Tying Your Own Hands, BlackBerry Edition
20 June 2006 at 4:31 pm Peter G. Klein 1 comment
| Peter Klein |
Joe writes below about time inconsistency, or the Ulysses problem: sometimes you can make yourself better off by deliberately limiting your own options ("tying your own hands"). This phenomenon has been widely studied in monetary policy (earning Finn Kydland and Edward Prescott a Nobel Prize), bargaining theory, and even internal organization.
From the New York Times we learn that a Chicago hotel has found a way to solve the time-inconsistency problem for heavy BlackBerry users: upon check-in, guests wishing to enjoy some downtime can give their device to the general manager, who agrees to keep it under lock and key for the duration of the stay. (I hope my wife isn't reading this.) (HT: Steven Dubner)
Organizations and Markets 
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AJE | 21 June 2006 at 5:27 am
This reminds me of a service launched by Virgin Mobile in Australia – prior to a drinking session you could contact Virgin and submit a list of numbers that you wanted blocked for that evening (e.g. boss, former girlfriend, dentist…), a way to toe your own hands and avoid so-called “drunk dialling”
A wonderful example of how governance can be supplied through market transactions