Scroogenomics

Author : Joel Waldfogel
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691142645
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Scroogenomics written by Joel Waldfogel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-25 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economist Joel Waldfogel illustrates how our consumer spending generates vast amounts of economic waste--to the shocking tune of $85 billion each winter. He provides solid explanations to show us why it's time to stop the madness and think twice before buying gifts for the holidays. Gift giving is different than shopping for our own needs: we make less-informed choices, max out on credit to buy gifts worth less than the money spent, and leave recipients less than satisfied, creating what Waldfogel calls "deadweight loss." And this waste isn't confined to Americans--most major economies share in this orgy of wealth destruction. While recognizing the difficulties of altering current trends, he offers viable alternatives. By reprioritizing our gift-giving habits, Scroogenomics proves that we can still maintain the economy without gouging our wallets, and reclaim the true spirit of the holiday season.--From publisher description.

Author : Joel Waldfogel
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400831253
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Scroogenomics written by Joel Waldfogel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How consumer spending during the holidays generates enormous amounts of economic waste Christmas is a time of seasonal cheer, family get-togethers, holiday parties, and . . . gift giving. Lots and lots—and lots—of gift giving. It's hard to imagine any Christmas without this time-honored custom. But let's stop to consider the gifts we receive—the rooster sweater from Grandma or the singing fish from Uncle Mike. How many of us get gifts we like? How many of us give gifts not knowing what recipients want? Did your cousin really look excited about that jumping alarm clock? Lively and informed, Scroogenomics illustrates how our consumer spending generates vast amounts of economic waste—to the shocking tune of eighty-five billion dollars each winter. Economist Joel Waldfogel provides solid explanations to show us why it's time to stop the madness and think twice before buying gifts for the holidays. When we buy for ourselves, every dollar we spend produces at least a dollar in satisfaction, because we shop carefully and purchase items that are worth more than they cost. Gift giving is different. We make less-informed choices, max out on credit to buy gifts worth less than the money spent, and leave recipients less than satisfied, creating what Waldfogel calls "deadweight loss." Waldfogel indicates that this waste isn't confined to Americans—most major economies share in this orgy of wealth destruction. While recognizing the difficulties of altering current trends, Waldfogel offers viable gift-giving alternatives. By reprioritizing our gift-giving habits, Scroogenomics proves that we can still maintain the economy without gouging our wallets, and reclaim the true spirit of the holiday season.

Author : Daniel S. Hamermesh
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691158177
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beauty Pays written by Daniel S. Hamermesh and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-21 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates how society favors the beautiful and how better-looking people experience startling but undeniable benefits in various aspects of life. This title shows that the attractive are more likely to be employed, work more productively and profitably, negotiate loans with better terms, and have more handsome and highly educated spouses.

Author : Hank Stuever
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0547427573
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Tinsel written by Hank Stuever and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2009-10-14 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heartfelt, hilarious look at the evolution of a half-trillion-dollar American holiday Hank Stuever turns his unerring eye for the idiosyncrasies of modern life to Frisco, Texas, a suburb at once all-American and completely itself, to tell the story of the nation’s most over-the-top celebration: Christmas. Stuever starts the narrative as so many start the Christmas season: standing in line with the people waiting to purchase flat-screen TVs on Black Friday. From there he follows three of Frisco's true holiday believers as they navigate through the Nativity and all its attendant crises. Tammie Parnell, an eternally optimistic suburban mom, is the proprietor of "Two Elves with a Twist," a company that decorates other people's big houses for Christmas. Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski own that house every town has: the one with the visible-from-space, jaw-dropping Christmas lights. And single mother Carol Cavazos just hopes that the life-affirming moments of Christmas might overcome the struggles of the rest of the year. Stuever's portraits of the happy, mega-churchy, shop-until-you-drop community in Tinsel are revealing and riotously funny, showing how our ancient rituals of celebration have survived—and succumbed to—the test of time.

Author : Julian Le Grand
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400828007
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Other Invisible Hand written by Julian Le Grand and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we ensure high-quality public services such as health care and education? Governments spend huge amounts of public money on public services such as health, education, and social care, and yet the services that are actually delivered are often low quality, inefficiently run, unresponsive to their users, and inequitable in their distribution. In this book, Julian Le Grand argues that the best solution is to offer choice to users and to encourage competition among providers. Le Grand has just completed a period as policy advisor working within the British government at the highest levels, and from this he has gained evidence to support his earlier theoretical work and has experienced the political reality of putting public policy theory into practice. He examines four ways of delivering public services: trust; targets and performance management; "voice"; and choice and competition. He argues that, although all of these have their merits, in most situations policies that rely on extending choice and competition among providers have the most potential for delivering high-quality, efficient, responsive, and equitable services. But it is important that the relevant policies be appropriately designed, and this book provides a detailed discussion of the principal features that these policies should have in the context of health care and education. It concludes with a discussion of the politics of choice.

Author : Nicolas Jacquemet
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108660495
Total Pages : 475 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Experimental Economics written by Nicolas Jacquemet and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past two decades, experimental economics has moved from a fringe activity to become a standard tool for empirical research. With experimental economics now regarded as part of the basic tool-kit for applied economics, this book demonstrates how controlled experiments can be a useful in providing evidence relevant to economic research. Professors Jacquemet and L'Haridon take the standard model in applied econometrics as a basis to the methodology of controlled experiments. Methodological discussions are illustrated with standard experimental results. This book provides future experimental practitioners with the means to construct experiments that fit their research question, and new comers with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of controlled experiments. Graduate students and academic researchers working in the field of experimental economics will be able to learn how to undertake, understand and criticise empirical research based on lab experiments, and refer to specific experiments, results or designs completed with case study applications.

Author : Julian Le Grand
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191532975
Total Pages : 206 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy written by Julian Le Grand and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-09-18 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we rely on the altruism of professionals or the public service ethos to deliver good quality health and education services? And how should patients, parents, and pupils behave - as grateful recipients or active consumers? This book provides new answers to these questions - a milestone in the analysis and development of public policy, from one of the leading thinkers in the field. It provides a new perspective on policy design, emphasising the importance of analysing the motivation of professionals and others who work within the public sector, and both their and public service beneficiaries' capacity for agency or independent action. It argues that the conventional assumption that public sector professionals are public-spirited altruists or 'knights' is misplaced; but so is the alternative that they are all, in David Hume's terminology, 'knaves' or self-interested egoists. We also must not assume that individual citizens are passive recipients of public services (pawns); but nor can they be untrammelled sovereigns with unrestricted choices over services and resources (queens). Instead, policies must be designed so as to give the proper balance of motivation and agency. The book illustrates how this can be done by detailed empirical examination of recent policies in health services, education, social security and taxation. It puts forwards proposals for policy reform, several of which either originated with the author or with which he has been closely associated: universal capital or 'demogrants', discriminating vouchers, matching grants for pensions and for long-term care, and hypothecated taxes.

Author : Martin Peitz
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195397843
Total Pages : 615 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Digital Economy written by Martin Peitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-23 with total page 615 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economic analysis of the digital economy has been a rapidly developing research area for more than a decade. Through authoritative examination by leading scholars, this Handbook takes a closer look at particular industries, business practices, and policy issues associated with the digital industry. The volume offers an up-to-date account of key topics, discusses open questions, and provides guidance for future research. It offers a blend of theoretical and empirical works that are central to understanding the digital economy. The chapters are presented in four sections, corresponding with four broad themes: 1) infrastructure, standards, and platforms; 2) the transformation of selling, encompassing both the transformation of traditional selling and new, widespread application of tools such as auctions; 3) user-generated content; and 4) threats in the new digital environment. The first section covers infrastructure, standards, and various platform industries that rely heavily on recent developments in electronic data storage and transmission, including software, video games, payment systems, mobile telecommunications, and B2B commerce. The second section takes account of the reduced costs of online retailing that threatens offline retailers, widespread availability of information as it affects pricing and advertising, digital technology as it allows the widespread employment of novel price and non-price strategies (bundling, price discrimination), and auctions, as well as better tar. The third section addresses the emergent phenomenon of user-generated content on the Internet, including the functioning of social networks and open source. Finally, the fourth section discusses threats arising from digitization and the Internet, namely digital piracy, privacy and internet security concerns.

Author : Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190231696
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Choosing Not to Choose written by Cass R. Sunstein and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cass R. Sunstein is at the forefront of developing public policy to encourage people to make better decisions. In Choosing Not to Choose he presents his most complete argument for how we should understand the value of choice, and when and how we should enable people to choose not to choose.

Author : Joel WALDFOGEL
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674044797
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Tyranny of the Market written by Joel WALDFOGEL and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economists have long counseled reliance on markets rather than on government to decide a wide range of questions, in part because allocation through voting can give rise to a "tyranny of the majority." Markets, by contrast, are believed to make products available to suit any individual, regardless of what others want. But the argument is not generally correct. In markets, you can't always get what you want. This book explores why this is so and its consequences for consumers with atypical preferences.