Sunday, April 29, 2012

Informal Rules and Food Trucks

Planet Money has a great podcast about the food truck business in New York City. It discusses regualtions that make every parkinjg place illegal, how vendors identify good spots, the economics of location and how it is influenced by product differentiation. But my favorite part was the discussion of informal rules that govern the use of parking spots: If someone has been in a spot for 10 years that is his spot; if there is already a taco truck on the block, don't park your taco truck there.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Reply All

Don't use it. This morning I received an email regarding attendance at a conference that I am not planning on attending. It turns out that it was sent to a list of people who should not have received it. I then received over 40 emails from people who were hitting reply all. First, a number of people thought it was necessary to inform everyone that they did not know why they were receiving the email. Then other people started replying to all that they should stop replying to all. These were professors at places like the LSE, Univ. of Chicago, and USC. Can't we all just hit delete?

Saturday, April 7, 2012