{"id":9496,"date":"2013-08-21T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/?p=9496"},"modified":"2013-08-20T23:33:23","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T03:33:23","slug":"the-economics-of-lobster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/2013\/the-economics-of-lobster\/","title":{"rendered":"The Economics Of Lobster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/082113_0330_TheEconomic1.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"424\" \/><\/p>\n<p>James Surowiecki looked at the surprisingly complex economics of lobster:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In 2005 lobster used to cost $6 a pound. Today it can go as low as $2.20 a pound.<\/li>\n<li>Yet in American restaurants lobster dishes are just as expensive as ever.<\/li>\n<li>This is partly due to the uncertainty of supply. If restaurants were to cut the price of lobster items, and then see the price of lobster spike, they would have a hard time raising prices again.<\/li>\n<li>When people can&#8217;t evaluate a product before purchasing it \u2013 such as in a restaurant \u2013 they often assume a positive correlation between price and quality. Thus if restaurants were to mark down the price of lobster, people might think that their lobster wasn&#8217;t very good.<\/li>\n<li>People also enjoy items that are more expensive if they&#8217;re associated with luxury \u2013 as lobster is. By reducing prices diners would enjoy their lobster less.<\/li>\n<li>Eateries may also want to keep the price of lobster high so that the rest of their menu items look cheap by comparison.<\/li>\n<li>Restaurants have found ways to serve cheaper lobster dishes without offending the image of lobster as a high class product. Lobster bisque, mac and cheese, and B.L.T. are not uncommon menu items these days.<\/li>\n<li>Ultimately lobster is not a commodity \u2013 it is now a luxury product \u2013 and so price has little to do with cost.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Read about the time when servants would demand that they not be fed lobster more than three times a week, how lobster came to be associated with luxury, and psychological experiments that show what&#8217;s up with the price of lobster over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/talk\/financial\/2013\/08\/26\/130826ta_talk_surowiecki\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/talk\/financial\/2013\/08\/26\/130826ta_talk_surowiecki\">The New Yorker<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Via: <a href=\"http:\/\/kottke.org\/13\/08\/consider-the-economics-of-lobster\">Kottke<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Surowiecki looked at the surprisingly complex economics of lobster: In 2005 lobster used to cost $6 a pound. Today it can go as low as $2.20 a pound. Yet in American restaurants lobster dishes are just as expensive as ever. This is partly due to the uncertainty of supply. If restaurants were to cut [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bulletin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/082113_0330_TheEconomic1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9496"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9498,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9496\/revisions\/9498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.Centives.net\/S\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}