Marketing theory contains the idea of points of parity and points of difference. In some ways, these are very logical. A point of difference is where you have an attribute of the product that is different from the competition. A point of parity is when you match the competition. Balancing Points Of Parity And Points…
Category: Public Policy
People Are Generally Reasonable Decision-Makers
An interesting discussion in behavioral science is the nature of humans as decision-makers. There often seems to be an assumption in the literature that people are terrible decision-makers. Consumers, members of the public, and voters are seen as battered by a host of errors and biases. This is partly because papers showing people making a…
Bias And Public Policy Discussions
Reading Zeke Hernandez’s excellent book, The Truth About Immigration, makes clear some challenges we experience given bias in public policy discussions. All of us have — to a greater or lesser extent — a skewed view of the world. This can impact public policy when enough of us have the same skewed views. We might…
A Positive Case For Immigration
Zeke Hernandez’s book The Truth About Immigration tackles one of the most contentious topics in modern politics. He examines the impact of immigration on society. Critically, he advocates for a view based upon a better understanding of the impact of immigration on the societies that receive people. In doing so he makes a positive case…
Negative Externalities Reduce Public Welfare
Christoper Marquis has a follow-up to his book on the B Corp movement, see here. This has many of the same qualities I admired in the earlier book. The best bits explain how business can be better. He has some excellent examples where businesses are making a positive contribution to the world. That said, the…
Criticizing Your Own Side
Political books can be a bit predictable. The challenge is often that right-wing people criticize the left-wing or left-wing people criticize the right-wing. This means you know where it is going before the book even starts. Depending upon your views, some comments might resonate more with you than others but the comments aren’t at all…
Experts Need To Take Public Policy Interventions Seriously
Public policy recommendations are one way academics seek to influence the world. That said, I fear we often don’t give our recommendations much thought. They are tacked onto the end of papers to make the years of work done on the problem seem important enough to publish. This week, rather than look at a paper…
Sludges And Nudges
Cass Sunstein is a law professor who worked in the Obama White House. He dealt with matters of regulation, and has a keen interest in how (generally bad) program design and administration prevents action, e.g., sludge. He also is an expert on behavioral economics — he wrote Nudge with Richard Thaler. The idea of sludge…
What If I’m Wrong?
The Population Bomb shared Paul Ehrlich’s predictions about the future. After his doom-laden warnings about mass starvation and the need for population control, by compulsion if necessary, Ehrlich asked, “What if I’m wrong?” What if his Malthusian thinking is a mistake? (See here for Malthus). The author was trying to make the point that it…
Population As A Disaster
Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968. I read a version printed in 1988 which had a 1978 update. It is a gloomy book that makes bold claims of famine and crises. There have certainly been problems in the last 55 years but nothing like Ehrlich predicted. It is an over-the-top book written by…
