Topic 17: Tragedy of the Commons Experiment

        In the experiment about the tragedy of commons, there are a lot of thing is going on. In our group, we didn’t really take too many fish, since we don’t want to waste the fish, but also because it is actually really hard to pick it up. In the first experiment, we all think that during the first few rounds to pick only the fish that can fill up our stomach, and in the last round to pick up as many fish as we can. I think probably because we all think that during is the last round, we will have to get all of them to maximize the goods we can have. However, we didn’t actually think carefully. When people are trying to get as many fish as they can, the resources will later be lesser and lesser and eventually gone. After we get the concept, we start our second round. Our entire group starts to only get the least amount of fish for us to survive and let the fish double as much as we can. Unfortunately, in the middle of the experiment, we didn’t listen carefully about when was the fishing season started, which then results that we all starve to death since we didn’t caught any fish. I think in our school there’s actually this kind of problem in our school cafeteria. When there’s a pretty good food in the cafeteria, people will not want to keep them for later to eat. Instead, they will get as many as they want in order to not let other people to enjoy it. Sooner, it results that people can’t get the food they want to eat, which is a pretty terrible tragedy.

Topic 16: Game Theory and Chicken

 In the video clip of “Beautiful Mind”, the guy are using girl as their choice, and later make it as the prisoner’s dilemma. If four guys all choose the blond girl, she will defiantly reject all of them, but when the guys go on and chase for the rest of the girl, the four girls will not accept because they will not want to be the second choice. Instead, the main character prove Adam Smith wrong and said the four guys need to give up the blond girl first, and just directly choose the rest of the four girls to achieve their best outcome. For me I think the way he thinks is really interesting. When there are two things, one is the thing that you want the most, and another is the second thing you want. Usually people will always chose the first thing they want to gain their maximize utility, but in the movie’s point of view, it told us to actually choose the second thing you want to aim for the best outcome. However, I think in reality, this might not happen, since people usually cannot resist the best thing they want. When the four men are choosing for the blond or the other four women, even if 1 of them choosing the blond girl, the rest of the 3 men will eventually choose the blond girl, which mean it is extremely hard to achieve this goal. They will have to fight against their utility of getting the best thing.

Topic 15: What is a Monopoly?

 The three kinds of characteristics for monopoly are that first, there’s only one seller that is in the market. Second, there is a barrier to entry for the market, which means it is extremely hard to enter or exit the market freely. Last, No one can produce the similar product to monopoly. When monopoly is making a decision how much to produce and how much it should charge, they will produce at the point where the marginal cost equals marginal revenue and charge the price where the buyer are willing to buy. One of the benefit for the monopoly is that since they are the only firm that is producing the specific product, they can sell their product no matter how much they want, and also same as the price. Monopoly can set their price wherever they want, the only problem is that is the customer willing to buy it or not. In the video, although some of the professors said that monopoly is not that good since they have too much power in the market, but sometimes monopoly can also be a good thing to have. When there’s a monopoly because of the first seller’s effort and work harder. It can encourage other firm to try to join the market, produce new creative product and willing to work harder and more efficiently.