Phasing in a no-tipping policy, Danny Meyer will eliminate tipping decisions, raise prices, change server pay and increase what the kitchen staff earns.…
Weekly Roundup: From Robot Servers to Shrimp Farmers
Our everyday economics includes wages, externalities, productivity, income, tradeoff, taxes, fiscal policy, gender, human capital and comparative advantage.…
Why Ronald McRobot Will Soon Serve Us
A minimum wage hike causes labor intensive fast food restaurants to exit the market, capital intensive restaurants to enter and the number of jobs to drop.…
A New Message From Starbucks
Worried about losing sales to upscale brands, Starbucks is using competitive strategies to increase demand from affluent customers.…
Weekly Roundup: From Fed Humor to the Wisdom of Warren Buffett
Our Posts Roundup Sunday 3.01.15 Handy notes from Warren Buffett…more Monday 3.02.15 The basics of Greek tax evasion…more Tuesday 3.03.15 Insight about airline queues…more Wednesday …
Weekly Roundup: From Drinking Behavior to Dating Decisions
This week’s everyday economics involved 6 economists and such ideas as product differentiation, behavioral economics, marginal utility, price and trade.…
Why We Should Look More Closely At the Size of Our Soda
The 6-ounce bottle of Coke was the king of soda when an upstart company called Pepsi-Cola sold a 12-ounce bottle for the same price. The year was 1934 and the price was 5 cents. Pepsi’s competit…
Starbucks Drive-Through Economics
My new Starbucks has a drive-through. If you look at a high shelf near the window through which the baristas hand the coffee and food to drivers, you see a screen with little cars and numbers. Changin…
State By State Gender Pay Gaps
At 15 cents, the gender wage gap is smallest in Vermont and Nevada. It expands to 36 cents in Wyoming. Comparing all women to all men, though, is tricky. We have the single female professionals who ha…
Innovation: The Cup Holder
Steve Jobs once said, “It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.” I suspect that automakers were thinking like Steve Jobs when they gave us the cup holder. The story of the cup holder begins…