Week 4, Sept 21, 25: market failures, public goods, shared resources, externalities, monopolies

Homework readings Sept. 21 and 25

1. In  The Economics Book. All have to do with market failures: externalities, monopolies, imperfect competition, public goods, and shared resources.

• Private individuals never pay for street lights – provision of public goods and services, p. 46, Loc. 840-872.
• Phone calls are dearer without competition – monopolies, p.92, Loc. 1718-1811
• Make the polluter pay – external costs, p. 137, Loc. 2626-2637
• The biggest challenge for collective action is climate change – economics and the environment, p. 306, Loc. 5965-6045

2. The anti-monopoly case against Facebook, Google, and Amazon
3. European Union fines Google $2.7 billion for monopoly violations
4. Europe's anti-monopoly regulators take aim at how tech giants use data 

Recommended: Planet Money Summer School podcast, Scarcity and Pistachios

Pistachio growers in California use so much water, that entire communities have lost water service to in homes.
The podcast
The transcript of the podcast

Concepts:

• Tragedy of the commons
• Externalities
• Scarcity
• Cap and trade