Tag: CBS

Life in Pieces — Flight Vouchers

 

Colleen and Matt are at the airport waiting for their flight, but it’s overbooked. They realize that they can receive flight vouchers for volunteering to wait for the next flight. Throughout the day, they continue to volunteer to be moved to the next flight until the last flight of the day is cancelled. The two end up missing their own wedding, but they are compensated with the “free hotel.” The scene outlines the value of time that people have in their willingness to delay their travel, but it also shows the potential risk of not making it somewhere.

Thanks to Peach for the clip suggestion!

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Life in Pieces — Unbundling the Shoes

 

At their family garage sale, John tries to sell a pair of shoes as separate items. By unbundling the items, he offers one shoe for 50 cents, but the second shoe as $10. He almost gets tricked when the shopped is buying the shoes for her husband who only has one leg, but John tries to quickly back-peddle. This form of price discrimination is the opposite of a bulk discount.

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Life in Pieces — The Stress of Regifting

 

Joan tries to give Jen and Greg a gift certificate for a couples massage because of how stressed they are. It turns out that Greg and Jen had already given her that gift certificate and caught her in the act of regifting the item. Joan claims they didn’t really need it because they were never really stressed so it was better to just give it back. One of the transactional issues of gift giving is that it’s hard to know exactly what the other person values, which creates losses in surplus.

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Life in Pieces — Death and Wills

 

John and Joan go to see Jen about getting a will done since they don’t have one already. Joan points out that she thought they were covered, but John is scared of wills since everyone he knows that has died has had a will. He seems to be mixing up correlation with causation.

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Young Sheldon — 1989 Technology

Radio Shack was a huge part of Sheldon’s life because of all the great technology tools available. In this scene, Sheldon describes the benefits of having a new computer and tries to convince his mom to purchase one so that they can be more productive. A computer costing $998 in 1989 would be equivalent to about $2000 in 2018 dollars. Sheldon is not initially successful in convincing his mom.

While some technology gains are productivity enhancing, at the end of this episode, we see that the gains aren’t the same for everyone.

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Young Sheldon — Productivity and Technology

The Cooper Family decides to purchase a new computer after Sheldon convinces his mother about all the things it could do for the family. Sheldon shows his parents how their life is a bit easier because of the benefits of the computer. Not all of the members of the family experience the technology gains, but instead have gains in happiness.

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Young Sheldon — Germaphobe

Sheldon is a bit of a germaphobe and flu season may be the worst time for him. While one sneeze could be caused by a variety of different items, someone who is sick may be contagious and harm others. Having the flu can impose a variety of external costs on others if they get sick. These externalities often plague college classrooms around exam time though, but it’s not as convincing of a story as The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome.

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Life in Pieces — Coupons as gifts

Matt isn’t the best at giving gifts and he’s realizing that this year. Matt gives his wife a homemade coupon book that she decides to finally cash in to show him how awful the gifts are. After a while he doesn’t work as hard, but then at family dinner he finds out that no one really appreciates his gifts because it doesn’t seem like he puts much thought into them. There is a small line about positive externalities because Jen got a flu shot for her birthday once, which her husbands announces was “the gift that keeps on giving.”

Life in pieces also has another great clip on opportunity cost that’s worth checking out!

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Superior Donuts — Food Truck Competition

A new food truck sets up shop outside the donut store. The clip starts with the new owner coming by and asking how long the shop has been in business and what kind of customers stop by. She quickly realizes that she can setup shop and steal some of the existing customers. This clip does a really good job showing how monopolistically competitive markets function and that even though an imperfect substitute enters the market, the demand for one business decreases.

 

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Young Sheldon — Go for it!

Young Sheldon teaches his family about the statistics behind going for it on 4th down. A lot of football fans believe you just have to punt, but studies by economists like David Romer show that it’s often better to go for it on 4th down than to punt. The famous Pulaski Academy coach who never punts became a bit hit after being interviewed by ESPN. The NY Times even created a Twitter bot that would tweet about whether teams should punt or go for it and the bot tweets during NFL games.

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