I am a big Chicago Bulls fan, so I was very excited when I  saw the headline for the article “Kevin Love likes Warriors, Bulls.” The article describes how Kevin Love, star basketball player for the Minnesota Timberwolves, has no intention to re-sign with the team when his contract expires after next season.  The Timberwolves have been pretty mediocre for Love’s entire career there and it seems he is ready to move on to a winning team.

I think one explanation for Kevin Love’s desire to move teams is the diminishing marginal utility of playing for the Timberwolves.  When Love first came to the Timberwolves as a rookie he was probably excited to the join the team.  He was paid a lot of money, had thousands of fans cheering for him at home games, and got to work with a new set of talented teammates and head coaches.  However, over time it seems that Love has lost interest in playing for the Timberwolves.  It is no longer as fun to step out onto the court when you have already done so with the same team for multiple seasons.  Though there is some degree of variation from game to game — a buzzer beating win is more fun than a 20 point blowout loss — on the whole Kevin Love is getting less and less utility out of playing for the Timberwolves.

Another relevant economic idea is Kevin Love’s opportunity cost of playing for the Timberwolves.  Kevin love wants to win, and every season he spends on a losing team in Minnesota is one he could be spending on a good team like the Bulls.  There are not very many explicit costs for NBA players simply because they are paid so much money and live a luxurious lifestyle.   Implicit costs, like missing out on the opportunity to play for a better team, tend to be the most important costs for NBA players.

The Timberwolves do not want to lose Love, but as the article mentions, the smartest idea might be to trade him.  They would be better off trading him — even for less valuable players — than letting  him go after next season and getting nothing in return.  This is similar to the economic idea of unexploited gains from trade.   If Kevin Love signs with another team, the Timberwolves will be losing out on profits they could have made by trading.

College can be a difficult time for managing finances namely because there are so many currencies which we deal with on a daily basis: US dollars, Schillers, dining dollars, meals.  This long list of currencies isn’t even considering some of the more transparent forms such as time.  In order to dissect these various forms of currency and the income and expenses associated with each I will first outline the funds of each and then go into the meanings behind the data.

Last week, at the urging of some friends, I applied to be a New Student Week leader. At the time, I had heard through the grapevine that SAO was short on applicants, and I figured that I would at least apply. When I applied I was not totally sure if  I would commit to the program, but I figured I’d keep my options open (I wasn’t even thinking about the Dan Airley article from earlier this term!).

This morning, I woke up to an email from someone in SAO saying that there were more applicants than ever before for the 65 open NSW Leader positions. The email was sent to all students who applied to be Leaders asking them to confirm their commit to the program if accepted. I have until noon tomorrow (Friday, May 16) to decide whether or not I want to be a NSW Leader. I figured that I would “think out loud” on this blog.

The benefits to being a NSW Leader are that I would get to spend an extra week on campus with my friends. This week would include minimal amounts of work. Additionally, I would get to meet some of the incoming freshman and give them my perspective on life here at Carleton. I had great NSW Leaders, and I think that it would be fun to help incoming freshman get acquainted with campus.

There is a pretty large opportunity cost associated with being a NSW Leader. I would have to come to campus ten days early: giving up the approximately $500.00 pay check that I could earn working at Caribou Coffee. So is a few extra days with friends and a chance to meet incoming freshman really worth $500.00?

One factor that I must consider is how much I will be itching to get away from home after the three months that I will be spending there. This is hard to conceptualize because, right now, I am very excited to be home, but I know that after three months I will be ready to be back in Northfield.

It is also entirely possible that I could start my on-campus job (which pays better than Caribou!) ten days early, in which case, being a NSW Leader is definitely the better choice. If, on the other hand, I have to wait until the start of Fall Term to start working then I think it would be wise to stay home.

It looks like I have a couple phone calls to make…

http://www.policymic.com/articles/79143/the-economics-of-the-oscars-in-two-quick-and-easy-charts

The Oscars have a storied history of incest and kickbacks, though most of it is covered by the luxury of the red carpet and the inconceivable fantasy of the after party.  The “Oscar Bump” as it is called in this article has long been the end game of many a production companies efforts, so much so that it has turned the Oscar season into a campaign.  Most notoriously known for this pursuit is the movie Shakespeare in Love and its producers the Weinstein Brothers.  The 1998 Oscars, celebrating the movies of 1997, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is nominated and everyone thinks that surely it will take home the prize.  Saving Private Ryan however, did not have Bob and Harvey Weinstein behind its Oscar campaign, and, quite significantly it was competing with another war movie, The Thin Red Line (but that is another story).

The Weinstein Brothers were at the time working for Miramax Films at the time, a Disney-owned company; in 2005 they would eventually defect to form their own company.  They saw the possibility for a split vote.   The people in the academy that liked war movies would have a difficult time deciding, so much so that a large percentage that would’ve voted for Saving Private Ryan in any other year voted for Terrence Mallick’s more cerebral take on war.  It is said that the reason why Shakespeare in Love won the prize is because of a split vote and because of the fact that everyone in the Academy saw it.  It was impossible to be a member and not see it.  Miramax sent free copies out to everyone that would take it, realizing that this was an investment to help secure a nomination.  They had a wide release date of January 8th, 1998, meaning that it was among the movies still in theaters at the time of actual voting.  Saving Private Ryan on the other hand was a summer release and already in the back of voters’ minds.  And so, come time the reveal, everyone was shocked; everyone but the Weinstein Brothers.  Oscar campaigning has become essential to anyone movie with Best Picture aspirations.  This last year there wasn’t a single best picture nominee that came out before October.  Most production companies send baskets to the members of the Academy.  12 Years a Slave took home the big prize and it was released in November.

A few years ago the Academy increased the amount of possible Best Picture nominations from 5 to 10 to a hushed uproar.  The general question was why?  The real question however should be why not.  If the Academy is considered to ‘produce’ nominations (nominations are certainly worth quite a bit of money) then their marginal cost of production for those 5 more nominations is almost 0, while their marginal revenue is certainly not.  But they do not make money off of the movies, yes?  In thinking that one would fail to remember that the Academy (and it’s board) is comprised of Hollywood’s biggest and most powerful figures.  Last year the indie box office smash Philomena rode its Oscar nomination to a 100,000,000 dollar worldwide gross on a 12,000,000 dollar budget.  Though it premiered at film festivals in the early spring of 2013 its wide release came in November.  Distribution was handled by none other than the inimitable Weinstein Company.  To put hat kind of success into perspective The Avengers made upwards of 1 billion dollars worldwide, but they did it on a 200 million dollar budget.

The history of the Academy Awards is full of indie success stories like Philomena, but there are also movies that market themselves as Oscar bait but go unbitten.  Most famous of these is the Daniel Day Lewis starrer Nine.  A musical from the Director of 2002’s Oscar-sweeping Chicago that failed to make back it’s 80 million dollar budget despite 4 nominations (none of those 4 were in the big categories).  The Weinstein’s don’t get it every time.  Really it is a miracle they managed to secure 4 nominations after releasing a movie that got critically panned from all sides.

Its shark-infested waters out there on the red carpet, akin almost to the sort of speculation that happens on Wall Street.  This is the surface, of course, but I am out of time.

We’ve all heard of it. It’s what worries our parents, shocks the prude, and mystifies high-school students: the controversial college hookup culture, young people throwing commitment and caution to the wind to casually engage with one another in what used to have reserved to relationships. Yet, as this article in the NYtimes discusses, the recent “rise” of hookup culture has been the result of economic forces. Some researchers argue that, since “women now outnumber men in college enrollment by 4 to 3,” it creates a gender imbalance that gives men more power in the sexual marketplace, which could be represented by a supply & demand graph with fewer sellers than buyers, the supply of men being less elastic, and that if men prefer casual sex to long-term relationships, hooking up will become more common.

However, the real reason is much more practical. The premise is simple: time in college is a highly-limited and valuable resource. As much as students want and try to do everything, their supply of time eventually has to run out. Thus, students have to make calculated choices when it comes to allocating this precious resource. When it comes to dating then, many are finding that the opportunity cost of committing to a relationship is simply too high, saying things like “a relationship is like taking a four-credit class” or “I could get in a relationship, or I could finish my film. ” It’s just yet another factor that contributes to one’s daily stresses and can keep one from their ambitions; when applying to internships, writing essays, organizing clubs, playing sports, rehearsing, etc., few have the spare hours in their day to sleep, much less to invest time in establishing and maintaining a relationship. Indeed, relationships are seen as investments and as one women put it “we are very aware of cost-benefit issues and trading up and trading down, so no one wants to be too tied to someone that, you know, may not be the person they want to be with in a couple of months.” When forced to choose between a romantic interest and one’s future career, self-development, and success, few will opt for a relationship, especially in college, where one’s investments of time and effort yield a much higher utility than any other period in one’s life.

Instead, “hooking up,” an ambiguous term that can mean any number of things, though always signifying low-commitment encounters that allow otherwise busy students to enjoy what they’d be missing without a relationship, has become the answer for many students. In economic terms, hooking up costs less time, has a lower opportunity cost, and has a more elastic supply, since one is not limited to any one partner, compared to an inelastic supply curve for a relationship. It’s not that young people are upending societal conventions as some might claim, it’s just that they are becoming more calculated and practical when making choices about time management. They’re thinking economically.

I applied to work reunion this summer about a month ago, and ever since then every conversation with my mom the question of when I’m coming home has arisen. This is due, not only to the fact that my mom wants me home as soon as possible, but also because my mom is anxious to buy my plane ticket home and needs to know whether I’ll be staying an extra two weeks. There are many economic concepts that factor into this decision.

Firstly, this problem can be approached from the point of view of the airlines. My mom is anxious to purchase the ticket as soon as possible because tickets are cheaper the further in advanced they are bought. This is because far in advanced the demand for a plane ticket is fairly low, but as the date gets closer the demand increases as people decide what days they want to travel on, causing the equilibrium price to rise. Therefore the earlier you can buy a plane ticket the cheaper it will be.

Besides the changing explicit cost of the plane ticket, my mother and I also had to weigh the opportunity cost of buying a plane ticket sooner versus later. If I bought a plane ticket earlier, before hearing back about the job offer for reunion, I would be giving up the income I would have made during that week. The amount I will make during reunion is substantial enough that it was worth waiting a few extra weeks, even though the price of plane tickets probably rose in this time period (I did get the job).

Another consideration was whether or not I could have flown standby. If I had more flexibility in my schedule flying standby could have been a cheaper option. This is because for each trip airlines have a fairly high fixed cost and relatively low variable cost. The plane itself is a sunk cost, and regular maintenance to keep the plane safe is required regardless of the number of passengers. The cost of jet fuel depends more on the distance of the flight than total weight added by a few extra passengers and their luggage, and the same number of crew are on a flight whether it’s 80% or 100% full. Because of this it is beneficial for planes to fill as many seats as possible. Therefore on the day of the flight airlines will drop the price of a ticket because selling a cheaper ticket is better than having empty seats. The trade off for costumers is that even though tickets are cheaper, there is less certainty of the availability of tickets at this point.

This article provides a brief introduction to New York City’s new Department of Parks and Recreation commissioner, Mitchell J. Silver. Nothing about the article is explicitly economic, but Silver’s description of how he is approaching his new position raises some interesting questions about matters of cost and benefit in urban planning. Mitchell, whose background is as a city planner, makes it clear that he as a holistic view of the issue, “Parks are a system within a city. They are connected to culture. They are connected to traditions and memories, the economy, the natural systems. As a planner, I take a very different view of parks, as not just a green space but a public space.”

The economic view holds that parks, like any parcel of land, are goods. Goods that can be bought, sold, “consumed” (enjoyed may be a better verb in this case), and even developed. Importantly, and as Silver makes clear, they are “public” goods. As such they are closed off from the possibilities  entailed by a free market and private ownership. New York City parks, given their location, are very valuable plots of land, and the government could probably profit tremendously from developing the land for commercial and residential purposes. By keeping the parks green and accessible to everyone, some economists would say that the NYC government is failing to realize the full economic potential of the park land. However, others, including Silver, would likely argue that the parks provide their greatest benefit as they are. Their logic being that as parks, this land provides a huge, albeit difficult to measure, amount of benefit to the many people who come to the park. Parks have also have economic value in that they can revitalize urban areas by attracting more people and therefore more commerce to the area. By the same token, parks often raise the real estate value of the surrounding neighborhoods. While it is difficult to determine which use of the land would generate the most profit, given the fact that the NYC government has a certain commitment to, as Silver puts it, “equity and fairness,” it seems unlikely that NYC’s parks will be developed any time soon.

Every male citizen of South Korea must serve 2 years in the military before the age of 30. Many male South Korean students at Carleton take 2 years off from college to serve out their military duty. While most Korean students choose to leave after their freshman year, some leave after graduation. After debating whether I should leave after my second year or after graduating, I have decided to leave school for military duty after my second year. My decision to leave after my sophomore year was determined after a careful analysis of trade-offs and opportunity costs between taking time off after my sophomore year and after graduation.

The opportunity cost of leaving after my second year at college is the gap in my college education. As an international student whose native language is not English, this gap is significant because while I am in the Korean military, there would be no chance for me to practice English at all. The problem gets worse when I come back from the military because not only will I be not used to conversing in English, but will also no longer be used to taking college classes in English. Some of my friends were a bit worried when I decided to leave after my second year because when I return from the military, I will be taking my major classes right away. Other trade-off of leaving before graduating is that when I return from the military, my friends from the Class of 2017 would be gone and I will have to make new friends. On the other hand, the benefits of leaving after my sophomore year is that taking the 2 years off from college after I declare my major would give me time to cautiously think about how I want to spend the remaining 2 years at Carleton. Also, spending 2 years of my life under strict rules of the military will make me more disciplined and allow me to mature as a person. Therefore, I believe that I would be more psychologically equipped to spend the second half of my life at Carleton than my peers.

The opportunity cost of leaving after graduation is exactly the same as my benefit of taking 2 years off after my sophomore year. My 4 years of college would go very fast without any break for me to think about my future and what I really want to accomplish here at Carleton. Additionally, finding a job after 2 years in the military would be very challenging because if I am at college, I would be able to utilize every employment resources available on campus, such as the Career Center. The only benefit of leaving after graduation is that, as I mentioned, I wouldn’t have to worry about losing my English skills and classmates. Therefore, in my personal view, the cost of going to the military after graduating is greater than the cost of leaving after my sophomore year. I strongly believe that I would benefit more from taking 2 years off after my sophomore year than going to the military after college.

In the article on Freakonomics’ blog entitled, Testing the Limits of Google Translate, Steven D. Levitt discusses his fascination with the Google Translate’s ability to “instantaneously (if imperfectly) translated.”  Because Levitt cannot speak any other language but English, he claims that Google Translate seems like a miracle, but it in fact has its limits.  He recounts his recent experience in Germany when he tried to translate “I had a nice time with you” with Google Translate; it actually translated to “I had a mice time with you,” which made his host (who spoke nearly no English) to become very confused.  Levitt has now understandably resolved to be more careful with his use of Google Translate.

As a Spanish major, I have had a number of experiences with online translators and dictionaries, especially through the comps process this past year.  I have had experiences similar to that of Levitt, but also have had helpful experiences too.  I have found that Google Translate helps with one or two word phases, but is less successful with complicated diction.

In contrast to my generally positive experience translating a romance language, a commenter, namely YX, explains that Google Translate is particularly bad at translating any East Asian language and that Bing is better for this function.  With the many students and travelers around the world with Internet access, there is an overwhelming demand for the possibility of rapid translation in this fast world.  To respond, there are many online translators (granted, with varying levels of accuracy).  Translators besides Google Translate and Bing, like Babylon, Babelfish, Reverso, etc. in this case can be considered substitutes in terms of their translating services, excluding their precision.  With all these online translators, it is difficult as a consumer to figure out which work the best without comparing and contrasting the results.

For this reason, although the opportunity costs of using an online translator may initially seem low because of the speed at which it can produce the translation, the opportunity costs end up being much higher because, like Levitt experienced, it actually takes a longer time to figure out what to do with the inevitable confusion from the produced translation.  At the same time, the opportunity costs however still remain lower with online translators than seeking out a language tutor.

So, to anyone interested in learning a new language at any point in his or her life, I would still suggest the use of online translators for a certain list of tasks with its low opportunity costs and generally acceptable translations.

This article reminded me of the episode of This American Life on the NUMMI plant on increasing employee productivity. Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson are developing a new plan called the Results-Only Work Environment, ROWE for short, at Best Buy. They are wondering what will happen if they judged employees only on their work and not how they did it. This means that people are allowed to work from home, whenever they feel like it, all meetings would be optional, even if you had been invited, and no one would judge you for how much time you spent in the office, as long as you got the work done that you needed to do. Managers would set overall expectations, such as increase sales by 10%, but no micromanaging would be done, such as keeping track of hours.

Since I will (hopefully) become employed one day, this article made me think about the opportunity cost of working a full time job and other things I could be doing with my life. With ROWE employees are not tied down to their desk and are able to better allocate their time between work and leisure. The opportunity cost of leisure time, for example if you were to take a week off to travel somewhere, would not be as high with ROWE. As long as you are accomplishing your work you don’t have to worry about how many hours you would be sacrificing to spend in the office. Under the old system, you would be judged by your boss and co-workers for missing a day of work, however with the new system you would solely be judged on your results. Another trade-off employees benefit from with this new plan is the time they spent commuting. Workers could use the time they travel to and from work and trade it to spend time with their kids or sleep. Managers would also could better allocate their time to focusing on the expectations and not micromanage the employees, such as checking on who is in the office, who is late and who is working extra hours. Overall, a lot of time would be saved and could be put to better use, this can be seen by looking at the opportunity costs.

Of course, the big question with this plan is does giving employees more freedom increase productivity? According to the article, Best Buy has seen an increase of 41% in productivity because of the new plan. By allowing the employees to working from home they are less likely to become distracted, take longer breaks, and don’t waste time commuting to the office. I don’t think this would be true for everyone since each person has a different work environment that works best for them. I would probably be more productive working from home, since I easily become distracted if I’m working around others. This plan would allow for those who work better at home to have that option, but many might take advantage of the new plan to have more leisure time and not provide the expected results.