Who Pays for Online Discounts?

The other day I woke up, looked in the mirror, and decided it was time for a haircut. Rather than picking up the phone and calling the salon where I’ve gone in the past, I checked my email, typed “haircut” into the search bar, and was rewarded with a half a dozen email offers from San Francisco salons selling haircut vouchers at 25%, 50% or even 75% off the regular price. All but one offer had since expired, but I was nonetheless amazed that businesses were offering such steep discounts with such regularity.

Traditional coupons seem to have withstood the test of time as a profitable marketing scheme, but the success of any discounting strategy depends on how coupons are used by both new and existing customers. A primary reason firms offer coupons is to attract new customers, in hopes that after experiencing the quality of the product or service, those who were initially only willing to pay the coupon price will later return and pay the full price. Regardless of whether coupons are offered online or delivered in the mail, however, some will invariably be used by existing customers who would have otherwise paid the full price. Thus, although coupons may generate additional revenues from new customers, they also may reduce revenues from existing ones. While I have been drawn to many new hair salons by their coupon offerings, the widespread availability of these offers has made me far less likely to become a repeat customer. Even if I particularly like a cut at one salon, I’m generally willing to take my chances on the next deal to save 50%.

Fortunately for firms, some customers willingly pay the full price to avoid the hassle coupons entail. This enables firms to separate consumers into two groups based on their willingness to pay, a technique known as price discrimination. If a salon can use coupons to gain customers who are willing to pay less (but instead willing to expend the effort required to use a coupon), and still charge a higher price to customers who are willing to pay more (but won’t bother with coupons), then it can increase the volume of its sales without having to lower the price on all sales. Thus, while it may seem that firms should want their coupons to be as easy to use and widely accessible as possible, the lower the “cost” of  acquiring and using coupons, the less ability the firm has to continue charging the full price to some customers.

Admittedly, there are other factors to this new online market for coupons that may counteract the difficulties presented above; some people buy coupons but never cash in on the services, some of the “discounts” may actually reflect artificially inflated original prices, and not everyone is willing to take a chance on a new salon for each new haircut. In the long run, the market will likely determine whether or not this particular variation of discounting survives, but until then, I’ll continue to take advantage of half-off haircuts.


Discussion Questions

1. How might the analysis above be different for different types of goods and services? Is there a difference between offering deals on things people buy impulsively versus things that people buy regularly?

2. How does the fact that people actually have to purchase many of these deals in advance of using them (as opposed to simply clipping a coupon that you may or may not end up using) affect the market? How might this benefit or hurt the firms offering deals?

3. How strong is the psychological component of coupons? That is, how might consumers respond differently to a regularly priced car wash for $30 versus a coupon offering a $60 car wash at 50% off? What does economics have to say about these different price schemes and how they should affect the market outcome?

4. Suppose there are only two hair salons, how could you use game theory to model their payoffs when they each must decide to offer a coupon or not?

Hunting for a Cheaper Easter Egg

Easter egg decorating was more expensive than usual in Europe this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, the annual spike in egg prices—due to their use in Easter food and decorating—was much higher than usual. Compared to the same time last year, prices were up by more than 75% across the European Union and had more than doubled in Poland, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic.

What’s different about this year? The beginning of 2012 marked the deadline for implementation of a European Union regulation, first issued in 1999, mandating larger cage sizes for hens. Because egg producers have to buy new cages and then use more space to house the same number of hens and produce the same numbers of eggs, the average cost of producing eggs has increased (assuming that having a larger cage doesn’t increase the number of eggs each hen lays). Consequently, some producers have exited the industry, and the remaining producers require higher prices to produce the same number of eggs.

The graph models the consequences of these demand and supply shifts in the egg market, with D1 indicating the normal, non-Easter demand and S1 indicating the supply without a regulation on cages sizes. “D Easter” reflects the increased demand due to Easter, and “S Reg” reflects the shift in supply due to the regulation on cage size.
Note:
P1: price of eggs outside of Easter season without a regulation on cage sizes
P2: price of eggs during Easter season without a regulation (i.e. what prices would have been during previous Easters)
P3: price of eggs this Easter season—that is, with a regulation on cage sizes
P4: price of eggs outside of Easter season with a regulation on cage sizes

The increased demand for eggs at Easter shifts the demand curve to the right, increasing the price of eggs from P1 to P2. The regulation shifts the supply curve up and to the left, causing a further increase in price (about 75% in this model) to P3. As Easter demand recedes and the demand curve shifts back to normal, the supply curve remains shifted, keeping prices, at P4, above what they were in previous years and, according to this model, above even what they were in previous Easters. The exact price and quantity changes will depend on the size of the demand and supply shifts and the elasticities of the demand and supply curves.

While the hens and those concerned with their welfare indubitably appreciate the improvement of their cages, which now have perches and more bedding, better conditions for chickens means higher egg prices for humans. As always, there’s no free lunch, even (perhaps especially) when it includes eggs.


Discussion questions:

1. How much extra would you pay for an egg produced by hens who got to live in better cages?

2. Assuming that all parts of Europe experience equal shifts in supply (which may or may not be true), what do the larger increases in price in Poland, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic suggest about elasticity of demand for eggs in those countries relative to Europe as a whole? What other explanations are there for the higher price increase in those countries?

3. California Proposition 2, passed in 2008, requires egg producers in California to provide more room for hens starting in 2015. However, the proposition does not require that California retailers only sell eggs produced in California. What do you think will happen to egg prices in California, egg production in California, and egg production in neighboring states?

Kicking through the Ceiling

In the sports world, it has become cliché for people to say that every second counts. However, we expect that phrase to apply on the field, not to the teams trying to get there. Recently, a friend of mine wanted to register his team for a local kickball league. The registration was online only, starting at noon. He had a problem with his credit card that slowed him down, and by 12:02, all the spots in the league were taken and his team was shut out.

Rather than seeing his misfortune as a sign of kickball’s growing popularity, or the quick typing skills of other kickball managers, the first thing that came to my mind was that the market for league entries must be distorted. The league uses public fields that also need to accommodate other sports and high schools, so time on the fields is limited. Since the kickball league will only have a fixed number of hours on the fields, and since the season needs to accommodate a set number of games, it’s fair to think about the supply of league space as fixed, or perfectly inelastic. Most importantly, even at very high market prices, there is no way to add additional teams to the league.

If limited space were the only constraint on the market, then we could find the equilibrium for the market at the intersection of supply and demand, and thus know the equilibrium price where there are exactly as many teams willing to pay as there are spaces in the league. However, since the league filled up so fast, and teams (like my friend’s) that are willing to pay more than the $500 entry fee are unable to join, it appears that there is an artificial price ceiling in this market. Since the league is publicly run, it is likely that someone decided on a “fair” price to charge, so that entries in the league would be open to people of varying incomes. Unfortunately, price ceilings create shortages, that is, they force some people who desperately want the good to go without it. When goods do not sell for the unrestricted equilibrium price, people who value the entries the most do not necessarily receive them. Thus, the shortage caused by a binding price ceiling will end up lowering society’s total welfare.

Can economic theory suggest a solution that would still offer entries at the “fair” price, but also make sure the entries go to the teams that value them the most? Suppose that the league entries were still given out the same way, but once initially purchased by a team manager, an entry could be resold to a team that did not sign up fast enough, if both parties agree. Teams that got entries and value them at least as much as the equilibrium price will hold on to their entries, but teams that were too slow to purchase them initially will be able to buy them from teams who value them less than the equilibrium price. In terms of the final price and quantity of entries, making the league entries tradable will achieve the same result as removing the price ceiling altogether: the market price for the tradable entries will rise to the unrestricted equilibrium price, and the teams that value them the most will end up in the league. However, setting a lower price initially allows some teams the opportunity to buy that otherwise wouldn’t be able to get them. Society’s total welfare is maximized by either making the entries tradable or removing the price ceiling, the only difference is who earns the surplus. As you can see, there are different ways to maximize society’s welfare. Some can be more complicated than others, but they can accommodate different concerns about fairness.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1) Currently, the market mechanism used to allocate kickball league entries is first-come-first-served. What behaviors does this sort of mechanism encourage?

2) If league entries are tradable and originally given on a first-come-first-served basis, who would attempt to get the initial entries? Is there a chance people who do not want to have a kickball team might apply for a slot? Under a tradable permit system, does the way the entries are initially allocated affect who receives the most welfare?

3) The Coase Theorem is a public economics result that applies to markets where governments want to reduce pollution. It says that the most efficient way to reduce pollution to any desired level is to give firms in an industry permits to pollute the desired amount, and then allow the firms to trade the permits. Consider the similarities between a fixed number of kickball league entries and a fixed amount of pollution by an industry. What results would you expect to see in the market for pollution permits? What effect would creating that market have on society’s welfare?

Tricky Tax Timing

After my husband signed a contract in October 2011 to work for a Maine hospital, they asked him if he preferred to get his signing bonus immediately or some time in 2012. The seemingly obvious answer was to get the money as soon as possible. As an economist’s spouse, my husband knows that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. However, after completing our 2011 taxes, we discovered that the answer to this question is not as simple as it seems.

While any economist will tell you that the present value of a dollar today is worth more than receiving that dollar in the future, the reverse of this is also true—spending a dollar tomorrow is cheaper in present value than spending a dollar today. To see this, consider the formula for computing future and present values:

Future Value = Present Value x (1 + Interest Rate)^{Number of Periods}
Present Value = Future Value / (1 + Interest Rate)^{Number of Periods}

If we take the money in 2011, we have to pay taxes on it by April 15, 2012; on the other hand, if we take the money in 2012, the tax payment would be delayed by a year, but we’d also get the bonus later.

Further complicating this was our state of residence. In 2011 we were residents of Pennsylvania, so accepting the signing bonus in 2011 meant that we had to pay taxes in Maine as nonresidents (which came out to about 5.5% of the bonus and required that I file taxes in that state when I normally don’t have to). We also had to pay taxes in Pennsylvania as residents (roughly 3%, but you can deduct the Maine payment so you aren’t fully double taxed), and in local taxes to Williamsport, PA (at another 2%). However, if we had waited to accept the payment in the middle of 2012, we would only pay taxes on this income in Maine as residents next April (roughly 8-10% depending on our joint income next year) and not need to file in Maine in 2011.

We were making less money in 2011 than we will in 2012, so we are in a lower federal tax bracket for our April 2012 filing. Our dilemma is whether or not that break plus the value of getting the money today is enough to compensate us for the additional tax liabilities of receiving the money in 2011. Our inability to foresee that taking the money in 2011 would result in a complicated tax situation might have lead us to make a suboptimal decision. Thus, before quickly jumping on the present value bandwagon and taking the money immediately, it’s important to make sure you have complete information about all future consequences of present-day choices.


Discussion Questions:

1. Another factor that led us to take the money immediately is that we plan to use it to pay down some of my husband’s high-interest rate medical school loans. Does this make our decision more or less rational if the interest rate on his loans is above what we could earn in an interest-bearing account? What if the rate on his loan is below what we could earn in interest?

2. Suppose that we received the signing bonus from a hospital in New Hampshire instead, where there is no state income tax for residents or nonresidents. How does this affect our optimal decision?

3. Suppose we were adopting several kids and I was planning to quit my job to become a full-time, stay-at-home mom, putting us in a lower tax bracket in 2012. How might this affect our decision?

Land or Dishes? Dishes, please!

On a recent visit to the Los Altos History Museum with my daughters, I found myself hoping that one day they will appreciate my favorite exhibit: a replica of the wheel-of-fortune used by the Los Altos Land Company in the 1930s. During the Great Depression, the company had a difficult time selling plots in the sparsely-populated apricot orchards that later became Los Altos. That land is now part of the Silicon Valley and among the 100 wealthiest communities in the country, but nobody could have predicted that success back then. To offload the property, the struggling company conducted a promotional contest that took place in San Francisco movie theaters. Participants could spin the wheel to win free stuff, including a choice between a set of dishes and a plot of land in Los Altos. A plot of land was about the price of a set of dishes back in the day and according to the exhibit, most people chose the dishes.

What determined this choice? Economic utility theory tells us that the choice between land and dishes is determined by the marginal rate of substitution between them. However, without more information about the consumer, we cannot deduce the winner’s utility function from owning one more set of dishes or one more plot of land by simply knowing that the prices are equal.
Asset pricing theory—an economic theory that attempts to understand the prices of uncertain payments—can give us more insight into the matter. Land and dishes are assets with different properties. Although both could be viewed as durable goods, the set of dishes qualifies as a consumer good, whereas land is largely treated as investment. This allows us to view this scenario as the choice between consumption and investment (or saving); a decision between the two is determined by the relative prices of the two goods, the utility of the consumption good, future returns on investment, and the rate of future discounting (or the degree of impatience). Even without assumptions about the impatience and preferences for fancy dishes, the seemingly naïve choice of the dishes was fully rational given that investment in farm land did not promise great returns at the time.

Now suppose that the lottery winners knew that in 40 years the area’s booming economy would lead to skyrocketing land prices. As a rational economist, if I was a winner at such an event, would I choose dishes or land? My first reaction is: “Of course in this case, I would pick the land!” On the second thought, however, I realize that there is a very good chance that I still would choose the dishes. In troubled times like the Great Depression, both the perception of risk and the demand for liquidity increased, making the dishes a clear winner. Because a set of dishes could be considered a durable good, it could serve as an asset functioning as a store of value. Also, it is easier and less costly to sell or exchange dishes than a plot of land, thus making dishes a more liquid asset than land. Thus simply knowing in 1931 that the Los Altos land would appreciate in a few decades does not imply that it could be immediately converted into cash when needed. In tough economic times, survival today is often more important than planning for the future. Therefore, I would likely choose in favor of current consumption despite the high expected return on investment.


Discussion questions:

1. What piece of information about the dishes and the plot of land is critical in my decision-making?

2. Suppose that land is as liquid as the dishes. How would this affect the choice between the land and the dishes?

3. Would the same economic reasoning apply if it were a dinner instead of the dinnerware?

4. What would be your choice today if you were presented with a similar set of alternatives? Justify why this choice is the same as or different from most people’s choice for dishes in the 1930s.

Househunters Meets Econ

A famous quip suggests that if you could teach a parrot to say "supply and demand," he could replace 90% of the world's economists. However, what economics is really about is analyzing the decisions people make in the face of scarcity and uncertainty. While the supply-and-demand model does have a wide variety of applications, it also comes with a laundry list of assumptions that give the model its power and tractability. One of these assumptions is complete information about the prices and quality of various goods. But one thing is for sure—in the housing market, there is certainly imperfect information about current and future market conditions.

For example, last week I found myself in an interesting predicament while house hunting. I was faced with two options: I could make an offer on a house currently on the market (going forward we’ll call this House A), with the belief that it was priced-to-sell and thus would likely be unavailable in the coming weeks. Or I could wait a month for more houses to come on the market, thus foregoing House A and incurring additional costs, like the effort to find new houses on the market and travel time to look at houses. This situation is exactly the type of scenario studied by search theory economists.

Search theory is a branch of economics that models markets with search frictions. In this case, “frictions” are the unknowns about what kinds of houses will come on the market in the coming months. You are faced with the choice of either accepting the good you’ve found today (House A) or throwing that choice away and paying a cost to find another choice tomorrow (House B). With some standard assumptions regarding utility and the distribution of houses on the market, the optimal way to shop is to use a reservation strategy; this means that you continue to shop until you find a house that makes you equally or more happy than that of the “reservation house”. This is the house that makes you exactly indifferent between continuing to search and buying it.

Thus, you can imagine my excitement surrounding house hunting. Not only is it fun to peruse the web and schedule showings, but house hunting is a great example of where supply and demand falls short, making room for more appropriate economic models like search theory. In most cases, consumers don’t know with certainty where goods can be found, how much they cost, and if they’re available; rather, they must spend time and money searching for these goods. When people ask me what kind of economics I like to study, my typical response is “the economics of shopping.” Search theory is simply the economic tool I use to describe it.


Discussion Questions:

1. How would you expect the time you have to search for houses to factor into the characteristics of your reservation house? In other words, do you think your level of pickiness will change if you had 3 months left to search versus 12 months?

2. Suppose that you didn’t have to worry about losing a housing option if you decide to search another day. Search theorists called this having “recall” over previous draws. How do you think this affects your “reservation house” if you’re searching over an infinite time period. How about a finite time period such as 12 months?

3. How has the internet alleviated search frictions in the housing market?

4. What other markets might be better explained using search theory as opposed to the standard theory of supply and demand? Why?

Getting Incentives Right

In September 2010, a natural gas pipeline owned by Pacific Gas & Electric company (PG&E) ruptured in a subdivision of San Bruno, California, starting a fire that killed eight people, destroyed 53 homes, and damaged 120 more. Because San Bruno is only a few miles from the Aplia offices, I took particular notice when I saw the following headline in the San Francisco Chronicle: “PG&E incentive system blamed for leak oversights.”

According to the Chronicle article, PG&E had delegated leak survey crews to find leaks on its pipelines but had been paying bonuses to “supervisors whose leak survey crews found fewer leaks and kept repair costs down.” Two years before the fire, PG&E ended the policy of bonuses and, worried about the consequences of the bonus system, began to redo leak surveys. The subsequent surveys revealed “many more” leaks than had originally been reported.

This result doesn’t come as a surprise if we think about a supply curve for undiscovered leaks -- leaks that exist but are not discovered by the survey crew. While it may at first take some mental gymnastics to think about undiscovered leaks being “supplied,” when you contemplate how the bonus system would effect the effort and diligence of leak survey crews, you can easily imagine the usual upward sloping supply curve like the one on the graph:

As with any upward sloping supply curve, the more that is paid for undiscovered leaks, the more “undiscovered” leaks will be supplied. Equivalently, fewer “discovered” leaks will be supplied.

(Note: The analysis doesn’t rely on the definition of the quantity supplied used here. A similar analysis based on the supply of discovered leaks, which may be easier to think about, leads to the same upward sloping supply curve. The difference is that the bonus system makes the payment for discovering a leak negative, and to account for this, the supply curve has to start at a price below zero (that is, even at a price of zero, there would be leaks discovered, so the price at which no leaks would be discovered would be below zero.)

This analysis doesn’t mean that incentive-based pay is a bad idea. It would make sense to pay to anyone responsible for preventing leaks a bonus based on fewer discovered leaks (assuming that the people in charge of discovering are different from the people in charge of preventing). What this analysis does mean, though, is that you have to match the incentives to the result you want. The price of mismatching incentives is, in some cases, very high.


Discussion questions:

1. Think of an incentive system that would have resulted in fewer leaks going undiscovered. What would be some of the drawbacks of this incentive system, particularly in terms of cost?

2. In the United States, students take standardized tests at various points in their academic career, and in some states, their teachers face dismissal if their students perform poorly on the exams. In those states there have also been reports of teachers fixing their students answers on the tests, and complaints that teachers focus on “teaching to the test,” to the exclusion of skills that cannot be tested. How are the incentives faced by teachers like the incentives faced by PG&E’s leak survey crews? How are they different?

3. What other situations do you know of where an incentive system produces undesirable results? Would the results improve more by changing the incentives or by removing the incentive system altogether?

A Penny Saved Is...

Which scenario would you prefer: (a) losing $30, or (b) losing $30, then losing $90, then regaining the original lost $30? While in most circumstances the first option is the unquestionably preferable, I recently found myself in a situation favoring the latter.

As a member of the Marin Sun Farms “meat club CSA” (community supported agriculture), I order a custom package of meats from a local farm that is delivered (frozen) once a month to a pick-up location near my home. While this arrangement offers me an excellent supply of local meat at a discounted price, the difficulty is remembering the monthly pick-up time. As disclaimed on the Marin Sun Farms website, “Packages not picked up promptly will be forfeited.”

This past Sunday I was sifting through emails when I discovered buried amongst online coupon offerings, eStatements, and a “Hello!” from mom, a reminder email sent the previous Thursday: “Pick up your CSA box today!” My heart sank as I pictured my box of grass-fed beef, lamb, and chicken slowly defrosting, decomposing, and ultimately being discarded. It had been a small shipment, only $30 worth, but nonetheless, I cringed at the waste.

Monday morning I awoke to another minor financial misfortune: a $90 parking ticket proclaiming my violation of section VC22500E – DRIVEWAY BLOCKING. D’oh! I knew when I parked that the rear of my car extended a few inches beyond the curb and into the neighboring driveway, but after half an hour searching for a spot I decided to take my chances (always thinking in economic terms, I figured that the expected cost of a ticket—equal to the true cost times the probability of actually receiving a ticket—was outweighed by the benefit from no longer looking for parking).

Chagrined by my back-to-back oversights, I called the number of the CSA pick-up location, just in case. To my surprise and relief, the woman in charge had managed to store my meat—not their usual policy—and I picked it up later that day.

By Monday night I had experienced the aforementioned $30 (perceived) loss, $90 loss, and $30 (perceived) gain, yet I felt better than I had felt on Sunday night when then I perceived only the $30 loss of meat. This may have had something to do with the order of events (after internalizing the loss of the ticket in the morning, the gain of $30 remained more salient at the end of the day), but I think it had more to do with how I perceived the true value of each loss. To a meat-loving economist, a discarded order constitutes a clear waste of resources—$30 of value—gone. The $90 parking ticket, on the other hand, represents a transfer of resources from me to the city of San Francisco, which ostensibly will put the money to use in the creation or maintenance of the public services I enjoy.

In introductory economics, we make a similar distinction between the deadweight loss and government revenue generated by taxes. Deadweight loss reflects the decrease in benefits to society (producers and consumers) resulting from fewer total transactions taking place. Economists view this loss to consumers and producers as different from the revenues a tax generates. Although both come at the direct expense of consumers and producers, the latter provides governments with the means to furnish public goods and services which indirectly benefit consumers, while the former—like rotten meat—is just no good.


Discussion Questions:

1. Why else might the $90 parking ticket be less painful than losing the meat shipment? Think about the “value” I got from time saved by parking illegally.

2. How does risk aversion factor into the decision of whether it’s worth taking the chance of doing something illegal? Consider a person who frequently speeds and occasionally gets speeding tickets. Ignoring the potential effects on others, might this too be a rational decision?

3. Consider other instances in which financial losses of the same dollar value might be felt in different ways (e.g. forgetting to take a $20 bill out of your pocket before washing it versus accidentally leaving an extra $20 as a tip on a restaurant bill?)

Low Carbs, High Fat…High Prices?

"One box will cost you $740, but if you don’t like it, you could try your luck with the Russian smuggler down the street." There are plenty of goods that might be sold based on discussions like that, but would you ever expect to hear that said about butter? Residents in Norway are currently facing a market like that, according to recent reports.

A recent diet craze emphasizing high fat and low carbs has caused a change in Norwegian consumer preferences. Fads and trends will change the equilibrium price and quantity observed in a market by shifting the demand curve. In this case, the popular new diet increased the demand for butter (shifting the demand curve to the right), while leaving the supply curve unchanged. The standard supply and demand model says a rightward shift of the demand curve leads to an increase in the equilibrium price and quantity consumed. Both of those were observed in real life, as well.

Nonetheless, changes in tastes rarely result in price fluctuations of this magnitude, so how do economists explain why the cost of butter went so high? We see increases (and decreases) in demand every day, but prices rarely swing so wildly. A closer look at the details sheds some light on the source: the government is preventing the free market from doing its work. As the Swedish Dairy Association (Svensk Mjölk) noted, Norway has “very restrictive trading policies, borderline protectionist.” That means that the Norwegian government’s policies make it very difficult (or even impossible) for foreign goods to enter the domestic market.

Though the government does this in an effort to protect Norwegian producers, protective policies like those block markets from working efficiently. When a “shock” to supply or demand occurs (in this case, an increase in demand), protectionist policies prevent foreign producers from entering the market to capture new profits. Because the trend hit quickly, and the production time for agricultural goods isn’t exactly short (you can’t just go out and rent an extra 200 cows overnight), the Norwegian market for butter appears to be relatively inelastic in the short run (that is, even a small percentage change in the quantity supplied is associated with a large percentage change in price). If this trend in preferences continues, prices will remain high until producers have time to react by expanding their farms to accommodate more livestock, hire more workers, and install more processing equipment.

Does that mean that Norwegian consumers are going to continue facing these brutal prices for the coming months? Only time will tell, but if prices persist, it would be a testament to a population stubborn enough (or wealthy enough) to stick to the latest trendy diet, and a government dedicated to hard-line international policies, even at the cost of its own citizens’ welfare.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1) A change in preferences isn’t the only way that the demand for a good can change. What are some other factors that could cause the demand for butter to increase?

2) Rather than demand returning to where it was (the end of interest in the fad diet), the equilibrium price of butter could also decrease if supply shifts. Which direction would the supply curve need to shift for that to happen? What would happen to the equilibrium quantity? What are some ways that the supply could shift in that direction?

3) Suppose the Norwegian government feels pressure to help lower butter prices. Propose a policy that would help lower prices in the market. Is there a policy that the government could use to generate revenue for itself while lowering the price of butter?

Oz Economics: Will your silver shoes carry you over the desert?

For centuries, gold and silver served as money, but not anymore. Silver went out of circulation in the late 19th century. Gold was effectively banned from circulation in the United States by the Gold Reserve Act of 1934. The last attempt to revive silver in the US as a form of money was made by the Populist Party. In particular, W. J. Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate on the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries, argued that adherence to the gold standard tightened the money supply and consequently limited access to credit. He claimed that this hurt the entire economy, especially the Midwestern farmers suffering from the deep and prolonged recession of 1890s.

The Populists’ solution was bimetallism – the use of gold and “free silver” – to increase the money supply, which in turn would help the farmers. Their efforts failed, but the debates of those days are immortalized in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. According to Henry Littlefield’s famous interpretation of Baum’s fantasy, Dorothy’s silver shoes symbolize the silver money that had to be added to the gold – the yellow brick road – in order for Dorothy’s quest to succeed.*

Money is a special asset. It exists in multiple forms and serves different functions. For example, commodity money such as silver or gold has an intrinsic value, whereas fiat money or paper money has value only as a result of government decree or law. To be used as money, any asset (commodity or fiat) must fulfill the following requirements: It must serve as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value, and a standard of deferred payment. In the modern world, it’s much easier to use paper money than silver or gold coins or bars. However, silver and gold outperform paper money when it comes to the store of value function, because inflation can potentially turn paper money into useless pieces of paper.

Gold is widely used for inflation hedging, which means that when fiat money loses value due to inflation, gold retains its value. The importance of gold as a store of value is underscored by historical price data that shows spikes in the periods of greatest macroeconomic uncertainty. Although not used as a universal medium of exchange, gold still remains an important asset. Its price among pivotal financial market indicators is on a par with Dow Jones and other major stock price indices and Treasury bills.

What about silver? In the past hundred years, it has never come close to gold in importance. The use of silver for investment was negligible until 2008. It was mostly used for industrial applications and for jewelry. Recently, the role of silver has been changing as it becomes an increasingly attractive investment. In 2010, its use as an investment commodity increased to 17 percent of total production. This resulted in an increase in the demand for silver, and consequently, a higher price.

Since then, silver has been appreciating steadily relative to gold. In September 2010, the price of silver was about $20 per ounce, whereas the price of gold was approximately $1,250 per ounce. This yields the gold-silver price ratio of 62.5, which is close to the average for the past two decades. One year later, in September 2011, an ounce of silver was traded for $30 and an ounce of gold for $1,800. Thus the gold-silver price ratio fell to 45. This suggests that silver has begun to function as a store of value and is creeping up on gold. Moreover, current technology significantly increases the liquidity of both gold and silver as assets. Not only is it possible to open an online storage account without leaving your desk, but it is also possible to trade silver and gold shares online without knowing where the metals are physically located.

The quest for a safer investment didn’t just increase the demand for gold, it also dragged silver back into the spotlight. It restored, even if temporarily, silver’s position as a store of value. Even if modern investors don't believe that a pair of silver shoes alone will carry them over the desert of economic instability, they are certainly interested in giving them a try.

* Dorothy’s ruby slippers in the MGM classic movie make no sense economically. Ruby replaced silver for the film because the red ‘popped’ more in the new Technicolor technology.


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How would expanding the money supply have helped poor farmers at the turn of the 20th century?

2. Would you be willing to accept a gold or silver bar as a means of payment today? Do you think your favorite store at the mall would? Based on your answers, would you say precious metals serve as an effective type of money in our modern society?

3. If two similar investments (like gold and silver) show very different rates of return over the same time period, do you think the investment market is in equilibrium?