Raise price on a good when it stops being a complement

The WSJ (Dec. 2019) discusses the increase in concert tickets. "As piracy decimated recorded music sales starting in the early 2000s, artists began to rely on touring, ever more so in the past decade."

Using AI to Screen Job Applications

The WSJ (Dec. 2019) describes how employers are using AI to screen applicants and offers advice. Some money quotes follow.

• "Spice up your résumé with specific on-the-job results, use meaningful job titles and tailor your choice of words to match companies’ requirements.
• "Rock Brouwer has hired many candidates ZipRecruiter has brought to his attention. 'When I get one of those, it just makes my day,' says Mr. Brouwer
• "About 60% of employers admit such tools cause them to miss some qualified candidates,
• "Most vendors refuse to tell employers how their algorithms work. And most employers lack deep, accurate performance data.
  The systems risk magnifying managers’ prejudices if those biases are reflected in the makeup of the employer’s current workforce
  ... High performers may share traits that have nothing to do with job performance, skewing outcomes." 
• "Even if employers and vendors aren’t trying to reject female or minority applicants, they still risk doing so if they train algorithms on data gleaned from a current workforce that lacks diversity." 

A new strategy, an extension of current strategy, or no strategy?

IHOP is opening a chain of fast casual restaurants (CNN, Dec. 2019). Is the decision an extension of the activities on which they currently focus, a decision to alter the activities on which they focus, or a failure to say no? How about adding burgers to the menu?

"For IHOP, new restaurants like Flip'd are part of a three-pronged growth plan. The chain is also targeting off-premise dining and promoting its non-breakfast food items — like burgers — to draw more customers into stores."

Moral Hazard in Organ Transplants

This essay describes a moral hazard problem in organ transplants. 

"Transplant programs are not evaluated by regulatory agencies to determine how well they use the organ donors available to them. Instead, they are judged primarily on how many of the patients they transplant are alive one year after surgery—an important but limited metric. The emphasis on one-year survival makes transplant programs overly cautious, letting viable organs go unused instead of using organs that they fear might harm their report card."

The essay includes an example. A surgery team turned down lungs that were good but not great matches for Patient A because another Patient B who had received a transplant had recently died. Patient A subsequently died while waiting for a match.

The emphasis on survival rates also reduces the propensity of doctors to transplant organs into patients who are likely to die within a year; e.g., patients who are old and weak and patients who suffer from other life-threatening diseases. 

Words v. action

In a commentary published by the WSJ (Dec. 2019), two researchers present evidence that "Business Roundtable signatories aren’t leaders in socially conscious environmental, social or governance practices or stakeholder orientation." 

Their conclusion: 

"The charitable explanation is that signatories are signaling their intent to change their ways. But there is no obvious way to test those intentions. As of now, signatories don’t walk the walk. Keep a close eye on whether that changes."