Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Those Darn Socialists

One of the basic insights of a typical microeconomics class is why price ceilings (and floors, for that matter) can be such a bad idea.  I'm ramping up to teach our Executive MBA students this summer, so this article from Saturday's New York Times caught my eye. 

Venezuela's populist leader Hugo Chavez --- concerned about keeping the poor happy in a country with severe income inequality and an upcoming election --- has pushed through mandatory price cuts on certain basic food staples.  The idea is that if milk and juice costs less, then the poor will be better off.  

But of course the problem is that suppliers make decisions based on the price they will receive when selling goods and services in markets.  And if that price falls, then suppliers react by making fewer investments, reallocating resources to more profitable markets, producing less, etc.  

To tie this back to a lines-on-a-chart supply and demand analysis, the mandatory price cut will move us down and to the left on the industry supply curve.  And at the same time, lower prices will cause consumers to shift their demand toward these staple goods, moving down and to the right on the demand curve.  At the government-mandated-low-price, the quantity of milk demanded by consumers will exceed the quantity of milk supplied by the market.  

"Excess demand" can seem like an abstract concept when presented in a lines-on-a-chart fashion to students, but it's not at all abstract for the people of Venezuela:  According to the article, in March 42% of stores had no powdered milk.  

Imagine this:  You have two young kids and you're going through milk like crazy.  And... where you gonna get it?  You have to visit probably two and sometimes three stores, just to feed your kids.  This constant, time-wasting search for daily products is just not something we (usually) deal with here in the US...  And you can thank the fact that prices are free to move to equate supply and demand.  Think about that next time you hear a call for government regulation to stop "price-gouging" in the market for gasoline.  

And let's not even think about the ramifications of the Venezuelan toilet paper shortages.  

Yes, it's socialism, right here in the western hemisphere...  Where is the Monroe Doctrine when you need it?

But before we get on our high horse and lecture the rest of the world about the virtues of free markets and how competitive the US economy is, let's recall that we do the exact same thing here in the good ol' USA.  In today's New York Times, there's a nice article about how the Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge to New York's long-standing "rent stabilization" law.  That's right, New York State is doing to rent what Chavez is doing to powdered milk, by restricting how quickly landlords can raise rents.  

So let's compare New York to Hugo Chavez, and hand out some Econ 101 grades: 

New York State:  We need to "prevent rent profiteering."
Hugo Chavez:  We need companies to "make money in a rational way, that they don’t rob the people".

Econ 101 Grades:  F for both!  The way to prevent "profiteering" and "robbing" is to make sure markets are competitive in the first place. 

New York State:  Regulations are "a necessary response to a housing shortage".
Hugo Chavez:  "Companies cause shortages on purpose, holding products off the market to push up prices."  So again the price ceiling is a response to the shortage. 

Econ 101 Grades:  Double F again!  Price ceilings aren't the remedy for shortages, they're the cause.

Total GPA 0.00, for both.  I'm concerned that neither Hugo Chavez or the New York State Legislature will be allowed to graduate....



Thursday, April 19, 2012

Roadside MBA

I've gotten a few e-mailed questions this week about the "Roadside MBA" project, so I thought I'd explain a bit more about what we're doing, and why.

Mike Mazzeo and Paul Oyer are economists and strategy professors at Kellogg (Northwestern) and Stanford, respectively, and I helped hire both of them at Kellogg in the '90s. (Yes, they *do* owe all their successes to me. Paul especially.) Paul and I have written many articles together, and I've known Mike since we were both undergraduates at Stanford in the '80s.

About two years ago, we were on the phone discussing economics-based strategy courses for MBA students, and were lamenting the fact that the typical Harvard Business School case study focuses on Procter and Gamble, or Ford Motor Company, or Microsoft, or Pepsi, or ... somebody big with billions or hundreds of millions in annual sales.

One of us --- probably me, but I don't actually recall --- pointed out that owners and managers of small and medium-sized businesses might benefit from thinking through their problems using an "Economics-of-Strategy", principles-based approach... but that our profession doesn't always do a great job of encouraging this given that we produce a lot of "big-business" case studies. We all agreed that small business needs attention from economists interested in strategy.

So we decided to hit the road in search of stories that we could use to help translate MBA strategy frameworks for owners of small and medium-sized businesses.

Our first trip was from Memphis to Omaha in August of 2010. We went from Denver to Oklahoma City in Winter 2011, Charlotte to Atlanta in Spring 2011, Missoula to Portland in Summer 2011, and as I type this I'm on a plane headed back to Salt Lake after a weeklong tour from Chicago to Cincinnati. We typically meet in City A, rent a car, stop in Cities B, C, D and E on consecutive days, visit 3-4 businesses per day, and fly to our respective homes out of City F. We have grown to like Holiday Inn Express quite a bit, although to date they have not offered us a sponsorship deal.

(I'm sure by now you're trying to imagine what it's like to drive across America in a rental car with economists for the better part of a week. Really, it's not that bad. I mostly drive. Paul mostly navigates, and, yes, we get lost a lot. Mike sits in the back and interjects with humorous commentary on whatever argument Paul and I happen to be having. By far the worst part is Mike's continuing affection for the New York Yankees, and his constant updates on how many hits Derek Jeter has --- like I care. The winter trip was my favorite, for obvious reasons.)

To date, we've visited 100+ small and medium-size businesses. We try to set a meeting with the owner or a general manager with significant operational and strategic oversight responsibility, and we usually start by just asking for the story of the business. From there, our visits usually turn in to a conversation in which the three of us ask questions about pricing, positioning, strategy, organization, succession, or other topics, depending on what strikes us as interesting. The people we've met are, without fail, creative and energetic, passionate and thoughtful, interesting and driven. It's been really fun, and we have learned so much.

What exactly have we learned? And how can our catalog of examples, stories and mini-cases help other owners of small and medium-sized businesses? We're not telling the stories quite yet, because it's important to for us to get signoff from business owners before putting anything out there publicly. But we're in the process of cataloging, analyzing, and writing; we're hoping to get something interesting down on paper --- er, pdf --- soon.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Hitting the Road

Give me some room to warm up, so I don't strain a blogging muscle.

I will be ending my term as Associate Dean shortly (77 more days!), and I am looking forward to doing more of the things I became a professor to do... Teach, write, think, etc. Part of the "write" plan is to restart this long-dormant blog. So, hopefully people are still interested in economics out there.

I'm writing from Chicago, where I'm meeting some economist friends for another installment of the Roadside MBA. We're making a circuit from Chicago to Cincinnati this week, talking to small and medium sized businesses all along the way. There will probably be a book written sometime, but first I need to get back to the whole "write" thing. (See above). I'll post some notes as we go along this week to try to slowly ease my way back into actual thinking as opposed to being an administrator!