of higher education, and especially private institutions. Here at UPS, we’ve seen a similar trend. According to the Office of Institutional Research’s Common Data Set, we have seen our female-male ratio slide closer to 60-40 over the past few years. (This obviously fails to account for people not Continue reading Up to Date: Market Thickness in Dating→

Graham-Cassidy: Repeal and Replace but don’t Repair

Posted on September 25, 2017 by . — No Comments ↓

This summer’s post-ACA repeal attempt blues seem to be going away this week with the introduction of the GOP’s latest healthcare bill, the Graham-Cassidy Healthcare Bill. Introduced by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the bill’s purpose is to take a, “fundamentally different approach to healthcare than Obamacare. We are giving power over health care to the states, not DC” said Cassidy over twitter. In other words, the Republicans are taking one last jab at repeal-and-replace of the ACA but are thus far not seeing their efforts play out all that well. According to a poll produced by Continue reading Graham-Cassidy: Repeal and Replace but don’t Repair→

The Market for B-Movies

Posted on September 22, 2017 by Madeleine Elliott — No Comments ↓

Last summer marked the release of the fifth movie in the Sharknado franchise. The film series, which involves a cyclone that picks up vicious sharks and carries them around a terrified city, checks many of the classic B-movie boxes, including low budget, relatively unknown actors, outlandish plot, and special effects that require a high suspension of disbelief. Much of the publicity that surrounded the release of the first Sharknado movie was negative, and it continues to be negative. As of September 2017, the movie holds an unfavorable rating of 3.3 out of 10 on IMDb. How, then, are there five Continue reading The Market for B-Movies→