Comments on: The Honors Class, Part II

By: The Big Answers, Part II at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:03:29 +0000

[...] answers to the remaining problems from my Oberlin honors exam. The original questions are here and here; the first round of answers is [...]

By: Steve Landsburg

Steve Landsburg — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:41:56 +0000

Al: I agree with you that under these circumstances she will never work more than one hour. It does not follow that she works zero.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:16:32 +0000

I’m slightly confused by question 6.

You state that Eve can produced exactly one apple per hour and also that she would be willing to work for up to x hours for x^2 apples.

Surely under both of these conditions she will only ever work 1 hour for 1 apple and a tax rate of anything greater than 0% will discourage her from working entirely since her post-tax income will be less than 1 apple per hour?

By: The Big Answers, Part I at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 07:03:15 +0000

[...] little while back, I posted the first half and then the second half of the honors exam in economics that I administered at Oberlin College. Since then, I’ve [...]

By: ryan yin

ryan yin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:11:57 +0000

Mike,
If it’s clear in the original how to add utilities together to get social utility, so much the worse for the original.

Poor Euthyphro. He should have just said, “gee Socrates, the Good is simply adding up utility functions. Duh. After all, there is just one unique utility function that describes a person’s preferences, and just one way to aggregate across utility functions.”

By: Playing Games at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:02:59 +0000

[...] Here are solutions to the two game theory problems from my honors exam: [...]

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:42:17 +0000

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By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:49:50 +0000

Thanks for posting the original version. I agree that it makes question 6 easier, since in the ‘translation’ it is not clear how one would add Adam and Eve’s utility functions together to create a social utility function.

By: Mort Dubois

Mort Dubois — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:01:17 +0000

10: Fraternal or identical twins? It makes a BIG difference.

By: nobody.really

nobody.really — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:54:19 +0000

Ironically, the less stable the King’s position is, the more likely that Duke 1 would have an interest in supporting the King.

How often do you derive a game theoretical benefit from the weakness of your own position?

1. Playing chicken, when you throw your steering wheel out of the car, you create a credible claim that you cannot be dissuaded for your current course of action, thereby forcing others to abandon efforts to discourage you. Burning bridges and ships, crossing Rubicons, etc., all create these same signals.

2. Insurance companies are willing to extend the benefits of group insurance policies not only to employees, but to their spouses, on the theory that employees are unlikely to acquire spouses on any basis that would correlate with abnormally high health costs. True, people might try to game this system – an employee might marry a someone with leukemia simply to provide health benefits to a friend. But the burdens of divorce are sufficiently great as to discourage this kind of gamesmanship. It is precisely the burdens of marriage that make it a good marker for insurance companies. Unmarried couples – including same sex couples – lack the burdens of a marital contract in most states, and therefore lack the markers insurance companies look for. The lack of burden creates a burden.

Other examples?