The way in which people make money from music is changing.
One symptom of this is that it’s getting much more expensive to see a big-name live music act, and the reason turns out to be a knock-on effect from the advent of downloadable music. Live shows used to be a way to promote CD sales, but now that fewer people get their music from CD it is tours that have to make a profit.
The pricing of live shows and the balance of power in recording contracts are topics in what Princeton University economists Marie Connolly and Alan Krueger call “Rockonomics”: the economics of the pop music industry.
From Degree Doctor in the Times: “Whether you are driven by money or a desire to improve the lives of others, studying economics is a smart choice.”
“Employers place a high value on the quantitative, analytical and problem-solving skills that you have gained, but will also expect you to write and communicate effectively and work well in a team.”
“As well as learning why and how markets work, they are also exposed to why and how markets fail. They are learning a lot more about the environmental consequences. They are seeing some of the problems in the world around them from an economists understanding.”
Alcohol and marijuana are related by what’s called the substitution effect: make it harder to get one, and consumers will turn to the other.
A classic report by economists John DiNardo and Thomas Lemieux studied teenagers from 43 states of the USA over the course of a decade. It showed that when the legal drinking age is raised, more teenagers smoke marijuana.
A soccer penalty is a good example of a situation where two choices made at the same time determine each other’s success or failure. Since the ball moves so fast, the goalkeeper has to move as soon as the striker moves. If a striker is likely to shoot to the left, it is in the goalie’s interest to move in that direction. But if the goalie is going to do that, then it is in the striker’s interest to shoot to the right, and so on.
It can be shown mathematically that the optimum for both players is to choose the left, right or centre unpredictably. Two studies by economists compare the behaviour of real professional football players to this ideal behaviour identified by economic theory, and find a good approximation. In other words the football players are doing good intuitive economics.
Look it up: I. Palacios-Huerta (2003) “Professionals Play Minimax” Review of Economic Studies, 70, pp. 395-415.
Population ageing has put increasing strain on the UK pension system. Unlike many other OECD countries, there has not been the prospect of rapidly growing state spending on pensions. But past reforms have created their own problems, notably: Read the rest of this entry »
· Raising standards is one obvious response. In England, this seems to be a particular problem at the lower end of the achievement scale, with large numbers of people leaving school with no qualifications.
· Another response is that it should be targeted at giving children from poorer families a better deal in the education system. Read the rest of this entry »