It is economically more efficient if Uber/DiDi can do dynamic pricing contingent on user’s phone battery level. Because this is a finer granular of price discrimination and given Uber’s large market share, it’s going to charge consumer more but the market as a whole will benefit. But no one guarantees that the surplus goes to the drivers, given Uber’s dominant network effect, the extra surplus from better price discrimination is likely going to the platform. ...

Recent review article on Science: Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance A Güllich, M Barth, DZ Hambrick, BN Macnamara | Science, 2025 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt7790 Editor’s summary …Güllich et al. looked at published research in science, music, chess, and sports and found two patterns: Exceptional young performers reached their peak quickly but narrowly mastered only one interest (e.g., one sport). By contrast, exceptional adults reached peak performance gradually with broader, multidisciplinary practice. However, elite programs are designed to nurture younger talent. —Ekeoma Uzogara ...

The duopoly of Christmas music is probably Mariah Carey or Tchaikovsky. In Chicago’s airport bathroom, plays a pop-mashed Super Plum Fairy variation in the airport bathroom. The violin carries the melody and the background adds drums (jesus, that is aweful). Remember, the OG composition is supposed to use a celesta, which Tchaikovsky pioneered its use in Orchestra and soon becomes viral: The Revolutionary Sound at the Heart of a Holiday Classic Link NYTimes ...

While most of the time we flutists are happy stealing pieces from violins, for Paganini’s Caprice No 5, I’m happy to just left it to the violinists. I like Itzhak Perlman’s version because he tends to speed up at hard parts, which makes him sound even more impressive and very satisfying to listen to. You feel the momentum and the piece is actually moving forward instead of stuck by a technical bottleneck: ...

Berlioz definitely enjoys gossip and writing, apart from the famous I-write-my-own-program-note of the Symphony Fantastique. He has a memoir, and a frictional book: U of C Press: link. During the performances of fashionable operas in an unidentified but “civilized” town in northern Europe, the musicians (with the exception of the conscientious bass drummer) tell tales, read stories, and exchange gossip to relieve the tedium of the bad music they are paid to perform. In this delightful and now classic narrative written by the brilliant composer and critic Hector Berlioz, we are privy to twenty-five highly entertaining evenings with a fascinating group of distracted performers. ...

Flute and violin are like sisters. We share the same vibe (and range). We think the others is cocky and have bad taste. Still we steal repertoire from each other every now and then. Astor Piazzolla has a wonderful Histoire du Tango suite. Violins love this piece. Violins are powerful. But sometimes it can be hard for them to embody the vulnerability. Especially in the 2nd mvt: Café 1930: I love Hadelich but he is too perfect in this recording. The 4th movement Concert d’aujourd’hui is also, just too rigid, not quirky enough—he should have do more dramatic contrasts: ...

Another example of how financial structures and incentives reshape industries: the consolidation of the ski industry under corporate ownership has turned skiing from a diverse, community-oriented pastime into a profit-driven, monopolized, and less enjoyable product — with higher (bundled) prices and operational cost cut driven by profit maximizaiton instead of the health of the sport. Capital is self-driven. Which also reminds me of this Freakonomics episode: Is Venture Captial the Secret Sauce of the American Economy.

A collection of class notes from 25 Fall’s Topics in Information Economics, taught by Professor Kamenica at Chicago Booth. Blackwell’s Theorem Aumann’s Common Knowledge Theorem A Unified Modeling Perspective to Compare Cheap Talk and Information Design LP Characterization of Cheap Talk vs. Bayesian Persuasion Game The last three lectures We did more than this but I don’t own the full lecture note’s copy right. If you find it useful or interesting, the credits goes to Prof Kemenica. If confusing, that’s probably my fault. Enjoy :)

An article about online social platform getting worse: Social Quitting by Cory Doctorow. It could be a motivation introduction to a wonderful economic theory paper. I won’t be surprised if it hasn’t already been quoted somewhere. The logic’s basically three phases: Platforms with network effects get more valuable as more people use them, which drives rapid growth. But the same effect creates high switching costs: leaving means losing access to all your relationships. Early on, platforms minimize switching costs to attract users; once dominant, they maximize switching costs to keep users trapped. Network effects + switching costs produce lock-in. Users unable to leave, platforms can subtract user surplus whatever they want. First, surplus is shifted from users to advertisers; later, once advertisers are also locked in, surplus is taken from them too. The platform degrades the service to extract maximum value from both sides. Eventually, degradation reduces benefits enough that leaving hurts less than staying. Switching costs fall, people exit, and inverse network effects kick in. So, enshittification isß not a moral failure but a structural outcome of monopoly platforms optimizing value extraction under high switching costs.

I used to be a vim-and-python minimalist. But now I’m an economist so, here’s how to run .ipynb on a server on a local computer. Set up ssh key for login, so that you won’t need to enter password a thousand times. See this blog configure SSH keys in terminal or your own HPC documentation. Booth’s HPC use slurm. I use mac. The following will be based on these backgrounds. Step 1: Login, get a computing node Login: ...