Gordon C. Winston

Addiction and backsliding : A theory of compulsive consumption

Abstract A time-specific model of compulsive consumption incorporates the two central characteristics of addiction: that people get hooked through use of addictive commodities and that people often are of two minds, simultaneously wanting to consume an addictive commodity and to avoid it. The paper demonstrates the importance of modeling that stable and bounded human non-constancy that is ruled out by orthodox equilibrium analysis: it induces ‘anti-market’ selling consumption avoidance; it creates consumer conflict and the need for self-control; it implies the possible welfare superiority of blind hedonism over expected utility maximization.

Why Can't a COLLEGE Be More Like a FIRM

A sophisticated and widespread intuition is supported by our experience with business firms. And it is confirmed, influenced, and expanded by the formal microeconomic analysis of those firms and their markets. This paper asks if that theory and intuition are helpful for understanding colleges and universities and the higher education “industry.”

Affordability Family Incomes and Net Prices at Highly Selective Private Colleges and Universities

Working from the financial aid records of individual students at 28 highly selective private colleges and universities, we were able to calculate both the price the low-income students at these schools actually pay for a year’s education, net of financial aid grants, and how the schools differentiate net price in recognition of their students’ different family incomes—their pricing policies.

Where is Aggressive Price Competition Taking Higher Education

It is increasingly clear that price competition is escalating in the market for higher education. We attempt to understand how price competition would work in higher education and explore the likely long run equilibrium structure of prices in that context. We draw inferences using both microeconomic theory and historical parallels found in the market for graduate education. Our analysis suggests that negative prices are likely to prevail at the wealthiest colleges and universities. Using data from IPEDS we estimate the resulting distribution of prices and school quality. While price competition may increase attendance by low income students at the wealthiest colleges and universities, it is unclear how they will fare at schools with middling wealth and resources. Further, schools with less accumulated wealth will be particularly vulnerable to any ensuing price competition. While our conclusions must be interpreted with caution, they do suggest some cause for alarm.

The economics of academic tenure: A relational perspective

Abstract This analysis draws on recent work in analytical labor economics that shows the value of stable long-term employment relationships. Tenure is conventionally portrayed as an economically wasteful institution justified (if at all) by its non-economic value. The present analysis identifies ways in which an extended probationary period followed by a lifetime guarantee of a well-defined job is well adapted to features of academic work. The most important of these are: (a) the difficulty of monitoring faculty work performance, and the highly specific character of (b) faculty jobs, and (c) the training those jobs require. The probation-tenure system is contrasted with term contracting. Case studies support the theoretical inferences about the drawbacks of term contracting in an academic setting.

Activity choice: A new approach to economic behavior☆

Abstract An individuals work and consumption behavior is modeled as the outcome of an optimal choice among activities at each moment within a ‘day’. The model describes the time-shapes of his demand for goods and services, labor supply, and activities within the day and it allows the analysis of choices in which unusually complex motivations are incorporated. It is applicable to questions of job satisfaction, peak demands, shift working and capital utilization, estimation of ‘the value of time’, goal and process utilities, intrinsic and extrinsic satisfactions, ‘labor’ versus ‘labor power’, and to the issues of compulsive consumption and self-control.

Saving, Wealth, Performance, and Revenues in U.S. Colleges and Universities.

New data on institutional saving illuminate U.S. higher education policy questions in a number of different ways. In the data lies a description of how various types of schools are doing financially and whether their present behavior is sustainable. The data complete the picture of the sources and uses of revenue, which helps to pin down the degree to which the charitable mission of these schools is responsible for their income. They describe a limit to aggressive price reductions. Lastly, they allow for some projections of what the economic structure of higher education will look like in the future.

Imperfectly rational choice: Rationality as the result of a costly activity

Abstract In identifying characteristics of people and of their choices that determine their degree of rationality — the nature and incidence of imperfect rationality — this paper suggests that there are often observable criteria by which to judge the applicability of the rational choice model to a particular market or choice situation. Clearer understanding will cut both ways, bringing more of non-economic behavior into the productive domain of rational choice analysis while at the same time showing economic, and non-economic, behavior that is badly modeled by the assumption of rational decision makers.

The Boundaries of economics

This volume examines themes that complicate the conventional economists view of the world and thereby provide for a notably more complex, and humane, subject of study than the traditional Homo economicus. Written by economists and philosophers, these essays attempt to place neoclassical economic theory, especially conventional textbook micro-economic theory, in the broader context of other social sciences and modern economics. In doing so, the book aims to find the boundaries of economics and to define more sharply its relationship to other kinds of inquiry. Though the widespread use of textbook microtheory in business, economic, and political analysis is a clear testament to its power, the restrictions and artificialities of neoclassical assumptions give cause for worry even to many economists. This book examines the extent to which the economists paradigm - that man is characterized chiefly by self-interested goals and rational choice of means - is useful in studying traditional noneconomic fields such as philosophy, political theory, and rhetoric. It also looks at how insights from other disciplines are changing - and perhaps improving - the current practice of economics.

Shift Working, Employment, and Economic Development: A Study of Industrial Workers in Pakistan

There is growing pressure in less developed countries to utilize existing industrial plant and equipment at higher levels-to economize on scarce capital simply by operating it more of the time.1 The underlying problem is illustrated by recent estimates that industrial capital stocks in both Pakistan and Korea are idle over 85 percent of the time;2 clearly, there is considerable scope for increasing both output and employment by higher utilization. Increased utilization of capital appears to be seductively costless-an effectively larger capital stock seems to be got with negligible