Having an ugly boyfriend
The Economics of an Ugly Boyfriend
By DANIEL HAMERMESH
Naked self-promotion: the third edition of my book, Economics Is Everywhere (Worth Publishers), has just appeared. It contains little articles like those I have included on this blog (and, no doubt, some of the posts from this blog will be included in the fourth edition). I love many of the stories, but my all-time favorite from among the 700 that have been in the book’s various editions combines several basic economic ideas:
One of the students came up with what is perhaps the most amusing negative externality example that I have heard in my teaching career.
Her roommate is beautiful, but her roommate’s boyfriend, so she says, is very, very ugly. No problem, except that the roommate has a poster-sized photograph of the boyfriend on the wall on her side of the room, a poster that my student has to view whenever she is on her own side of the room.
I ask my student why, if the guy is so ugly, her roommate goes out with him, and she answers, “He goes to Harvard."
By DANIEL HAMERMESH
Naked self-promotion: the third edition of my book, Economics Is Everywhere (Worth Publishers), has just appeared. It contains little articles like those I have included on this blog (and, no doubt, some of the posts from this blog will be included in the fourth edition). I love many of the stories, but my all-time favorite from among the 700 that have been in the book’s various editions combines several basic economic ideas:
One of the students came up with what is perhaps the most amusing negative externality example that I have heard in my teaching career.
Her roommate is beautiful, but her roommate’s boyfriend, so she says, is very, very ugly. No problem, except that the roommate has a poster-sized photograph of the boyfriend on the wall on her side of the room, a poster that my student has to view whenever she is on her own side of the room.
I ask my student why, if the guy is so ugly, her roommate goes out with him, and she answers, “He goes to Harvard."
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