Why is it so wrong that a museum would sell works from its collection? More specifically, why is it wrong to sell works where the proceeds from the sale would not be committed to the purchase of other works for the collection? I know of the policies of the Association of Art Museum Directors against the practice, but I am economist by training, and I remember when first studying in the field of cultural economics to being a little puzzled: what is so bad about having the freedom to manage and trade assets over time to ensure the institution is … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2014
When dynamic pricing makes sense
"Let's move before the raise the parking rate." Palmerston North, New Zealand, has the latest in dynamic pricing for parking. From Offsetting Behavior (via Marginal Revolution): The 33-space carpark in the city’s Church Street has been kitted out with solar-powered sensors by local parking technology firm Frogparking that can tell which parks are occupied. Drivers pay for parking through their smartphone. Frogparking has been providing ticketless parking systems to Palmerston North for a few years, but director Don Sandbrook said the new … [Read more...]
the sunk cost fallacy
You've got to know when to fold 'em. Yesterday at Indiana University we hosted Peter Frumkin, who talked about his new book (co-authored with Ana Kolendo) Building for the Arts: The Strategic Design of Cultural Facilities. The book contains a range of case studies of significant building or renovation of cultural facilities in the United States. A key finding, maybe not surprising, is the very high proportion of projects for which new revenues were highly overestimated, and costs of construction, and subsequent operations, were highly … [Read more...]
Do we need more Nutcrackers?
Matt Yglesias thinks there could be benefits for the economy if we had a little more Christmas. Maybe he is being tongue-in-cheek, but for what it's worth I will take him at face value: The real economic case for Christmas is macroeconomic. There's an old Keynesian saying: It takes a lot of Harberger triangles to fill an Okun Gap. Which is to say that the total amount of harm done by micro-inefficiencies is small compared with the massive harms associated with the macroeconomic slack of recessions. Most people do not realize this because … [Read more...]
What is a movie star worth?
Is there pay discrimination against female movie stars? Helaine Olen at Reuters thinks so. She writes: Why should we begrudge [Robert] Downey a $50 million payday for The Avengers? The film brought in $1.5 billion globally. Downey’s take was a mere 3 percent of the haul. However ... Hunger Games producers first signed [Jennifer] Lawrence to a deal in 2011. She was still a relative unknown, albeit one with an Oscar nomination on her credits. So they could sign her to play the lead, Katniss Everdeen, for less than $1 million — a relative … [Read more...]