Emma Peaslee
speaker
237 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 22 Jul
Emma Peaslee’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
However, this method has some problems.
Oh, interesting. Rebecca Dizon-Ross, not one of our colleagues, you Chicago economist, big egg spender, apparently.
Willingness to pay is simply the absolute maximum dollar amount someone is willing to pay for something. But that is deceptively complicated to measure. Like if we just ask our NPR egg colleagues, hey, what's the most you would pay for a dozen eggs? You know, like we did with Rebecca.
So how then do you get people to zero in on that true value? Well, economists and researchers... have developed a very clever way to do this. It's a little topsy-turvy. I'll be honest, it took me a couple times to really understand it, but it is so cool and has become my new favorite cocktail party trick. And we're going to show you how we use this on our egg-curious NPR colleagues.
So Rebecca was in rural Uganda conducting an economics experiment.
So there's this idea that mothers may value things like educational and health goods more than fathers. And so maybe aid groups would do better delivering that kind of aid through mothers.
Now, like we've discussed, just asking, hey, how much is this worth to you? That will not necessarily work.
So here is how this worked for Rebecca in Uganda. She would find parents willing to participate in her research.
And let's say you, dear listener, you are the parent here. Rebecca pulls out a math workbook. She then tells you she is about to generate a random price for this book.
But but before she generates that random price, she needs from you your max willingness to pay price.
It's not a negotiation. It's not an offer. You are simply stating the absolute max you'd be willing to pay.
And that's it. That's the Becker-DeGroote-Marshak method.
If it is not entirely clear how this method pushes people to be honest about their max price, well, that is understandable. The good news is that we have been Becker DeGroote Marshacking the heck out of our colleagues at NPR, and you're about to see it in action.
Hello, Becky. You are the next contestant on How Much Is That Egg?
A couple of notes about our version of Becker DeGroote Marshak. Ours is a game show. And what each person would be asked to value was not one dozen eggs, but one. One single Sam Merton's chicken egg. This was a test. A test to see how much each person valued Sam's eggs.
We didn't violate his terms. No. No. So, we begin our BDM assessment now. With Becky Brown, audio engineer, we show her a basket of Sam's eggs. So is there one of these eggs in particular that looks great?
In fact, Sam told me that egg came from Noodles, who is indeed a very happy chicken.
Becky just landed there. Okay. 90 cents.
And here, here, listeners, is where you can see why the BDM method forces people into a rational corner, forces them to reveal their true willingness to pay.
That is below Becky's 90 cents. She will have to buy the egg for that random price, 89 cents.
Showing 141–160 of 237 · page 8 of 12
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