Monday, December 17, 2012

We are number 12

The Legatum Institute in England has a ranking of nations by prosperity. Prosperity is more in their index than simple per-capital income. It includes a variety of other factors such as health, safety, governance, and personal freedom. The U.S. has fallen out of the top ten for the first time that the index has been computed. We are now at 12.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

McArdle on price discrimination

Megan McArdle has an interesting piece on Groupon and pricing discrimination:

Coupons basically serve two functions for businesses--advertising, and price discrimination.  Advertising means it brings in new customers by making them aware of your service, or giving them an incentive to try it.  Price discrimination, on the other hand, is what food processors do with grocery store coupons: it lets them sell their products to customers who are very price sensitive, without lowering the price paid by people who are too busy or embarassed to clip coupons.
As far as I can tell, small businesses viewed Groupons largely as the former....

The problem is that for consumers, it seems mostly to have been about price discrimination....