Friday, February 10, 2006
Assignment for Tuesday -- What is economics?
Below are the readings for Tuesday. Please read the Becker piece before class. The Lazear piece is also an interesting exploration of the application of economic tools to topics that (until recently) people didn't really think of as economics. The Choi piece is, obviously, an extreme example of the application of economic tools to "non-standard" economics problems. This piece is highly technical, so just click the link and get a sense for what he's arguing (and more importantly how he's thinking about the problem).
Becker, Gary (1993) “Nobel Lecture: The Economic Way of Looking at Behavior.” Journal of Political Economy 101 (3): 385-409.
Lazear, Edward P. (2000) “Economic Imperialism.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 115 (1): 99-146.
Choi, J.P. (2002) “Up or Down? A Male Economist’s Manifesto on Toilet Seat Etiquette”
Note, I am not providing links to the Becker and Lazear pieces. One skill I want to make sure that you posess/acquire is the ability to find articles on your own. So this time (and occassionally through the term), I will force you to do a little extra work. I assure you that both of these articles are on the internet, so it shouldn't be that much work.
Before 11AM Tuesday, please send me an email in which you briefly address two questions:
1) What is economics?
2) Why are you majoring in it?
Becker, Gary (1993) “Nobel Lecture: The Economic Way of Looking at Behavior.” Journal of Political Economy 101 (3): 385-409.
Lazear, Edward P. (2000) “Economic Imperialism.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 115 (1): 99-146.
Choi, J.P. (2002) “Up or Down? A Male Economist’s Manifesto on Toilet Seat Etiquette”
Note, I am not providing links to the Becker and Lazear pieces. One skill I want to make sure that you posess/acquire is the ability to find articles on your own. So this time (and occassionally through the term), I will force you to do a little extra work. I assure you that both of these articles are on the internet, so it shouldn't be that much work.
Before 11AM Tuesday, please send me an email in which you briefly address two questions:
1) What is economics?
2) Why are you majoring in it?
// posted by BW @ 11:51 AM 
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Choi leaves out an important point that my wife pointed out to me. Since male toilet use is more conducive to spillage than female use, the "up" setting has a potentially high aesthetic cost (i.e. it's more likely to be gross to look at). If this cost is high, then it may overwhelm Choi's arguments.
So do we assume that men and women have the same disutility associated with the "grossness"? If not, so the costs are asymmetric, do the results change?
I think they do. Let's say men have no disutility associated with "grossness": if you put a high enough disutility on the women, then many reasonable social welfare functions would say to put the seat down, no?
I think another interesting thing to consider in the toilet seat placement dilemma is brought up in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. On this show, Larry David ends up falling into the toilet and breaking his tail bone after his wife left the seat up because she got sick. This bit of irony demonstrates an asymmetrically large cost that has a low probability of confronting both men and women if the seat is left up. Therefore, I think this model has to be taken beyond aesthetics. The author attempts to reconcile this fact by explaining that the down rule could apply at night while the selfish rule would apply during the remainder of the day. However, I believe that the establishment of time specific guidelines complicates the system and makes individuals less likely to follow it. Furthermore, in his conclusion he still endorses the selfish rule with little regard given to the most extreme cost associated with toilet seat etiquette.
Nice point Varun. Larry David provides useful insights as always. If I remember correctly, the only costs Choi considered were those associated with changing the seat position. This point (and Dave's earlier point about aesthetics) suggest that there are other costs that need to be incorporated.
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