APPLIED ECONOMIC THEORY & URINAL CAKES

Dear Economist,

Whenever I go to the gentlemen’s toilet in a pub, I’m unsure how to behave. The question is: Should I urinate on the urinal cakes or not? At first, I think that if I urinate on them I’ll help to finish them earlier, thus making the publican purchase more of them, and helping the economy.

But then I think, while I’m urinating, that if the publican has to buy more tablets, eventually he will probably have to raise the price of the beer, to my huge disappointment. So the question is, where should I urinate in the gentlemen’s toilets in the pub?

Thank you,

Massimo J.

Italy

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by Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist (Via. Twitter!).

I confess, I found this on Andrew Sullivan's site, The Daily Dish.

For more on the analogy try: Frederic Bastiat.