Why on-campus food is bad

I like to eat, and I like to eat good food and I don't mind paying good money for it. Personally, when it comes to food I think quality trumps quantity anytime. Sadly, when you are geographically bounded on campus the selection and the food quality is not so great, not that they are any cheaper either, any good food court in a mall can trump any of the so-called eating places here.

The question is why is the food on-campus bad compared to the selection off-campus? I don't think it's income differences of customers, not when you see the brand new cars that the new students brought to campus this semester. Most probably it has something to do with the monopoly provision of food services on campus. There is only one provider here, although you'd see that there are supposedly different food service outlets but they are all run by one company.

Everybody knows that when you have a monopolist (though not always bad) there is a tendency to ignore consumer demand sometimes, they just dont have enough incentives. They can choose to charge higher prices or decrease quality, either of the two reduces consumer welfare. They earn money from the sole contract alright, and my suspicion is the university splits this benefit with the contracted food service company. Why does the university do business this way? Is it costlier to negotiate with more businesses? (I'm sure a lot of food outlets out there would want to have a captive market of 20,000 customers not to mention access to low cost labor-students) Is it that the university finds it costly to say have tens of trucks delivering supplies on campus? Or are they motivated by the franchise fee the sole provider pays (but then again why not charge the same total amount of franchise fee among many players)?

Imagine if we had free entry into our food market here. I would imagine the competition for customers would spur eating places on campus to provide better service and better quality.

Corruption and Growth

The chart below is from a recent working paper out of the University of Chicago (mentioned in the Becker-Posner blog). The author shows that indiosyncratic corruption (basically the part of corruption index/level that is not correlated with governance indicator) has a positive impact on growth specially in countries with low quality of regulations. In a sense, corruption that goes around inefficient government regulation can be growth enhancing. Very interesting result.

Source: "Bad Corruption, Good Corruption and Growth" a working paper by Maxim Mironov

Oh Katrina

We got heavy clouds today in the horizon remnants of what's left of Katrina. I saw the videos of New Orleans today on TV and it reminded me of the monsoon season in Manila. Just like it's cajun counterpart, Manila also sits below the sea level, so you can imagine that water stays there for a while and does not drain into the bay very quickly after a storm dumps its rain. But experience would tell you that people who live in areas like these are resillient (if not outright stubborn), must be something to do with self-selection, they chose to live there because they know they can handle it. It can't be said of speculators who buy houses in an area so they can flip them a few months down the road.

A new hope

First day of classes today. Lots of new students and you can tell them apart because they dont quite have that college student been here a couple of semester look. I am energized by the new semester, from fighting for a parking spot as everybody decided to drive to campus hoping their parking tags was an assurance of a parking space-they wish, to waiting for a computer terminal at the library, and looking for my printouts from the heap of papers the giant printer produced. I'm going to miss it all when I finally get out of here whether that be this year or never...

Fall rites

Today I had to wake up early for an office appointment at an uncivilized time of 7:30 in the morning. What did I see? A bunch of "rushers" these new female college students seeking to be a member of some sorority. I didn't know they set "rush" activities this early. It was a good sight anyway to compensate for waking up after 3 hours of wink time. Then after my appointment I thought I ran into a Harry Potter convention, I forgot that today was the academic convocation that's why a lot of old people were running around in black robes. I think PhD students should be given a wand with the hood when they graduate.

Another semester

A new semester is upon us and nothing reminds you of it than having three new students approach you for directions on your very short walk from your department office to the cafeteria. I wanted to be out of here by the start of the semester but things didnt work out that way so it's a moving target and hopefully before the year is out I would put my PhD studies behind me. Wanting it done and getting it done are two different things....but I'm getting closer...of course that's a relative term :)

Give me a break

The media recently picked up the results of a study linking french fries consumption to breast cancer risk. Yeh right. If I run a regression of the life span of americans on the number of McDonald's franchises awarded from the year it started to the present I will surely find a positive relationship. Would that mean McDonald's had a positive impact on extending life expectancy?

70,000 miles

It took that much usage on top of the milage it had when I bought it before my car finally succumb to the big breakdown. I was on I-295 somewhere in Virginia when the warning lights started to light up, oh oh. Then the cruise control disengaged, the cruise control light went out, then the speedometer just dropped to zero although I was still cruising at around 65 mph, then the engine starts losing power. I decided to get to the shoulder so I could figure out what's going on. I turned off the engine, bad idea. Engine wont crank up again although you can hear the sound of the starter trying to churn. Definetly not the starter, could be the battery. But I just got the battery two weeks ago! Oh oh please don't be the alternator. I called for a tow truck and was ready to wait for them when I tried to start the engine again. It starts! I cancelled the tow service and tried to drive my way to a service area. This part of Virginia is full of small towns with probably only a couple of mechanics around. I tried to push my luck and drove some more and was able to go 100 more miles all the way to Durham, N.C. All the way I had to stop every 5 miles or so as the engine kept on losing power. Took me almost 3 hours to travel 100 miles. Got to Durham finally and crashed into a hotel, by this time I have probably lost 5 pounds after sweating it out without air-conditioning for 100 miles. I figured a college town would be a better choice to get this thing fixed as there should be a lot of service centers used to students with tight budgets. I finally got it fixed and had a new alternator installed the next morning. I think I provided a not so trivial economic stimulus for Durham residents :) Flyingroc had a better ending to his car trouble story.

Unbreakable

Today I brought my Samsonite luggage to a service center that does warranty for Samsonite. I thought these bags were indestructible. These things do have ten year warranties. The top handle on my carry-on luggage snapped and it was not even while I was really abusing it, I was just pulling it out of the car. Anyway I had to pay a $5 handling fee and it would be almost a month before I get to see it again. I guess it gets sent to a luggage infirmary who knows where. Maybe Latin America? Or someplace where such labor would be cheap.

Vice vs. Virtue

Slate.com has this new column piece comparing the performance of so-called virtue funds (the Ave Maria Fund for example) and the vice fund. Guess which fund is performing better than the other? I followed the link to the chart they cited and here it is:

The red line is the Ave Maria, the blue line the Vice fund.