Megamart (the discount chain run by Arvind Brands) has a really weird discount policy. Usually, the discounting mechanism that clothing stores follow is progressive discounting – the more you buy the more discount you get. In fact, even Megamart was following this practice a few months back. “Buy one get 20% off; buy two and…
Marginal cost of flying
The problem with all these 1 rupee – 2 rupee offers in indian aviation is that they aren’t really that cheap. On top of this you have the various taxes and user charges which come up to some Rs. 1500 (I’m not sure of the exact number). What has effectively happened is that these charges…
Temple food
During my recent pilgrimage, three of my four meals were at temples – two at the Horanadu temple and one at Sringeri. For the fourth meal, we took a conscious decision that a temple meal may not be suitable for an overnight bus journey on a bumpy road, so we ate at a restaurant.
Looking for porn in Sringeri
Now that this half-blasphemous title is out of the way, let me get straight to the point. Actually I think a bit of beating around the bush is warranted. When I read Tyler Cowen’s Discover Your Inner Economist, I wasn’t sure if i would be quoting part of this book on my blog. However, considering…
SLV Banashankari 2nd Stage
Around this time last year, I was doing a series of blog posts on delivery and revenue management practices in restaurants in Bangalore. My apologies for not updating on that series for so long. This morning I had my breakfast at SLV in Banashankari 2nd stage (near the BDA complex; opposite the park next to…
Correction
In a post I wrote a month back, I had talked about Predicatably Irrational Traffic – in which I talked about a bunch of motorists collectively jumping a signal which they deemed unfair. Now, having read “The Logic of Life” a couple of weeks back, I’m not sure the heading of that was correct. I’m…
Scrap the spending limit
There are two notable things regarding the ongoing elections in Karnataka. The first is the presence of a large number of real estate developers in the elections. The second is the virtual non-existence of corruption, rather the removal of it, in party manifestos. These two points, I believe, are not independent. Under the current system,…
Rice prices
Recently, Tyler Cowen wrote in the New York Times saying that lack of free trade in rice and growing protectionism is not a good thing from the long-term perspective. IAS Officer Gulzar Natarajan (now with the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation) took him on and elaborated as to why protectionism might be necessary. I left the following…
The met department and randomness
Ok. Nothing unusual about the title of this post. There is intuitively a lot of randomness where the met department is concerned. This post is about an editorial in the Business Standard. Now, the Indian Met department used a new process for forecasting the monsoons last year. Now, this process yielded good results in the…
Being a jack of many trades
Earlier today, I had written that bosses are unlikely to trust employees who they think have the option of easily quitting their jobs. I had made the point back then that you shouldn’t take a job for which you are over-qualified. Thinking about it, it strikes me that if you are versatile, you face a…
option to escape
From The Logic of Life – “your option to escape means you cannot be relied upon”. Harford makes this point while he is talking about “acting white”. That black kids who work hard at acads are discouraged by family and peers because they are now getting an option to exit the misery. It’s the old…
Tim Harford
I first came across Tim Harford when Tyler Cowen linked to his blog some six-seven months back. He used to blog fairly prolifically back then, and I used to enjoy reading it. In the matter of a couple of months, he had upstaged Tyler to become my favourite econ-blogger (that position currently belongs to Arnold…
Now it’s the turn of the economists
To fear the engineers that is. It seems like TCA Srinivasa Raghavan had an extremely tight deadline with respect to his analysis of the Raghuram Rajan Report. So, instead of taking on the report, he decides to go after the chief author instead. And he doesn’t even do a good job of this. He goes…
On dumping tomatoes, burning wheat and leaving stands unsold
About a month back, I’d written that farmers in Karnataka, when faced with a glut in the tomato crop, elect to throw sack loads of tomatoes on the highways, rather than selling them. During the great depression in America, sack loads of wheat were burnt in order to prevent wheat prices from falling. During the…
Coffee pricing at Chalukya
The pricing of coffee at the Samrat restaurant (part of Hotel Chalukya on Race Course Road) is interesting. This is a popular old restaurant, and being in an area full of government offices, is perennially crowded (despite its large size). It is a sit-down kind of restaurant, though you might have to share a table…
Water privatization in Kundapur
A couple of years back, in a blog post (part of which also went into a project report), I’d talked about water privatization. I had said that it is a good thing even if it pushes up costs, because it now offers people the option to get piped water supply. The analysis went something like:…
Sugarcane Markets
Ah, no. Don’t get psyched by the title. This is not about agriculture, and will not be cross-posted on the Indian Economy Blog. This is more to do with the festival today. Sankranthi. The basic activity during the festival is that you visit some N houses and give them a stick of sugarcane each (along…
Coffee segmentation and take away and food courts
I really like the way the coffee market in India is segmented. You have a clear distinction of cafe and coffee shop. If you just want a quick tasty caffeine kick, you just go to one of the cafes (Darshini types) and for some 6-7 rupees you’ll get excellent steaming and strong filter coffee. However,…
Teaching Economics: Part Two
Madman Aadisht has extended my earlier post to talk about why Economics toppers from DU don’t necessarily need to clear in their concepts. He talks about the admission process and the internal examination process and the course content to arrive at this particular conclusion. So what could be done to fix it? There is no…
Teaching Economics: Part One
Ok I thought this conversation merits a post. Given my writer’s block, I’ll just copy paste it here. And i’m adding some links to the conversation now. The counterparty to this conversation is of course sw_aadisht . You can find his blog here .
The Sugarcane Mess
The situation with the sugar industry has gotten more bizarre, with the Allahabad HC stepping in and mandating that the mills buy sugarcane at Rs. 110 per kilo and start processing. While on first thought, it seems quite funny that the high court is getting into matters it shouldn’t get into, such as fixing of…