Tiny extension: Just stumbled upon another example where very basic dumb-down versions of market effects risk to create directed fundamental bias in (some examples of) econ 101: Take a price-quantity diagram and draw the effects of price discrimination. It’s all rosy; rent always increase and no (strict) downsides. You can sell the student the discounted pizza for lunch in your otherwise empty pizzeria on weekdays, top. That you have to run to the gate as you’re screwed if you miss your flight, and a gazillion other nuisances with some price discrimination practices, are just not part of the 2D P-Q diagram so those too focused on the based model end up only talking about welfare gains instead of welfare gains with oft serious downsides risks and thus miss out on any important questions about regulating some types of discrimination.
It makes sense for this one not to have made it to the main post; it’s imho rarer, as most—I think—would teach the potential for strict downsides (besides the distributive questions), but I just found this issue of lacking mention in the Swiss central bank’s educative explanatory paper on the topic of price discrimination (German) (40% chance they might update it in future as I just wrote them).
Tiny extension: Just stumbled upon another example where very basic dumb-down versions of market effects risk to create directed fundamental bias in (some examples of) econ 101: Take a price-quantity diagram and draw the effects of price discrimination. It’s all rosy; rent always increase and no (strict) downsides. You can sell the student the discounted pizza for lunch in your otherwise empty pizzeria on weekdays, top. That you have to run to the gate as you’re screwed if you miss your flight, and a gazillion other nuisances with some price discrimination practices, are just not part of the 2D P-Q diagram so those too focused on the based model end up only talking about welfare gains instead of welfare gains with oft serious downsides risks and thus miss out on any important questions about regulating some types of discrimination.
It makes sense for this one not to have made it to the main post; it’s imho rarer, as most—I think—would teach the potential for strict downsides (besides the distributive questions), but I just found this issue of lacking mention in the Swiss central bank’s educative explanatory paper on the topic of price discrimination (German) (40% chance they might update it in future as I just wrote them).