Market Power

Report: Scalper Claims St. Louis Cops Kept $2,000 After Arrest

Report here.

Pizza Sauce

This is a recipe that I found over at Allrecipes.com that I modified using some of the suggestions given by users.

• 1 15 oz can tomato sauce
• 1 6 oz can tomato paste
• 2 t oregano
• 2 t basil
• 1/2 t sugar (white)
• 1 t paprika
• 1/2 t onion powder
• 1 clove of fresh garlic, minced
• 1/2 t of olive oil

Instead of the sauce and paste, 21 ounces of tomato puree can be used.

I combined the ingredients in a mixing bowl and stirred until it was smooth.  One batch is enough to cover three 14-inch pizzas. 

Explaining Bloated Bureaucracies

Parkinson was crystallising, with tongue half in cheek, classic work done by the German sociologist Max Weber in the early 20th century. Weber described the attributes of an ideal bureaucracy and possible "degenerating" influences - such as any system of promotion not based wholly on merit. Parkinson's own analysis spawned other, more po-faced and politically charged critiques of public bureaucracies from economists such as William Niskanen, who served on US President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. Niskanen theorised that bureaucracies grow because officials seek to increase the budgets they control and so boost their own salary, power and standing. He and other conservatives used such arguments to push for smaller government - but they could not give any supporting quantitative insight into the growth of bureaucracies.

The new work aims to do just that. "Parkinson's essays weren't quantitative," says Klimek, "but they're so clear that it's easy to cast them into specific mathematical models." From a simple system of equations using quantities such as the promotion and drop-out rates within a hierarchical body, a "phase diagram" can be computed to show what conditions breed ever greater bureaucracy. A high probability of promotion coupled with the hiring of more subordinates - the scenario Parkinson described- is unsurprisingly a recipe for particularly fast growth.

Story here.  There's also an explanation of how work, if you want to call it that, gets done in bureaucracies.  Plus there is an explanation why committees don't work with 20 members or with 8 members.

HT to my colleagues Ved Sharma and Bob Simonson

Report: Cubs Sold to Tom Ricketts

Story here.  Here's why Mark Cuban did not buy the Cubs in his own words.  Andy Kessler at Forbes has other thoughts about Cuban's attempt to buy the Cubs.

Keep in mind that like the local country club or Moose lodge, an American professional sports league is a club and you get to join the club if and only if the members say so.  That means that you, as a member, have to make the club members better off in some way, shape, or form.  Mark Cuban has the reputation of being bombastic, a reputation that I, as a Cubs fan, would have loved to see at the head of the Cubs.  But I can see why some owners would view him as a potential headache.

San Diego Lawyers Sue the Chargers - Without Telling the City or the Chargers

Video here. 

Via an email from Doc.

In related news, citizens of the city of Industry, Ca., a suburb of LA voted 60-1 (you read that right) to issue $150 million in bonds to help pay for infrastructure to build a new stadium in the city.  It is hoped that the city will be able to lure an NFL team, possibly the Chargers.  No doubt the NFL will use this as a way to extract maximum rents from local governments.

Brad Humphreys on Sports and the Economy

Brad Humphreys did a live discussion at the Globe and Mail this afternoon about sports and the economy.  Here is his discussion (via TSE).

The Idiossey - An Epic Poem (Sort of)

IowaHawk has penned what is surely to become an instant internet classic:  The Idiossey - a Poem of Obamacles. 

Black and White Pictures of New York City 1890-1970's

Here is a website with about 200 B&W photographs, with captions, of NYC. I love looking at black and white photos of city buildings.  Found over at Fark.

Vic Matheson on the Economic Impact of the Inauguration

Form Vic at TSE

Bryan Engelhardt, Rob Baumann, and I ran the numbers for employment in Washington during inaugural years and came up with the usual answer for mega-events: inaugurations have no statistically significant impact on employment and are as likely to worsen the employment picture as improve it.

The big difference between sports mega-events and the inauguration is the policy prescription. People like us as well as Rob Baade, Phil Porter, Dennis Coates, and Brad Humphreys, among others, deride studies purporting a large economic impact from mega-events in order to limit public subsidies. In the case of the inauguration, however, the opposite conclusion could be reached. Our results could easily be used to justify national subsidization of D.C.'s big party. Washington is not competing with others to host the event. Indeed, the inauguration is thrust upon the city. The inauguration is not being undertaken primarily to enrich private parties but instead is constitutionally mandated. If the event crowds out more economic activity than it generates, there is clear justification for D.C. to request subsidies to host the event.

While the NFL requires large payments from cities for the "privilege" of hosting the Super Bowl, D.C. can rightly request large payments from the rest of the country for the burden of hosting the inauguration. Of course, only one of these subsidy requests is backed up by the numbers.

Lest we forget, Dubya, as one of his last actions in office, declared a state of emergency for the inauguration so that fed money would be available for DC.  Now all we need is some creative politician to grant that Super Bowls, Final Fours, Daytonas, and Sturgis Bike rallies are all emergencies.  Hell why not?  Even Larry Flint was looking for a handout.

Looking at Lowering the Drinking Age

John McCardell answers questions about lowering the drinking age from Radley Balko (via Glenn Reynolds).  An excerpt:

Q: Why lower the drinking age?

A: We’ve had a law on the books for 24 years now. You don’t need an advanced degree to see that the law has utterly failed. Seventy-five percent of high school seniors have consumed alcohol. Sixty-six percent of high school sophomores have.

The law abridges the age of majority. It hasn’t reduced consumption but has only made it riskier. Finally, it has disenfranchised parents and removed any opportunity for adults to educate or to model responsible behavior about alcohol.

Q: Do you favor setting the federal drinking age at 18 or removing federal involvement altogether?

A: I would defer to the Constitution, which gives the federal government no authority to set a national federal drinking age at all. It’s clearly supposed to be left to the states. So the first thing we need to do is cut out the 10 percent penalty [in federal highway funds to states that refuse to adopt the minimum age of 21], then let the states make their own policies.

Read the whole thing, as they say. 

The local authorities busted 127 people at an off-campus party recently, mostly for underage drinking.  No doubt the authorities and local supporters of alcohol abstinence will see that as a major victory.