economics tba

Tag: economics tba

A Monster Week for the Econ Department

Week three of the Spring term is shaping up to be a busy one for the economics crowd.   On Monday we have our usual Economics TeaBA, featuring a discussion of health insurance reform (see here for the source article and here for Professor Finkler’s post).  Stop by some time after 4:15 in Briggs 217 for discussion with students and faculty.

On Tuesday, Ambassador Mulford will be giving a talk at 1:30 in the Cinema, and will follow that up with a talk to the Economics Club at 4:30 in Briggs 217.   Here is the campus announcement and  here we have the previous blog post.

Then, on Wednesday, students reading Prophet of Innovation for the Innovation & Entrepreneurship reading group will meet for dessert at 8:40 p.m.  Contact Professor Gerard for details.   Keep an eye out for a few more posts on the Schumpeter Live Blog.

This week’s SpecialTea: Fresh Ideas in Innovation

Our weekly EconTeaBA will get an intellectual boost from physicist and in-house innovation expert Professor Brandenberger on Monday. As this post noted a few days ago, he recharged and refreshed his thinking on innovation at a conference in Berkeley, where the world’s top thinkers on innovation gathered two weeks ago. The conference was organized by The Economist, and the list of speakers included Amar Bhidé, Robert Reich, Clayton Christensen, David Kelley, Michael Porter, Jared Diamond, Ray Kurzweil… and the list goes on. Professor Brandenberger will tell us about what these great minds had to say about the future, about innovation, and how that has changed his views on the subject. And there will be cookies, tea, coffee.

First Economics TeaBA of the New Term

Welcome back to campus.   With the new term comes an all new and improved Economics TeaBA.   This term promises to offer more beverages, more insight, more excitement than all of the prior terms of economics TeaBA combined.

For those of you who are new to this, the economics faculty and students began meeting Mondays for cookies and discussion last term.  The faculty turnout has been outstanding, including all of the regular faculty and emeritus professor Corry Azzi, and we have had occasional visitors from mathematics and other disciplines.   Generally, it is a time for informal discussion, but we will occasionally have a formal presentation or another matter to discuss.  It certainly lets you know where you can find at least one of us if you need some help.

Things (like the water and coffee) get heated up every Monday at 4:15 in Briggs 217.

See you there.

Economics Tea, Today at 4

Today marks the last regular season Economics TeaBA before the start of our playoffs — the finals’ week TBA.   We will discuss what happened at the investment summit (including the performance of the triumphant winning team of Molly Ingram, Rana Marks, and two people who are not in my Econ 300 class), and find out if there are any takeaway messages.

We can also tell you about courses for next term and for next year, who will be on leave, the I&E reading group, what it means to be an entrepreneur, and ideas for improving the quality of the chocolate chip cookies (pay more?).

See you in the Fishbowl around 4.

Price Discrimination, Girl Scout Cookie Edition

The Girl Scouts are in the news again, this time for ruthlessly exercising market power:

Girl Scout cookies sell for different prices in different areas. The going price is either $3.50 or $4.00 depending on where you live. Local Girl Scout councils are actually allowed to set any price they want…

Well, perhaps not ruthless.  The author incorrectly titles it “price gouging,” when in fact it is simply a form of third-degree price discrimination, I suppose.   I would be interested in seeing data on different prices across different markets.  Do you think the different elasticities of demand stem from differences in income? Differences in tastes?  Differences in close substitutes?  Why isn’t there entry to wipe away the excess profits? I could spend the rest of the day thinking about this (and probably will).

For you 450 readers, perhaps there is an arbitrage opportunity out there for a would-be (Kirznerian) entrepreneur.

I am definitely going to check the price before I commit to Girl Scout cookies for the Economics TeaBA.

Speaking of the TeaBA, see you Monday at 4.

Economics TBA — today at 4 p.m.

After a scintillating weekend up north, we are back for the home stretch of the second term.  And what better way to finish a Monday than TeaBA with the economics faculty and students?

Today will be the Oliver Zornow Tea, for his spectacular finish in the this weekend’s game theory tournament.  Today’s cookies are courtesy of Mr. Zornow.

We will also hear a presentation from a group in The Economics of the Firm (Econ 450), examining the role of the football coach in the division III schools.  Can we measure his performance in terms of wins and losses?  Or is it a multi-attribute principal agent model?

Should be a corker.  See you there.

Economics Tea with Corry Azzi, Today at 4 p.m.

Rumor has it that Professor Azzi will be stopping by for tea and conversation.

More than likely, “subtle” is one of the last adjectives that springs to mind when a description of economics professor and alumnus Corry Azzi is needed. In a world fashionably attired in grays, Azzi, ’65, prefers going through life dressed to the nines in blacks and whites.

….

A willing combatant on the academic battlefield, he revels in the good fight. He doesn’t suffer fools easily and spouts sentences that sound like a talk radio host audition: “We’ve put such a value on open-mindedness that we think the uneducated and the ignorant are sophisticated.”

Peek beyond the bluster, however, and you will find an award-winning teacher, loyal friend, and most importantly, a nurturing mentor.

Who knew?

We will also be discussing the Bjorklunden weekend, the winter Olympics, and whether 4 p.m. is too late for “morning thunder.”

See you there!

Internets Down in Briggs, Monday 9 a.m.

The internet is down and so for those of us who spend time engaged in cyberspace, there has been a flight to [generally lower] quality. No word on it’s expected return except the always reassuring, “they’re working on it.”

If you need an economist, you might be forced to go to Briggs 2nd and bang on a door. I’ll see my 300 class at 9:50.

We will see you for tea at 4 p.m., somewhere on Briggs 2nd. Start at the Fish Bowl and then work from there.

UPDATE: Never mind.

Schumpeter Day Tea, That Is

The folks over at Organizations & Markets remind us that it’s Schumpeter Day again (where does the time go?). The nation-wide celebrations commemorate the birthday of the prominent economist, who plied us with such memorable lines as this:

The process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism … it is not [price] competition which counts but the competition from . . . new technology . . . competition which strikes not at the margins of profits . . . of existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives.

The Economics TBA / Schumpeter Day High Tea at 4 p.m. today (along with “Reading Days”) will serve as a kick off for the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Reading Group. We will begin blogging the text later this week.

See you at 4

Update: The tea was once again a resounding success, with the student faculty ratio of better than 3:1. I still think offering caffeine could boost our numbers.

Don’t Forget the Monday Economics Tea, 4 p.m.

Following the success of the inaugural Economics TBA, we will be breaking out the hot beverages and cookies once again this coming Monday at 4 p.m. (Caffeine available upon request).

This should work out splendidly for you with classes running until 4:20, as I’m certain that both the water and the conversation will be heated by that point.

See you there!

Give Me a “TEA”

Don’t forget, the Economics Tea kicks off today at 4 p.m. in Briggs 217. “Free” cookies and discussions of maximizing behavior. If you are reading this, presumably your attendance indicates a well-specified objective function, whereas your absence is due to high marginal costs rather than an information problem.

If you find that amusing, then this will definitely be your kind of crowd.