I’ve previously discussed the voluntary pricing strategy taken by restaurants and cafes in a handful of states to offer food and drink for free and allow customers to decide whether and how much they would pay.  I was rather skeptical about the profitability of this strategy in the retail setting. But it looks like we may soon have another datapoint from another industry as the WSJ reports that Radiohead will sell its new album (“In Rainbows”) only as a digital download from its website and allowing fans to choose how much they will pay.

Read the full piece here.

I started writing this as a comment to Josh’s last post, but it got so long I figured I’d make a post out of it.  Thanks for the inspiration, Josh.

I really hope Radiohead releases the data on its little experiment!  My prediction: They will receive an average price of $2 and a median price of $0.

Read the full piece here. 

In case you haven’t already, I recommend taking a gander at today’s New York Time Book Review.  In it, there is a review of Naomi Klein’s new book, The Shock Doctrine, by Nobel-winning economist, Joe Stiglitz.  It’s an abomination (I’m sure the book is an abomination, too, but I’m referring to the book review).

Read the full piece here. 

That seems to be the message of presidential candidate/ Senator Barak Obama’s response to the American Antitrust Institute’s questions on antitrust (HT: Antitrust Review). First off, kudos to Obama for stating his position on antitrust in a public forum. I hope the rest of the candidates will do the same. Do go read the whole thing.

Read the full piece here.

Over at TaxProf Blog is an interesting series on “advice to Dean Chemerinsky” from various folks throughout the legal academy.

Read the full piece here.

Andrew Young and William Shughart II have posted an interesting paper (forthcoming in Public Choice) entitled “The Consequences of the U.S. DOJ’s Antitrust Activities: A Macroeconomic Perspective.”

Read the full piece here.

Melissa Lafsky at the Freakonomics Blog reports on a study showing no relationship between law school courseload choices and bar passage rates (except in the third quartile of students apparently).  So what to do?

Read the full piece here.

After receiving the page proofs last week, I’m posting “Behavioral Law and Economics, Paternalism, and Consumer Contracts: An Empirical Perspective” to SSRN. I wrote this paper for last year’s NYU Journal of Law & Liberty Symposium on Behavioral Economics™ Challenge to the Classical Liberal Program. The basic idea of the paper is an evaluation of the empirical evidence concerning behavioral and neoclassical theoretical predictions in a few settings where behavioral anomalies are frequently argued to justify paternalistic measures: credit cards, standard form contracts, and shelf space contracts.

Read the full piece here.

EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes responds to the USDOJ Antitrust AG’s criticism of the recent Microsoft decision…

Read the full piece here.