Economics 1.01
The publication of this book confronts me to THE elementary issue at the core of economics: how to best allocate scarce resources?
My editor has sent me 10 free copies of the book. What shall I do?
Option 1 => Auction them, and let the market decide;
Option 2 => Reward friends, out of my political discretion. This option is tricky. Assuming I have more than 10 friends (I guess I have), how to pick those that should receive the book without p****g off disincentivizing other from being my friends?
Option 3 => Reserve part of them for the university library out of “universal service” considerations + sell the remainder
Option 4 => Do nothing, and shelve them, like a lazy monopolist
Chillin'Competition 
Dear Nicolas,
Congratulations on this release! (I’m impressed).
I believe option 1 is forbidden by the contract with your publisher 🙂
Cédric
27 June 2013 at 12:25 pm
Option 5 – Auction copies signed by the author ?
Comp_geek
27 June 2013 at 12:31 pm
Option 5 : choose the most worthy or most deserving….but by what measure?
Anna
27 June 2013 at 12:34 pm
You can send me some copies of your book. I’ll write a review.
The more books I receive the more I will try to promote your book sales. 😉
“Good, but only relevant for the french speaking «concurrence» community” [1 copy]
vs.
“A hilariously entertaining book and a must-read not only for antitrust lawyers, competition law practitioners, economists, antitrust government officials, and politicians worldwide, but also for the regular guy on Main Street.” [10 copies].
rainergrossmann
27 June 2013 at 12:46 pm
Option 5: Run a tombola.
J.
27 June 2013 at 2:32 pm
Let’s replace ‘quantity’ represented on the abscissa with altruism and ‘price’ on the ordinate with ‘self-interest’. Apparently more books to the school library would imply a higher level of altruism and a lower satisfaction of the self-interest. This is not necessarily true or is it?
Though, I am more interested in the last option. The degree of altruism equals zero, but also the self-interest will approach the origin. It would actually constitute a paradoxical choice in economic terms and it will be in fact similar with Paul Cézanne’s moments of doubt and reflection in front of a new painting. In these challenging moments having more than ten friends may help a lot 🙂 Congratulations for your new book!
Emanuela Matei A (@Wespasiana)
27 June 2013 at 2:34 pm