Today I had a debate (well, more of an amiable public dialogue) with Alex Tabarrok at the Wall Street Journal’s Econoblog. The topic: Non-Levitt freakonomics. Check it out here.
Today I had a debate (well, more of an amiable public dialogue) with Alex Tabarrok at the Wall Street Journal’s Econoblog. The topic: Non-Levitt freakonomics. Check it out here.
Jun 29 2005
In a comment on the preceding post, Andrew Whitacre, who wrote the original rant, speculates, There are too many smart people for too few smarts-required jobs, just like there've never been enough English professorships for all the English majors who want to teach. My instinct is to say that this cannot happen, becau...
Jun 29 2005
This rant struck me, mostly because it is strikingly consistent with my 22-year-old's experience. Dear current Management-Generation of Cubicle Land, please understand that: 1. My generation was misinformed—by elders and fortune—about the value of our college degrees. $120,000 of your/our money now buys, career-w...
Jun 28 2005
Today I had a debate (well, more of an amiable public dialogue) with Alex Tabarrok at the Wall Street Journal's Econoblog. The topic: Non-Levitt freakonomics. Check it out here.
READER COMMENTS
Roger McKinney
Jun 29 2005 at 9:32am
Has economics been reduced to Freakonomics because so few people take it seriously, and do so few people take it seriously because mainstream economics has so little good advice on the more importants issues?
Mcwop
Jun 29 2005 at 12:11pm
The car rental piece was interesting. I have noticed the follwing on some car rental sites:
When you enter coupons (e.g. AMEX Rewards) the regular rental rate is increased, so that the savings is limited. It was cheaper for me not to redeem car rental points on Thrifty recently.
Bernard Yomtov
Jun 29 2005 at 1:59pm
McWop,
My experience with car rental coupons is that they are worthless. Either they only apply to “regular” (inflated) rates – your experience – or they are so tied up with restrictions, blackout dates, “not all locations,” etc. that taking advantage of them is not worth the effort. Not unlike many rebates.
I guess the idea is to get you to call the company and then not want to bother calling another one, though I wonder how well this works with Internet reservations.
Jason Ligon
Jun 29 2005 at 3:34pm
I was wondering about the car rental piece. Do you think most car rentals come about as a result of business travel, and consequently the governing factor is the corporate preferred provider list rather than the price? That is my experience, but I’m not sure how universal it is. We have a list of three preferred providers, and everyone winds up using Hertz at every opportunity because of some combination of Never Lost GPS systems and customer service. Price doesn’t factor in.
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