The Sharing Economy has attracted tremendous interest over the past few years: firms like Uber, AirBnB, TaskRabbit and Zilok offer people the ability to monetize assets that they’re not using all the time, or to find customers more easily than was the case pre-internet. As a homeowner, I’ve become an enthusiastic user of AirBnB: the… Continue reading Is It Always Good to Share?
Tag: economics
Wage Inequality: How Not to Fix It
There was a great little piece on Business Insider this morning about Patricia Arquette’s acceptance speech at the Oscars. It got me thinking. Let me start by saying that I am a firm believer in equality in all areas: male/female, black/white, whatever. Whilst there are undoubtedly differences in individuals’ capabilities that’s what makes the world… Continue reading Wage Inequality: How Not to Fix It
Putting the Gini Back in the Bottle
An article by The Economist on Twitter caught my eye a couple of days ago. It shows that the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans control around 22% of the nation’s wealth — almost exactly the same proportion as the bottom 90% of citizens. This hasn’t happened since the late 1930s and the article seems to be… Continue reading Putting the Gini Back in the Bottle
Should You Pay The Ransom?
The recent surge in popularity of “ransom-ware”, along with Islamic State’s penchant for hostage-taking got me thinking about kidnapping & ransom. In last weekend’s FT, Tim Harford reviewed the work of Reinhard Selten on the ‘Chain Store Paradox’ and it struck me that there was a strong parallel between the rational response of a monopoly… Continue reading Should You Pay The Ransom?
Dying on Payday
This is from the egalitarian Sweden: “In this paper, we study the short-run effect of salary receipt on mortality among Swedish public sector employees. By exploiting variation in pay-days across work-places, we completely control for mortality patterns related to, for example, public holidays and other special days or events coinciding with paydays and for general… Continue reading Dying on Payday