Russ Roberts’ brilliant and eagerly-awaited Keynes vs. Hayek rap video is here.  It’s the best economics pop music since Merle Hazzard.  Here are the lyrics:

We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits

[Keynes Sings:]

John Maynard Keynes, wrote the book on modern macro
The man you need when the economy’s off track, [whoa]
Depression, recession now your question’s in session
Have a seat and I’ll school you in one simple lesson

BOOM, 1929 the big crash
We didn’t bounce back—economy’s in the trash
Persistent unemployment, the result of sticky wages
Waiting for recovery? Seriously? That’s outrageous!

I had a real plan any fool can understand
The advice, real simple—boost aggregate demand!
C, I, G, all together gets to Y
Make sure the total’s growing, watch the economy fly

We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits

You see it’s all about spending, hear the register cha-ching
Circular flow, the dough is everything
So if that flow is getting low, doesn’t matter the reason
We need more government spending, now it’s stimulus season

So forget about saving, get it straight out of your head
Like I said, in the long run—we’re all dead
Savings is destruction, that’s the paradox of thrift
Don’t keep money in your pocket, or that growth will never lift…

because…

Business is driven by the animal spirits
The bull and the bear, and there’s reason to fear its
Effects on capital investment, income and growth
That’s why the state should fill the gap with stimulus both…

The monetary and the fiscal, they’re equally correct
Public works, digging ditches, war has the same effect
Even a broken window helps the glass man have some wealth
The multiplier driving higher the economy’s health

And if the Central Bank’s interest rate policy tanks
A liquidity trap, that new money’s stuck in the banks!
Deficits could be the cure, you been looking for
Let the spending soar, now that you know the score

My General Theory’s made quite an impression
[a revolution] I transformed the econ profession
You know me, modesty, still I’m taking a bow
Say it loud, say it proud, we’re all Keynesians now

We’ve been goin’ back n forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Keynes] I made my case, Freddie H
Listen up , Can you hear it?

Hayek sings:

I’ll begin in broad strokes, just like my friend Keynes
His theory conceals the mechanics of change,
That simple equation, too much aggregation
Ignores human action and motivation

And yet it continues as a justification
For bailouts and payoffs by pols with machinations
You provide them with cover to sell us a free lunch
Then all that we’re left with is debt, and a bunch

If you’re living high on that cheap credit hog
Don’t look for cure from the hair of the dog
Real savings come first if you want to invest
The market coordinates time with interest

Your focus on spending is pushing on thread
In the long run, my friend, it’s your theory that’s dead
So sorry there, buddy, if that sounds like invective
Prepared to get schooled in my Austrian perspective

We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits

The place you should study isn’t the bust
It’s the boom that should make you feel leery, that’s the thrust
Of my theory, the capital structure is key.
Malinvestments wreck the economy

The boom gets started with an expansion of credit
The Fed sets rates low, are you starting to get it?
That new money is confused for real loanable funds
But it’s just inflation that’s driving the ones

Who invest in new projects like housing construction
The boom plants the seeds for its future destruction
The savings aren’t real, consumption’s up too
And the grasping for resources reveals there’s too few

So the boom turns to bust as the interest rates rise
With the costs of production, price signals were lies
The boom was a binge that’s a matter of fact
Now its devalued capital that makes up the slack.

Whether it’s the late twenties or two thousand and five
Booming bad investments, seems like they’d thrive
You must save to invest, don’t use the printing press
Or a bust will surely follow, an economy depressed

Your so-called “stimulus” will make things even worse
It’s just more of the same, more incentives perversed
And that credit crunch ain’t a liquidity trap
Just a broke banking system, I’m done, that’s a wrap.

We’ve been goin’ back n forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No it’s the animal spirits

When I first met my father in law, he spent hours trying to convince me of the cultural superiority of his tastes. Some of these were indeed triumphs. I’m thinking here of “Dr. Strangelove,” “The 400 Blows,” and the music of Richard Wagner. (Others were not. I’m thinking here of “Children of Paradise,” a movie about mimes.) His love of Wagner is curious; he was born in Israel and almost his entire family was murdered in the Warsaw ghetto. This is not a trivial issue. Hitler loved Wagner too, and used his music for political ends. Wagner was himself a hater of Jews. Accordingly, Israel banned public performance of Wagner’s music nearly six decades ago, and the taboo was not broken until 1995 when “The Flying Dutchman” was played on Israeli radio. Six years later Daniel Barenboim (a Jew) led the Berlin Staatskapelle in a performance of an overture from “Tristan und Isolde” at an Israel Festival, which only reignited the controversy.

I respect my father-in-law’s ability to separate politics and art. But this is also just a necessity for me; listening to only Ted Nugent and watching only Chuck Norris movies would make my leisure time quite depressing. So I pay to see movies by Nora Ephron and Steven Spielberg, and I listen to music by Bruce Springsteen. But maybe there should be lines.

I love the music of “The Clash,” agreeing with a British critic who called them “the only band that matters.” But what should I make of their 1980 album “Sandinista!”? With its red and black colors and vehemently anti-American lyrics, the album is a political disgrace. For instance, the song “Washington Bullets,” which is not an homage to the NBA team of the (then) same name, tells us where the Clash were coming from:

   For the very first time ever
   When they had a revolution in Nicaragua,
   There was no interference from America
   Human rights in America
   Well the people fought the reader,
   And up he flew ...afdb
   With no Washington bullets what else could he do?

But the music is pretty wonderful. Should I put aside the political idiocy and just listen to the music? I’m not sure this can be done. After all, I would never buy an album called “National Socialists!” or “CCCP!”, no matter how incredible the music was. For now, I’ll pass, belieiving that, as cultural critic Wayne Booth wrote, the company we keep matters.

• Larry Ribstein on exempting small firms from SOX
• Bernie Sanders’ “Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist” Bill (but see here)
• More Professor Birdthistle on Jones v. Harris
• Michael Ward on the economics of H1N1 (here, here and here)
• Lots of blogging on the meat market — but I’ve seen nobody discuss what I thought was the most surprising event at the conference, i.e. the disappearance of Starbucks from the hotel

The Economist seems to think so, relying on evidence from this new paper by Joel Waldfogel and Ben Shiller.  Waldfogel and Shiller find that, relative to uniform pricing at $.99, alternative pricing schemes including two part tariffs and various bundling schemes could raise producer surplus by somewhere between 17 and 30 percent.  Those are large numbers, which raises the obvious question: why is Apple leaving so much money on the table? Or are they? I doubt it.

Reading the Economist article reminded me of something that I heard from both Armen Alchian and Ben Klein at different points during my UCLA days.  If your model is not predicting the behavior of real world agents you have a choice — blame the model for not predicting the actions of the agents or blame the economic agents for not acting like the predictions of the model.  The right answer is very, very rarely to blame the economic agents.

To be fair, Waldfogel and Shiller themselves explicitly note that they aren’t passing judgment on the uniform pricing scheme (though its a bit unclear exactly what else readers are supposed to do with the results).

That’s from Firefox chief software architect Mike Connor in an interview with PCPro.  Here’s an excerpt suggesting that Mozilla fears that its recent success might lead to antitrust liability in the United States or elsewhere:

Firefox has only just tipped past the 20% mark in worldwide browser market share, and is still a long way away from achieving the 90%+ market share that Internet Explorer enjoyed in its heyday.

Yet, Firefox has a market share of more than 50% in some countries and is hugely popular among PC enthusiasts: Firefox was used by around 40% of visitors to PCPro.co.uk last month, and Connor claims the browser is used by about 80% of visitors to Digg.com.

Connor admits the prospect of achieving monopoly status – defined as two thirds of the market in the US – has been a topic of discussion at Mozilla HQ.

Perhaps there are too such things as false positives.

Its an interesting article (see also here) especially in light of the recent EU investigation of Microsoft’s bundling of IE to the operating system.  Connor also commented that Firefox did not want to be bundled with Windows as a remedy.  The most interesting line of all was that Opera’s complaint that bundling had harmed competition in the browser market was “provably false” because it is “asserting that bundling leads to market share” and “I don’t know how you can make that claim with a straight face.”

It is unknown whether Mozilla Foundation chairperson Mitchell Baker was straight-faced when he wrote this post supporting the EU’s investigation of IE bundling an, of course, offering Mozilla’s assistance in crafting the appropriate remedial response.   The most curious line in Baker’s post, however, is the rebuttal to the proposition that Mozilla’s increasing share across the world is evidence of a competitive marketplace or at least one would not impede equally efficient competitors:

Equally important, the success of Mozilla and Firefox does not indicate a healthy marketplace for competitive products. Mozilla is a non-profit organization; a worldwide movement of people who strive to build the Internet we want to live in. I am convinced that we could not have been, and will not be, successful except as a public benefit organization living outside the commercial motivations. And I certainly hope that neither the EU nor any other government expects to maintain a healthy Internet ecosystem based on non-profits stepping in to correct market deficiencies.

Leaving aside the bit about the non-profit worldwide movement “living outside commercial motivations”, wouldn’t this claim cut the opposite direction.  That is, if bundling IE couldn’t even exclude from the marketplace an apparently spontaneous collective invariant to the profit motive then surely the mere presence of the bundle couldn’t exclude a greedy, profit-seeking rival could it?  I’m not suggesting this is the appropriate way to think about the antitrust analysis here.  But I find the line of argument curious and likely counterproductive.

Over at Doug Lichtman’s IP Colloquium, there is a new (and what looks to be very interesting) program up on the Tenenbaum file-sharing litigation. Here’s the description:

Joel Tenenbaum looks a lot like every other defendant who has been accused by the music industry of illegally sharing copyrighted work online, but with one key difference: his defense attorney is Harvard Law School Professor Charlie Nesson, and Nesson is out to turn his case into a public referendum not only on the music industry’s efforts to enforce copyright through these direct-infringer suits, but also on the copyright rules that make the industry litigation possible.

In this program, we engage Nesson’s key arguments, focusing especially on Nesson’s claim that copyright law’s statutory damages regime runs afoul of constitutional protections against excessive and/or arbitrary civil damages awards.

Guests include Professor Nesson himself; Steven Marks, General Counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America; and three of the leading academic experts on punitive damages: New York University Professor Catherine Sharkey, Florida State Professor Dan Markel, and George Washington University Professor Thomas Colby. UCLA Law Professor Doug Lichtman moderates.

Check it out, and maybe earn a few CLE credits in the process.

David Glenn brings us the latest in the filesharing dispute.  HT: Peter Klein, who says sensible things about the newest, and ugliest piece of the controversy:

Strumpf suggests that Liebowitz is pressing the issue so zealously because Liebowitz’s center at UT-Dallas receives funding from the RIAA and “other commercial interests,” a charge I find shockingly inappropriate and unprofessional. (Anyone who knows Liebowitz can attest to his zeal on a number of unpopular issues, such as his defense of QWERTY and his attack on the Boston Fed study of mortgage discrimination.)

I don’t know the primary sources well but one gets the definite impression that Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf are being less-than-fully candid about their work. Their defenses against various critics (not only Liebowitz) seem weak and unconvincing. Overall, this episode reminds me of the Card-Kreuger controversy over the minimum wage: an empirical paper finds the opposite of what everyone expects and makes a big splash, but the authors don’t have a solid explanation for their findings, there are questions about the data and methods, and specialists aren’t convinced by the results. My conjecture is that in this case, like the minimum-wage episode, the spashy result will not stand the test of time.

I share Peter’s view that the Strumpf allegations about Liebowitz are remarkably unprofessional.  This is especially true given the consensus view that many of Liebowitz’s critiques have gone unanswered (Glenn writes: “in several cases, the authors have not replied to Mr. Liebowitz’s criticisms, either in public or in Mr. Strumpf’s referee report”).  The leading alternative theory to Strumpf’s concerning Liebowitz’s interest in the topic, is as Craig Newmark puts it, “maybe he’s just upset that a 40+-page lead article in one of the profression’s top journals has serious errors.”  Indeed.  Glenn’s article is worth reading.  It contains a nice summary of the “summer sales” test and I also learned that the OS paper “grandfathered” out of the new Journal of Political Economy policies on replication.

I’d have to say the answer is yes (duh).  Radiohead’s In Rainbows made a stunning “official”debut, coming out at number 1 on the Billboard chart with 122,000 US sales in the first week.

But Radiohead’s last album, Hail to the Thief, debuted at number 3, selling 300,000 copies in its first week.

The band must be disappointed with those sales numbers.  Number 1 or not (and I’m pleased to see it doesn’t take all that much to bump Mary J. Blige from the top spot), that’s a huge decrease in initial sales, especially for an album so critically lauded and with such a spectacular media following at the end of last year (including this very influential blog).

Of course it didn’t make my top 25, which probably explains the whole thing, come to think of it.

I’ve been inspired by Lynne’s music favorites post (mainly so I can share my disagreement with her–and one big agreement).  It’s a bit off-topic for this blog, but some of you must be music fans.  And in the spirit of taking advantage of a platform while you have it, I thought I’d share my picks for best music of 2007.  Have at it in the comments. 

25.  Ha Ha Tonka, Buckle in the Bible Belt

24.  Great Lake Swimmers, Ongiara

23.  Dr. Dog, We All Belong

22.  Rogue Wave, Asleep at Heaven’s Gate

21.  Levon Helm, Dirt Farmer

20.  Sunset Rubdown, Random Spirit Lover

19.  Over the Rhine, The Trumpet Child

18.  The Apples in Stereo, New Magnetic Wonder

17.  Band of Horses, Cease to Begin

16.  WIlco, Sky Blue Sky

15.  Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga 

14.  Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Baby 81

13.  Josh Ritter, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter

12.  Deadstring Brothers, Silver Mountain

11.  White Stripes, Icky Thump 

10.  Cloud Cult, The Meaning of 8  

9.  The Bees, Octopus

8.  I’m Not There (Soundtrack)

7.  Blitzen Trapper, Wild Mountain Nation

6.  Shearwater, Palo Santo (Expanded Edition (ok, slightly cheating, but well worth it))

5.  The Broken West, I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On 

4.  The Avett Brothers, Emotionalism

3.  Okkervil River, The Stage Names

2.  Menomena, Friend and Foe

1.  The National, Boxer

The results are in:  Radiohead did . . . ok.  Before I share the specifics, let me remind you of what one seemingly prescient prognosticator said a few weeks ago:

My prediction: They will receive an average price of $2 and a median price of $0.  

So what happened?

Of those who downloaded Radiohead’s digital album, In Rainbows last month, about 62 percent walked away with the music without paying a cent, reported ComScore, an Internet research company.

About 17 percent plunked down between a penny and $4, far below the $12 and $15 retail price of a CD. The next largest group (12 percent) was willing to pay between $8 and $12–the cost of most albums at Apple’s iTunes is $9.99. They were followed by the 6 percent who paid between $4.01 and $8 and 4 percent coughed up between $12 and $20.

* * *

According to ComScore, the average amount spent for all downloads came to $2.26.

So, if my calculations are correct, Radiohead received an average price of $2.26 and a median price of $0. 

Man I’m good.

By the way–read the whole article linked above.  Some interesting comments from Chris Castle on the Radiohead “experiment.”

UPDATE:  To be fair, these kinds of claims to depend a lot on the quality fo the data. See this comment from the band on the reported figures:

“In response to purely speculative figures announced in the press regarding the number of downloads and the price paid for the album, the group’s representatives would like to remind people that, as the album could only be downloaded from the band’s website, it is impossible for outside organisations to have accurate figures on sales,” they explained.

The statement added: “However, they can confirm that the figures quoted by the company comScore Inc are wholly inaccurate and in no way reflect definitive market intelligence or, indeed, the true success of the project.”

So says Scott Adams, creater of Dilbert and now author, in today’s WSJ.  The context might interest TOTM readers who’ve been following the Radiohead/ voluntary pricing discussions here and elsewhere:

A few years ago I tried an experiment where I put the entire text of my book, “God’s Debris,” on the Internet for free, after sales of the hard copy and its sequel, “The Religion War” slowed. My hope was that the people who liked the free e-book would buy the sequel. According to my fan mail, people loved the free book. I know they loved it because they emailed to ask when the sequel would also be available for free. For readers of my non-Dilbert books, I inadvertently set the market value for my work at zero. Oops.

So I’ve been watching with great interest as the band “Radiohead” pursues its experiment with pay-what-you-want downloads on the Internet. In the near term, the goodwill has inspired lots of people to pay. But I suspect many of them are placing a bet that paying a few bucks now will inspire all of their favorite bands to offer similar deals. That’s when the market value of music will approach zero.  That’s my guess. Free is more complicated than you’d think.

This time from Paste Magazine (HT: Peter Schwartz via Wired Blog Magazine), and motivated by the Radiohead Experiment, and with an interesting twist:

Subscribers who choose to pay more than the normal $19.95 asking price will have their names printed in an upcoming issue of the magazine, but the entire year-long subscription can in fact be had for $1, as I just confirmed.

Both Paste and Radiohead appear to be making these moves to broaden their consumer base (and as Geoff has pointed out, getting access to valuable customer data), strategies that are at least related to strategies commonly observed from multi-product firms, rather than some more permanent attempts to incorporate voluntary pricing into the business model we’ve seen (e.g., restaurants).  Aaron Schiff has some nice posts up looking at some voluntary pricing download data from a website called Jamendo which makes the data publicly available (the minimum donation is apparently $5). Schiff reports that the average donation is a (surprisingly high in my book and much higher than the reported estimates of Radiohead’s donations) $14.55 and the data are available on his site.

I started writing this as a comment to Josh’s last post, but it got so long I figured I’d make a post out of it.  Thanks for the inspiraiton, Josh.

I really hope Radiohead releases the data on its little experiment!  My prediction: They will receive an average price of $2 and a median price of $0. 

And I think Radiohead has a better chance of succeeding than that coffeeshop Josh wrote about (which is somewhere near here, right?  I should really go grab some free coffee).  Their fans are rabid, and they feel an emotional connection to the band unlike I imagine anyone has to a coffeeshop.  There are people out there who believe that Radiohead changed their lives.  Incidentally, these people are also anti-capitalists.  And yet they will find themselves throwing money at the band, completely unnecessarily, simply because, well, it’s a whole new zeitgeist, man. 

For the rest of us–the more rational Radiohead fans (it’s hard to deny the quality of this band.  It’s hard to believe that the same public that loves Britney could also love something as good as Radiohead, but there it is)–views will be split.  Some will feel an obligation to compensate the band for their work, although they will find it hard to explain exactly why they feel obligated if the band itself is not obligating them.  Others will think it’s cool, and it’s an awesome slap in the face to the paleolithic record labels, and will contribute to the cause.  And most will know that they would probably have just burned the CD from a friend anyway, and entering credit card information is such a pain, and, well, why should I pay if they don’t make me?  And these people will pay nothing.  A large subset of them will claim to have paid $5.

So what does the band get?  For starters, some good press (although they hardly need that).  They also get to satisfy their moral desire to bring down the (putatively) evil record labels (to say nothing of DRM!) and to demonstrate their disdain for capitalism and consumer culture.  Consider it a form of charity. 

Or competitive advantage.  I can assure you that in a post-record-label/post-DRM world, where revenue comes from live performances and t-shirts, Radiohead will be in a considerably better position than the 4 million bands trying to make it on MySpace.

Here’s what else they get:  An excellent mailing and e-mail list.  To buy (or receive gratis) the album from the website one must enter name, email (and no cheating, since download codes are sent via email), address, cell phone number (but not home number.  Anyone see mass text messaging in Radiohead’s future?), etc.  For Radiohead, this is a valuable list, I imagine.  It may also be valuable to any number of direct marketers and online advertising companies. 

Mostly, though, I think Radiohead is leaving money on the table.  And I also think that the band will not release the data, and we won’t know the extent to which this experiment fails.

I, for one, have already pre-ordered my copy.  And of course I paid $5.

UPDATE:  Steve Levitt wants to crunch the data.  Note also the colorful quote from Thom Yorke (Radiohead’s front man) about the music industry’s “decaying business model.”

I’ve previously discussed the voluntary pricing strategy taken by restaurants and cafes in a handful of states to offer food and drink for free and allow customers to decide whether and how much they would pay.   I was rather skeptical about the profitability of this strategy in the retail setting.  But it looks like we may soon have another datapoint from another industry as the WSJ reports that Radiohead will sell its new album (”In Rainbows”) only as a digital download from its website and allowing fans to choose how much they will pay.  From the WSJ article:

By letting consumers dictate what they will pay for a digital copy of the album, the band will test theories of online pricing that have been the subject of much speculation in recent years — most notably, the notion that fans will pay a fair price for downloads if given the freedom to do so on their own terms.

Speaking of experiments in online behavior and “voluntary pricing,” Stan Liebowitz has posted a paper to SSRN critiquing the empirical claims in the highly publicized JPE Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf paper on file-sharing which found little, if any, impact of file sharing on music sales.  Unfortunately for the economics profession, one aspect of the critique is that the authors of the JPE study have not been willing to share data with Liebowitz so that their findings can be replicated.