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This is not a post about academia, economics, or game theory. It is a post about life.
Today I am going to meet my French teacher for our weekly session, and I wanted to prepare an interesting topic for discussion. I pondered what can be an appropriate subject, and the words “the most gifted woman in the world” popped into my mind. Who is that woman and what did she do?
I typed “The most” in Google search bar. Auto-complete had few suggestions:
The most violent year
The most expensive car
The most expensive watch
The most dangerous game
The most beautiful woman
I went on. “The most gifted”. Auto-complete tried to read my mind:
The most gifted psychics
The most gifted child in the world
The most gifted man who ever lived
The tenth option was
The most gifted rapper in Nigeria
yet no mention of women.
Let’s continue. “The most gifted wo”. In how many ways can you complete this search? Two.
The most gifted child in the world
The most gifted person in the world
Fine, let’s add another letter. “The most gifted wom”.
Nothing. Not a single auto-completion. I beat Google. Probably everyone else know the answer and therefore nobody looked for it before me.
I am a stubborn guy. “The most gifted woman in the world”. Google is even more stubborn than me. They figured out that I mistyped my search phrase, and made few suggestions, in which the word “woman” was replaced by another boldfaced word: “child” and “person”. In fact, they thought that it is more probable that I search for “The most gifted psychics review” than for a gifted woman. Does this say something about me, about Google, or about the phrases that we search on the internet?
I did not give up and pressed “Enter”. The list that I got involved only (female) singers. Only? Almost. The tenth link was to “Support for Gifted Mothers: America Is Not a World Leader”.
I suspected that my misunderstanding with Google is due to language issues, and that the word “gifted” might refer to people’s vocal abilities, so I searched for “The most gifted man in the world”. Unfortunately I did not get any male singer. The first three pages referred me to the TV series “A Gifted Man”, number 30 pointed to King Solomon on a christian site, yet the title of number 32 was more promising: “Ten People with Unbelievable Talents”. Yes, I told myself, I finally got a proof that our world is full of chauvinism. I clicked on the link and found out that the most talented person in the list succeeded in pulling a truck with his XXXX. I did not bother to check the achievements of the other nine.
If this is the most significant accomplishment of men, no wonder auto-completion failed.
Stanford University, based in California, has once again anticipated the future. In addition to providing subsidized housing to attract and retain faculty, faculty can now choose to be paid in water. The University has quietly been buying up farms to acquire ownership of water rights and has even signed futures contracts with the Great Lakes Regional Water authority for the delivery of water 15 years from now. In addition they have a joint venture with Elon Musk, to harvest water from comets. Google meanwhile, is behind the curve. They’ve only gone as far as allowing their employees to take long showers on site.
Having caught your eye, I direct you to an article in the April 9, 2015 edition of the Grey Lady. It discusses attempts by various countries to boost domestic birthrates. The same issue had been considered earlier by Noah Smith. There are two questions lurking here. First, what is the optimal population size for a country? If the goal was to shrink the population then a declining birth rate is not a bad thing. Suppose the goal is keep the population fixed, because, say of pension obligations. Then, one wants a replacement birth rate of roughly 2 per couple.
If the birth rate is below the target, what should one do? Interestingly, I cannot recall anyone I have asked or read who does not turn to Government interventions of various kinds. Noah Smith, for example, only discusses Government interventions before concluding one should imitate the French. If the birth rate is below what is optimal for society, why doesn’t the market take care of it? Do we have a missing market? Is this a public goods problem? (If so, then, Mankiw who is often castigated for being a selfish beast, is, in this case, an unstinting provider of public goods, see here.)
Analogies are sometimes helpful (if biology is the study of bios, life; geology is the study of geos, earth, what does that make analogy?). Farmers plant crops and after a period, the fruits of their labor are harvested and sent to market. The Farmer must anticipate what will be demanded in the future to decide what to plant now. What if she plants turnips when what is desired are parsnips? This problem is solved with a futures market for parsnips (or turnips or pork etc). Why not a futures market for babies? Those who want warm bodies in the future to support them in their dotage pay for babies now. Swiftian, I know, but interesting to consider. Once one thinks about how to implement the idea, difficulties emerge. One might, for example, be concerned with moral hazard on the part of parents. However, these same difficulties are present even with various Government subsidies.
According to the NY Times, some Californians
would have to cut their water consumption by 35 percent under the terms of a preliminary plan issued by state officials on Tuesday to meet a 25 percent mandatory statewide reduction in urban water use.
There is an obvious way to achieve this, raise the price of water. If its obvious why isn’t it the first thing California did some years back when it was clear that water was scarce? In some cases the hands of the state are tied by water rights allocated for commercial purposes, so lets focus on household consumption.
We know that the first tool the state reaches for is regulation. See, for example, the following memo from the California State water board. Interestingly, it begins by noting that the state is in the 4th year of a drought! Eventually, it is clear that regulation is insufficient and then, price increases are considered. In fact, the water reduction targets quoted from the NY Times above come from a report by the Governor of the state that also urges the use of
rate structures and other pricing mechanisms
to achieve reductions. Again, why is price last rather first? Is this because the state must maintain a credible reputation for not exploiting its monopoly power with water?
If one is going reduce consumption by raising prices, should it be an across the board price increase? Note that consumption is metered so the exact amount that is purchased by a household is known to the provider. The state also has access to other information: location, home size, family size and income. In principle, the state could price discriminate. Here is an example from the Irvine Ranch Water district. Each household is given an initial `allotment’ that depends on household size and area that is landscaped. Exceed the allotment and the price of water rises. For more details and the impact on consumption see the following paper. Is it obvious that this is the `correct’ mechanism?
The Leisure of the Theory Class 
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