The Pricing of Corn

It is sweet corn season, and we buy and eat a lot of it this time of year. During the past week, we have bought corn at several different stores and considered it at several different roadside stands. Here are the prices we observed:

• Major grocery store: $1.99/dozen
• Small-town grocery store (affiliated with the same chain as the Major grocery store): $1.99/dozen
• Small-town grocery store a different one: $3.49
• Farmers’ Market a farmer near the back with no tables: $4/dozen
• Farmers’ Market a nicely laid out stand at the entrance: $5/dozen
• Roadside stand: $5/dozen
• A Different Roadside Stand: $5/dozen.

My reaction to the roadside stand prices was “Huh?” Is the corn at roadside stands really worth that much more? Well, of course it is if people are willing to pay that much more.



But why do people pay $5 at the roadside for what they can buy for $2 at a major store?

• Is roadside corn fresher than grocery store corn? Maybe, but the corn at the grocery store seems mighty fresh, and just how often is the corn at roadside stands picked and then transported to the stand? once a day? if so, that corn is probably not much, if any, fresher than grocery store corn.
• And does an extra 12 hours of freshness matter with sweet corn? Not so far as I can tell. In fact, when we buy a dozen ears of corn, we don’t eat them all that day or evening. We often save some for a day or even two, and they still taste just as good as the ones that we ate on the day we bought them.
• Is roadside corn more costly to produce? So what if it is? If there is little to no difference in quality, then why do people pay such a hefty premium for it, even if it is more costly to produce. And isn’t the usual argument that roadside produce is cheaper because of the cost savings from avoiding all the intermediaries? If so, why are the roadside prices higher? Let’s hear for the efficiency and cost savings provided by intermediaries!
• Do people pay more just to support local farmers? I expect some do. But given the corn lobby’s influence on corn subsidies and inefficient ethanol production, I certainly have no desire to give them any charity.
• or, and this seems most likely, do tourists and cottagers in this area not know that fresh corn is readily available in local grocery stores for a much lower price; or, having stopped and picked out some corn, do they just go ahead and pay the price despite feeling uneasy or unhappy about its high price? [not me; I told the person it was too high and left].

Global Warming, Opportunity Costs, and Broken Windows

I am skeptical about the various concerns many people have about global warming. But suppose they are right. Even if they are, devoting scarce resources to fight global warming is not win-win, as Hilary Clinton has recently argued: to create jobs in industries that spring up to help fight global warming is to attract those scarce resources away from some other use. That is a cost to society, not a benefit! Those employees, those machines, supplies, and buildings, all have some alternative use. And by attracting them to the fight against global warming, we must give up the alternative use — a forgone opportunity, an opportunity cost.



From James Pethokoukis:

“This issue of energy and global warming has the promise of creating millions of new jobs in America. It can be a win-win, if we do it right.”—Sen. Hillary Clinton, at last night’s Democratic debate in South Carolina



And with that, Clinton seemingly stumbled into the classic economic trap known as the Broken Window Fallacy. As described by the French economist Fredric Bastiat, the fallacy imagines some punk kid chucking a rock through a store window. A bad thing, right? Yet a contrarian onlooker offers that the troublemaker may have actually helped the economy because now the storeowner will have to hire a glazier, who will make money replacing the window. Then the glazier will use that money to buy bread from a baker, who then might buy shoes from a cobbler. And the “multiplier effect” goes on and on, creating a more prosperous economy.



But Bastiat points out that such reasoning ignores the hidden costs to the shopkeeper, who was forced to spend money on windows instead of something else that may have had higher value to him or society, like a new suit or investing in a start-up tech firm.

Yet another reason policy makers need to learn more about the “natural unemployment rate” (even with its failings) and stop talking about “job creation”.

Global Warming Causes Wetter and Dryer Summers…in the same locations!

As I have written often, I am skeptical about the concerns over global warming. Here is one reason: the predictions of the climate models have spectacularly wide confidence intervals and even lead to wildly different conclusions. From Melanie Phillips:

… [G]lobal warming is a truly miraculous theory. It means that, without a shadow of a doubt, we will have dry summers and wet winters, and wet summers and er, well, wet winters. As Dr Stott says:

‘In the UK wetter winters are expected which will lead to more extreme rainfall, whereas summers are expected to get drier. However, it is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying.’ (my emphasis [M.P.])

As it gets dryer, it will get wetter. Truly, this global warming theory has some extraordinary properties.



Bewildered? Wake up at the back there —haven’t you got it straight yet? We’re going to be frying and freezing, drowning and dehydrating at the very same time. And carbon emissions will be to blame for the planet getting hotter and getting colder, getting wetter and getting dryer. Because global warming means that whatever happens to the weather, wet dry, hot, cold— it’s all our own fault.



Those who still nurture an old-fashioned regard for facts as opposed to tendentious and indeed ridiculous hypothesis might like to bear in mind that these torrential downpours are not unprecedented in Britain at all. Indeed, we have had worse in the past. As Michael Hanlon reports in the Daily Mail:

On May 29, 1912, nearly five inches of rain fell in three hours near the town of Louth in Lincolnshire. The flood-water practically razed the town and killed 22 people. Even more spectacular was the deluge that occurred three months later in Norfolk: Brundall, near Norwich, experienced more than eight inches of rain on one hellish August day — roughly double the total measured anywhere in the recent floods. Much of Norfolk was still under water six months later.

And on August 15 that year, a depression moving up the Bristol Channel deposited nine inches of rain over Exmoor, spawning the lethal flood that was nearly to wash away the village of Lynmouth. More than 30 people were killed. The record for rainfall in one 24-hour period occurred on July 18, 1955, when nearly 12 inches of rain fell on parts of Dorset. So there is certainly nothing unprecedented about these floods, and similar deluges occurred long before we worried about global warming.

But then global warming theory represents the ultimate triumph of hypothesis over experience, as the latest distinguished scientist in the Canadian Financial Post’s series of climate change sceptics recently made clear. Tom V. Segalstad, head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says the whole theory is nonsense.

Why does he say it is nonsense? Because it relies on a crucial assumption that the CO2 being produced will hang around in the atmosphere for 50 years or more rather than be absorbed by the oceans, whereas all the evidence to date suggests that C02, on average, stays in the atmosphere for no more than 5-10 years.

Amazingly, the hypothetical results from climate models have trumped the real world measurements of carbon dioxide’s longevity in the atmosphere. Those who claim that CO2 lasts decades or centuries have no such measurements or other physical evidence to support their claims. Neither can they demonstrate that the various forms of measurement are erroneous. ‘They don’t even try,’ says Prof. Segalstad. ‘They simply dismiss evidence that is, for all intents and purposes, irrefutable. Instead, they substitute their faith, constructing a kind of science fiction or fantasy world in the process.’



In the real world, as measurable by science, CO2 in the atmosphere and in the ocean reach a stable balance when the oceans contain 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. ‘The IPCC postulates an atmospheric doubling of CO2, meaning that the oceans would need to receive 50 times more CO2 to obtain chemical equilibrium,’ explains Prof. Segalstad. ‘This total of 51 times the present amount of carbon in atmospheric CO2 exceeds the known reserves of fossil carbon– it represents more carbon than exists in all the coal, gas, and oil that we can exploit anywhere in the world.’

Global warming: religion, not science.

Global Warming Causes Wetter and Dryer Summers…in the same locations!

As I have written often, I am skeptical about the concerns over global warming. Here is one reason: the predictions of the climate models have spectacularly wide confidence intervals and even lead to wildly different conclusions. From Melanie Phillips:

… [G]lobal warming is a truly miraculous theory. It means that, without a shadow of a doubt, we will have dry summers and wet winters, and wet summers and er, well, wet winters. As Dr Stott says:

‘In the UK wetter winters are expected which will lead to more extreme rainfall, whereas summers are expected to get drier. However, it is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying.’ (my emphasis [M.P.])

As it gets dryer, it will get wetter. Truly, this global warming theory has some extraordinary properties.



Bewildered? Wake up at the back there —haven’t you got it straight yet? We’re going to be frying and freezing, drowning and dehydrating at the very same time. And carbon emissions will be to blame for the planet getting hotter and getting colder, getting wetter and getting dryer. Because global warming means that whatever happens to the weather, wet dry, hot, cold— it’s all our own fault.



Those who still nurture an old-fashioned regard for facts as opposed to tendentious and indeed ridiculous hypothesis might like to bear in mind that these torrential downpours are not unprecedented in Britain at all. Indeed, we have had worse in the past. As Michael Hanlon reports in the Daily Mail:

On May 29, 1912, nearly five inches of rain fell in three hours near the town of Louth in Lincolnshire. The flood-water practically razed the town and killed 22 people. Even more spectacular was the deluge that occurred three months later in Norfolk: Brundall, near Norwich, experienced more than eight inches of rain on one hellish August day — roughly double the total measured anywhere in the recent floods. Much of Norfolk was still under water six months later.

And on August 15 that year, a depression moving up the Bristol Channel deposited nine inches of rain over Exmoor, spawning the lethal flood that was nearly to wash away the village of Lynmouth. More than 30 people were killed. The record for rainfall in one 24-hour period occurred on July 18, 1955, when nearly 12 inches of rain fell on parts of Dorset. So there is certainly nothing unprecedented about these floods, and similar deluges occurred long before we worried about global warming.

But then global warming theory represents the ultimate triumph of hypothesis over experience, as the latest distinguished scientist in the Canadian Financial Post’s series of climate change sceptics recently made clear. Tom V. Segalstad, head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says the whole theory is nonsense.

Why does he say it is nonsense? Because it relies on a crucial assumption that the CO2 being produced will hang around in the atmosphere for 50 years or more rather than be absorbed by the oceans, whereas all the evidence to date suggests that C02, on average, stays in the atmosphere for no more than 5-10 years.

Amazingly, the hypothetical results from climate models have trumped the real world measurements of carbon dioxide’s longevity in the atmosphere. Those who claim that CO2 lasts decades or centuries have no such measurements or other physical evidence to support their claims. Neither can they demonstrate that the various forms of measurement are erroneous. ‘They don’t even try,’ says Prof. Segalstad. ‘They simply dismiss evidence that is, for all intents and purposes, irrefutable. Instead, they substitute their faith, constructing a kind of science fiction or fantasy world in the process.’



In the real world, as measurable by science, CO2 in the atmosphere and in the ocean reach a stable balance when the oceans contain 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. ‘The IPCC postulates an atmospheric doubling of CO2, meaning that the oceans would need to receive 50 times more CO2 to obtain chemical equilibrium,’ explains Prof. Segalstad. ‘This total of 51 times the present amount of carbon in atmospheric CO2 exceeds the known reserves of fossil carbon– it represents more carbon than exists in all the coal, gas, and oil that we can exploit anywhere in the world.’

Global warming: religion, not science.

Global Warming Causes Wetter and Dryer Summers…in the same locations!

As I have written often, I am skeptical about the concerns over global warming. Here is one reason: the predictions of the climate models have spectacularly wide confidence intervals and even lead to wildly different conclusions. From Melanie Phillips:

… [G]lobal warming is a truly miraculous theory. It means that, without a shadow of a doubt, we will have dry summers and wet winters, and wet summers and er, well, wet winters. As Dr Stott says:

‘In the UK wetter winters are expected which will lead to more extreme rainfall, whereas summers are expected to get drier. However, it is possible under climate change that there could be an increase of extreme rainfall even under general drying.’ (my emphasis [M.P.])

As it gets dryer, it will get wetter. Truly, this global warming theory has some extraordinary properties.



Bewildered? Wake up at the back there —haven’t you got it straight yet? We’re going to be frying and freezing, drowning and dehydrating at the very same time. And carbon emissions will be to blame for the planet getting hotter and getting colder, getting wetter and getting dryer. Because global warming means that whatever happens to the weather, wet dry, hot, cold— it’s all our own fault.



Those who still nurture an old-fashioned regard for facts as opposed to tendentious and indeed ridiculous hypothesis might like to bear in mind that these torrential downpours are not unprecedented in Britain at all. Indeed, we have had worse in the past. As Michael Hanlon reports in the Daily Mail:

On May 29, 1912, nearly five inches of rain fell in three hours near the town of Louth in Lincolnshire. The flood-water practically razed the town and killed 22 people. Even more spectacular was the deluge that occurred three months later in Norfolk: Brundall, near Norwich, experienced more than eight inches of rain on one hellish August day — roughly double the total measured anywhere in the recent floods. Much of Norfolk was still under water six months later.

And on August 15 that year, a depression moving up the Bristol Channel deposited nine inches of rain over Exmoor, spawning the lethal flood that was nearly to wash away the village of Lynmouth. More than 30 people were killed. The record for rainfall in one 24-hour period occurred on July 18, 1955, when nearly 12 inches of rain fell on parts of Dorset. So there is certainly nothing unprecedented about these floods, and similar deluges occurred long before we worried about global warming.

But then global warming theory represents the ultimate triumph of hypothesis over experience, as the latest distinguished scientist in the Canadian Financial Post’s series of climate change sceptics recently made clear. Tom V. Segalstad, head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says the whole theory is nonsense.

Why does he say it is nonsense? Because it relies on a crucial assumption that the CO2 being produced will hang around in the atmosphere for 50 years or more rather than be absorbed by the oceans, whereas all the evidence to date suggests that C02, on average, stays in the atmosphere for no more than 5-10 years.

Amazingly, the hypothetical results from climate models have trumped the real world measurements of carbon dioxide’s longevity in the atmosphere. Those who claim that CO2 lasts decades or centuries have no such measurements or other physical evidence to support their claims. Neither can they demonstrate that the various forms of measurement are erroneous. ‘They don’t even try,’ says Prof. Segalstad. ‘They simply dismiss evidence that is, for all intents and purposes, irrefutable. Instead, they substitute their faith, constructing a kind of science fiction or fantasy world in the process.’



In the real world, as measurable by science, CO2 in the atmosphere and in the ocean reach a stable balance when the oceans contain 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. ‘The IPCC postulates an atmospheric doubling of CO2, meaning that the oceans would need to receive 50 times more CO2 to obtain chemical equilibrium,’ explains Prof. Segalstad. ‘This total of 51 times the present amount of carbon in atmospheric CO2 exceeds the known reserves of fossil carbon– it represents more carbon than exists in all the coal, gas, and oil that we can exploit anywhere in the world.’

Global warming: religion, not science.

Does the BBC Have ANY Credibility… At All???

It has recently come to light that some employees of the BBC knowingly flagrantly lied about the timing of events in stories involving the Queen and phone-in scams. So what is upper management doing about it? SFA. From Melanie Phillips:

The BBC is apparently in crisis. We are told that its top brass take very, very seriously the blow to its integrity delivered by the recent series of scandals involving the reversed footage of the Queen and the phone-in scams. Yet the Chairman of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons, whose whereabouts when the furore exploded on July 19 in New Zealand were revealed when his phone-line went down in the middle of his interview on the BBC Radio Four Today Programme, appears therefore to have conducted his stern encounter the previous day with the Director-General, Mark Thompson — in which we were told Thompson was summoned to explain the BBC’s behaviour — in a long-distance telephone call. Some stern summons. Now we read today that the Commons Culture Select Committee, which was due to grill Mr Thompson yesterday, had to make do instead with his deputy, Mark Byford, since Mr Thompson had gone off on a family holiday – forcing the committee to listen incredulously as Byford declared that every BBC employee would be sent on courses teaching them about the importance of not lying to the public. Thus the BBC’s response.

Like Macavity, it seems, Mr Thompson is never there to face the music in person. What does this tell us about the seriousness with which the BBC takes this fundamental blow to its integrity?

I think they should hold the courses at Ben Miller Inn, a lovely resort/spa near here, so my friends can come to visit and go geocaching with me.

More seriously, sending EVERY employee on a course because of the sins of a few is really dumb. It would be much more effective just to fire those involved in the lies.

Freedomnomics

I have been reading Freedomnomics by John Lott. He is a good writer, and he is relentless in his pursuit of better economic models to explain the world.



Because I teach and often do research on economics and law, I have been especially interested in chapter 4, “Crime and Punishment”. In this chapter, we learn that crime rates have been declining, but not because of legalized abortion, as argued by Levitt et al. In fact Lott presents a strong case that after legalized abortion, more teens had more unprotected sex, thus leading to more, not fewer, unwanted children.



This argument continues through the chapter: that when behaviour is constrained in some way on one front, people respond by altering their behaviour on another. E.g., when people are required to lock up their guns, accidental killings don’t go down much, if at all, but robberies, etc., go up because criminals know that victims will not have ready access to their guns. And, as should be expected, Lott provides much more evidence that gun control laws are actually counter-productive, at least in the US. Despite his growing evidence that right-to-carry laws help reduce crime, politicians and victims still do not see the overall validity, on a probablistic basis, of Lott’s analysis. For example, from a recent incident in Toronto,

The killing prompted Mayor David Miller to renew his call for a total federal handgun ban and help stemming the flow of guns from the United States.



“It’s time for the Canadian government to say to the U.S. ‘we are good friends, but your gun laws are exporting a problem to our country and it is not acceptable any more and you need to take action,’” he said Monday.



Audette Shephard, whose only son, Justin, was shot dead in 2001, also called for a handgun ban. “Guns are a weapon of mass destruction,” said Ms. Shephard, a member of Mayor Miller’s community safety panel. “You can’t defend yourself against a gun.”

In Lott’s book, we also see evidence that as arrest (not necessarily conviction!) rates go up, crime rates go down. In general, it appears that Lott has found many instances in which if the expected value of something is changed by altering either probability of an outcome or by altering the value of that outcome, should it occur, then people often react by adjusting the other variable. And that’s sort of a neat result, not unlike the Peltzman seat-belt arguments of several decades ago.



More later on this intriguing book. For a comprehensive review, see this by Craig Newmark.

Please Sign the Petition Opposing the Boycotts

Scholars for Peace in the Mideast have an on-line petition opposing the proposed UCU boycott of Israeli academics. If you are an academic or a professional, please go to their site to read about the petition and to sign it:

http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/display_petitions.cgi?ID=9&Action=Sign

The Weekend Begins on Thursday…

For the past several years, all of my teaching at The University of Western Ontario has been concentrated on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It makes for long days, but also long weekends and long blocks of time to read and do research.



I always conclude my last Thursday class with,

Thank you, keep well, and have a nice weekend. The weekend begins on Thursday at Western.

I wouldn’t ordinarily have said something like that except that several students in previous years had told me that Thursday night was the best night to go out, and then they would just cut their classes on Fridays.



Imagine my surprise (and this just shows how naive I really am) when [h/t to Newmark's Door] I read this statement as the third of about 120 items in the list, “You Know You’re in College When…“

3. Weekends start on Thursday.

Many of the students who had classes on MWF told me they didn’t understand why I said that since they still had classes on Fridays. They tended to be among the better students, of course.



In the spring and summer, when I have taught at the International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle, there are no Friday classes. Fridays and Saturdays (and some Sundays) are reserved for field trips for various classes. So at that institution, the weekends do indeed begin on Thursdays.



And this coming academic year, I will be on sabbatical at Guelph University, where I will be visiting every Tuesday through Thursday. Once again, the weekends begin on Thursdays!



Digression: Further evidence of my naivete is that there are several references to “beer pong” in that list. I could easily infer that it is some kind of drinking game, but I had to look it up on Wikipedia to see what it really is all about. The most amusing part of that article comes at the end, when it talks about “Bud Pong”, a variant of the game from Anheuser-Busch:

Bud Pong was the branded version of beer pong that brewer Anheuser-Busch said involved the drinking of water, not Budweiser or any other beer. In the summer of 2005, the company began marketing “Bud Pong” kits to its distributors. Francine I. Katz, vice president for communications and consumer affairs, was reported in The New York Times as saying that Bud Pong was not intended for underage drinkers because promotions were held in bars, not on campuses. And it did not promote binge drinking, she said, because official rules call for water to be used, not beer.



The New York Times quoted a bartender at a club near Clemson University as saying she had worked at several Bud Pong events and had “never seen anyone playing with water. It’s always beer. It’s just like any other beer pong.”[1]



Some expressed incredulity at Anheuser-Busch’s public statements. Henry Wechsler, director of the College Alcohol Study at the Harvard School of Public Health, said: “Why would alcohol companies promote games that involve drinking water? It’s preposterous,”[1] while advertising news site Adjab opined that “someone playing Bud Pong with water is about as likely as a teenage kid using the rolling paper he bought at the convenience store to smoke tobacco.”[10].



On October 19, 2005 the company professed surprise that some players were using beer instead of water, and withdrew the game in response to criticism. Francine I. Katz stated that “Despite our explicit guidelines, there may have been instances where this promotion was not carried out in the manner it was intended.”

If I ever play this game, I want Phil Miller on my team. And Ms. Eclectic thinks it should be played with single-malt scotch!

The Weekend Begins on Thursday…

For the past several years, all of my teaching at The University of Western Ontario has been concentrated on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It makes for long days, but also long weekends and long blocks of time to read and do research.



I always conclude my last Thursday class with,

Thank you, keep well, and have a nice weekend. The weekend begins on Thursday at Western.

I wouldn’t ordinarily have said something like that except that several students in previous years had told me that Thursday night was the best night to go out, and then they would just cut their classes on Fridays.



Imagine my surprise (and this just shows how naive I really am) when [h/t to Newmark's Door] I read this statement as the third of about 120 items in the list, “You Know You’re in College When…“

3. Weekends start on Thursday.

Many of the students who had classes on MWF told me they didn’t understand why I said that since they still had classes on Fridays. They tended to be among the better students, of course.



In the spring and summer, when I have taught at the International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle, there are no Friday classes. Fridays and Saturdays (and some Sundays) are reserved for field trips for various classes. So at that institution, the weekends do indeed begin on Thursdays.



And this coming academic year, I will be on sabbatical at Guelph University, where I will be visiting every Tuesday through Thursday. Once again, the weekends begin on Thursdays!



Digression: Further evidence of my naivete is that there are several references to “beer pong” in that list. I could easily infer that it is some kind of drinking game, but I had to look it up on Wikipedia to see what it really is all about. The most amusing part of that article comes at the end, when it talks about “Bud Pong”, a variant of the game from Anheuser-Busch:

Bud Pong was the branded version of beer pong that brewer Anheuser-Busch said involved the drinking of water, not Budweiser or any other beer. In the summer of 2005, the company began marketing “Bud Pong” kits to its distributors. Francine I. Katz, vice president for communications and consumer affairs, was reported in The New York Times as saying that Bud Pong was not intended for underage drinkers because promotions were held in bars, not on campuses. And it did not promote binge drinking, she said, because official rules call for water to be used, not beer.



The New York Times quoted a bartender at a club near Clemson University as saying she had worked at several Bud Pong events and had “never seen anyone playing with water. It’s always beer. It’s just like any other beer pong.”[1]



Some expressed incredulity at Anheuser-Busch’s public statements. Henry Wechsler, director of the College Alcohol Study at the Harvard School of Public Health, said: “Why would alcohol companies promote games that involve drinking water? It’s preposterous,”[1] while advertising news site Adjab opined that “someone playing Bud Pong with water is about as likely as a teenage kid using the rolling paper he bought at the convenience store to smoke tobacco.”[10].



On October 19, 2005 the company professed surprise that some players were using beer instead of water, and withdrew the game in response to criticism. Francine I. Katz stated that “Despite our explicit guidelines, there may have been instances where this promotion was not carried out in the manner it was intended.”

If I ever play this game, I want Phil Miller on my team. And Ms. Eclectic thinks it should be played with single-malt scotch!