| Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles 2008 Edition Contributor(s): McKenzie, Richard B. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0387769994 ISBN-13: 9780387769998 Publisher: Copernicus Books OUR PRICE: $40.49 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: May 2008 Annotation: Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies, And Other Pricing Puzzles seeks to unravel an array of pricing puzzles from the one captured in the book??'s title to why so many prices end with "9" (as in $2.99 or $179) to why ink cartridges can cost as much as printers to why stores use sales, coupons, and rebates. Along the way, economist Richard McKenzie explains how the 9/11 terrorists have killed ??? through the effects of their heinous acts on the relative prices of various modes of travel ??? more Americans since 9/11 than they killed that fateful day. Professor McKenzie also explains how well-meaning efforts to spur the use of alternative, supposedly environmentally friendly fuels have caused starvation among millions of people around the world and have given rise to the deforestation of rainforests in Malaysia and Indonesia. How can this be? If you think you already have an answer, read on. The solutions to this and other such puzzles are more sophisticated and surprising than you likely now think. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Business & Economics | Economics - General |
| Dewey: 338.521 |
| LCCN: 2008923102 |
| Physical Information: 1.06" H x 6.39" W x 9.51" (1.40 lbs) 326 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: - How Prices Matter rices are ubiquitous, so much so that their importance to the smooth operation of a market economy (even one constrained by extensive polit- P ical controls as is the case in China) can go unnoticed and unheralded. Prices are what all trades, whether at the local mall or across the globe, are built around. Tey facilitate trades among buyers and sellers who don't know each other, meaning they make less costly, or more socially benefcial, the allocation and redistribution of the planet's scarce resources. Indeed, as the late Friedrich Hayek is renowned for having observed, prices summarize a vast amount of - formation on the relative scarcity and, hence, the relative cost of resources (with much of the information subjective in nature) that can be known only by ind-i viduals scattered across markets and cannot be collected in centralized loc- tions, except through market-determined prices. 1 Because they summarize, and largely hide from view of buyers, so much i- formation spread among people throughout the world, prices can be puzzling. Why prices are what they are, and change for reasons that are obscured by a multitude of economic events that can extend backward in time and forward into the future, can be mysterious. Explaining many puzzling prices can be - tective work that the modern-day Sherlock Holmes would surely fnd challenging. |