Pop the balloons.
p.s., I ran Spybot Search & Destroy after having visited this site and found nothing, so it’s probably ok.
Pop the balloons.
p.s., I ran Spybot Search & Destroy after having visited this site and found nothing, so it’s probably ok.
Phil Miller, at Market Power, notes that many people in Boulder, Colorado, skipped worked to watch the CU bowl game. He speculates about whether this lost output is included as a cost in the tabulation of the economic impact of bowl games.
Let’s see….. if we apply this to the NHL lockout, does this mean there will be more output in Canada this year as fewer people miss work, especially during the playoffs? If so, It would primarily come from those on the night shift.
My earlier posting about the 17-cents per bag tax on plastic grocery bags being considered in San Francisco sparked some interest on other blogs.
Bill Sjostrom, of the Atlantic Blog, wrote:
Ireland introduced a 15 cent (currently about 20 cents US) tax on plastic shopping bags in 2002. I do not know what happened to landfill, but the effect on litter was remarkable. Frank Convery and Simon McDonnell of the Department of Environmental Studies at University College Dublin claim, on the basis of a survey of unidentified retailers, that plastic bag use dropped between 89% and 99%. On the basis of the casual evidence of being the family shopper, I almost never see anyone taking bags; they almost always bring their own.
which was what I did not say nearly so well in my initial posting — the price elasticity of demand for plastic grocery bags is so high that a 17-cents per bag tax might very well reduce their sale so much that it would likely become inefficiently low.
He also pointed out that when people bring their own bags to a grocery store, shop-lifting increases. Damn, isn’t it interesting how “people respond to incentives”?
At SCSU Scholars, King Banaian wrote
We have a per bag fee for putting out garbage in St. Cloud; a green, labeled Hefty costs $2 each. This has encouraged a great deal of recycling, and more than a little searching by some for dumpsters at apartment buildings and businesses. A couple of grocery stores which have you bag your own groceries sell tote boxes; these are not very popular items as best I can tell.
We also have “Pay As You Throw” garbage collection here in Clinton, Ontario, a town of 3200 people. Furthermore it is absolutely and totally private, and, as a result, there are two different companies offering garbage collection on different days of the week. As I wrote in an editorial for the National Post back in May, 2001, the system is terrific.
Since I wrote that article, the “tipping fee” at the local landfill has increased, and so our garbage fees have increased to $2/bag. Also, as I predicted then, one of the three companies initially serving the town no longer does; but it is profitably serving other towns nearby, and so it can enter quickly, should the existing duopoly collude to raise prices.
My earlier posting about the 17-cents per bag tax on plastic grocery bags being considered in San Francisco sparked some interest on other blogs.
Bill Sjostrom, of the Atlantic Blog, wrote:
Ireland introduced a 15 cent (currently about 20 cents US) tax on plastic shopping bags in 2002. I do not know what happened to landfill, but the effect on litter was remarkable. Frank Convery and Simon McDonnell of the Department of Environmental Studies at University College Dublin claim, on the basis of a survey of unidentified retailers, that plastic bag use dropped between 89% and 99%. On the basis of the casual evidence of being the family shopper, I almost never see anyone taking bags; they almost always bring their own.
which was what I did not say nearly so well in my initial posting — the price elasticity of demand for plastic grocery bags is so high that a 17-cents per bag tax might very well reduce their sale so much that it would likely become inefficiently low.
He also pointed out that when people bring their own bags to a grocery store, shop-lifting increases. Damn, isn’t it interesting how “people respond to incentives”?
At SCSU Scholars, King Banaian wrote
We have a per bag fee for putting out garbage in St. Cloud; a green, labeled Hefty costs $2 each. This has encouraged a great deal of recycling, and more than a little searching by some for dumpsters at apartment buildings and businesses. A couple of grocery stores which have you bag your own groceries sell tote boxes; these are not very popular items as best I can tell.
We also have “Pay As You Throw” garbage collection here in Clinton, Ontario, a town of 3200 people. Furthermore it is absolutely and totally private, and, as a result, there are two different companies offering garbage collection on different days of the week. As I wrote in an editorial for the National Post back in May, 2001, the system is terrific.
Since I wrote that article, the “tipping fee” at the local landfill has increased, and so our garbage fees have increased to $2/bag. Also, as I predicted then, one of the three companies initially serving the town no longer does; but it is profitably serving other towns nearby, and so it can enter quickly, should the existing duopoly collude to raise prices.
My earlier posting about the 17-cents per bag tax on plastic grocery bags being considered in San Francisco sparked some interest on other blogs.
Bill Sjostrom, of the Atlantic Blog, wrote:
Ireland introduced a 15 cent (currently about 20 cents US) tax on plastic shopping bags in 2002. I do not know what happened to landfill, but the effect on litter was remarkable. Frank Convery and Simon McDonnell of the Department of Environmental Studies at University College Dublin claim, on the basis of a survey of unidentified retailers, that plastic bag use dropped between 89% and 99%. On the basis of the casual evidence of being the family shopper, I almost never see anyone taking bags; they almost always bring their own.
which was what I did not say nearly so well in my initial posting — the price elasticity of demand for plastic grocery bags is so high that a 17-cents per bag tax might very well reduce their sale so much that it would likely become inefficiently low.
He also pointed out that when people bring their own bags to a grocery store, shop-lifting increases. Damn, isn’t it interesting how “people respond to incentives”?
At SCSU Scholars, King Banaian wrote
We have a per bag fee for putting out garbage in St. Cloud; a green, labeled Hefty costs $2 each. This has encouraged a great deal of recycling, and more than a little searching by some for dumpsters at apartment buildings and businesses. A couple of grocery stores which have you bag your own groceries sell tote boxes; these are not very popular items as best I can tell.
We also have “Pay As You Throw” garbage collection here in Clinton, Ontario, a town of 3200 people. Furthermore it is absolutely and totally private, and, as a result, there are two different companies offering garbage collection on different days of the week. As I wrote in an editorial for the National Post back in May, 2001, the system is terrific.
Since I wrote that article, the “tipping fee” at the local landfill has increased, and so our garbage fees have increased to $2/bag. Also, as I predicted then, one of the three companies initially serving the town no longer does; but it is profitably serving other towns nearby, and so it can enter quickly, should the existing duopoly collude to raise prices.
In hindsight, I can’t imagine that the lack of a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean would pass the Hand Test (also called “the calculus of negligence“). If it wouldn’t, then who is the least cost bearer of this risk? And if bureacrats with some gubmnts wouldn’t foot the bill for the system, who, then, becomes the least-cost insurer?
According to this study, there is a positive correlation between the size of the dimple in the bottom of a bottle of wine and the price of the wine [link via Newmark's Door]. What this means is that when someone brings a bottle of wine as a gift, I can roughly estimate how much they spent for the wine, depending on how deep the dimple is, as if I care [note: my tastes in wine run to the screw-top variety, as indicated by my work with the Philistine Liberation Organization].
If others catch on to this scheme, then surely a market will develop for plonk with a big-dimpled bottle as a false signal, and this wine will temporarily become the wine of gifting. But that will happen only for awhile, for surely most recipients will not take long to discover the true quality of the wine.
Meanwhile, check it out at tonight’s parties!
According to this study, there is a positive correlation between the size of the dimple in the bottom of a bottle of wine and the price of the wine [link via Newmark's Door]. What this means is that when someone brings a bottle of wine as a gift, I can roughly estimate how much they spent for the wine, depending on how deep the dimple is, as if I care [note: my tastes in wine run to the screw-top variety, as indicated by my work with the Philistine Liberation Organization].
If others catch on to this scheme, then surely a market will develop for plonk with a big-dimpled bottle as a false signal, and this wine will temporarily become the wine of gifting. But that will happen only for awhile, for surely most recipients will not take long to discover the true quality of the wine.
Meanwhile, check it out at tonight’s parties!
According to this study, there is a positive correlation between the size of the dimple in the bottom of a bottle of wine and the price of the wine [link via Newmark's Door]. What this means is that when someone brings a bottle of wine as a gift, I can roughly estimate how much they spent for the wine, depending on how deep the dimple is, as if I care [note: my tastes in wine run to the screw-top variety, as indicated by my work with the Philistine Liberation Organization].
If others catch on to this scheme, then surely a market will develop for plonk with a big-dimpled bottle as a false signal, and this wine will temporarily become the wine of gifting. But that will happen only for awhile, for surely most recipients will not take long to discover the true quality of the wine.
Meanwhile, check it out at tonight’s parties!
We have a classic inference problem. Suppose the null hypothesis is that the earthquake has generated a dangerous tsunami. The government still does not know what its magnitude will be. The beachgoers have no idea how accurate the government’s projection is, if one is issued. If you reject the null hypothesis, and it is true, a Type I error, do you drown, or do you see three brief increases in the local surf? Would your answer be any different if your beach front had a history of tsunamis? Under what circumstances would you make additional investments in tsunami warning systems? And people say statistics is dry. I commend this primer on the various sorts of errors in inference researchers may be subject to.
Last month I posted on Type I vs. Type II errors, with reference to punitive damages. Now Stephen Karlson at Cold Springs Shops has an excellent piece relating those concepts to tsunami warning systems (and implicitly to the strength of one’s Bayesian priors):
And don’t forget to give to some relief programme.
