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Testing Testing 1 2 3 Is this thing on?

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Blog Post 4: Illini Bucks

The example that comes to my mind when I think of the Illini bucks concept is parking. Personally, I have had an enormous amount of trouble with parking here at uiuc and I know I'm not the only one. In the scenario that I am thinking of, Illini bucks can be used to allow the buyer to buy preferential parking spaces (closer to their classes/apartment, off the street, covered or in a garage, etc.) It is important to note that the Illini bucks don't actually buy the parking spot, they just allow the buyer the ability to buy the spot. One change that would have to be made from the scenario that Professor Arvan outlined in the prompt would be that there would have to be other options for using Illini bucks other than for parking spaces, and the system for using the Illini bucks for parking spaces would have to be mediated by bidding. Without these two assumptions, everyone would just use all of their Illini bucks to buy the same level of access and the currency would be useless. ...
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Blog Post 9: Principle-Agent model triangles

This variation of the principle-agent model is actually a significant problem that I faced when working as a swim instructor a few summers ago. The two principles that I had at the time were my boss who coordinated the private lessons that we scheduled, the parents of the children that I was teaching. These private lessons were scheduled to be half an hour and the parent is instructed to pay before entering the pool. Each lesson is a flat rate with no discounts given for multiple lessons. It is also the same rate for multiple children to be in the same lesson. As the agent, I was expected to be there 15 minutes early to collect equipment, formulate a lesson plan and then mark out an area of the pool for the lesson to take place in. The pool had to be claimed, because these lessons often occurred during free swim hours at the pool. The conflict between the principles idea of high and low effort usually revolved around the amount of time that the lesson consumed. Even with the 15 minut...
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Blog Post 2: Opportunism

I have always found opportunism an interesting moral area. Often it is portrayed as evil or comedic in movies, for example when a main character needs information and is held up for exorbitant sums of money in exchange. These hold up scenarios are complex because from an economic standpoint, there is nothing wrong with them. The main character is leaving with a small amount of surplus even after parting with so much money (or else he wouldn't have paid that much) and the supplier of the information is gaining a large surplus from the basically "free" cash. Now from an economics viewpoint, this could also be considered a monopoly or gouging depending on the situation, both of which are illegal in the United States. And this is where the morality comes in. While economics finds that both gouging and monopolies can be the optimal market outcome in some situations, morally, we know that isn't usually the case. The same goes for these opportunistic exchanges. Like in a m...
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