Hearing Economics

We interrupt this series of Econ 101 posts to bring you something a bit closer to home with no graphs or subscripts.  I cannot speak for my readers, but I for one am tired of thinking about Classical Economics, Supply and Demand Curves, and Price in general.  So… let’s do a Scarlett O’Hara and think about that tomorrow. Today, let’s think

Last post looked at why different firms are Willing to Sell at different Price points — another way of saying that some firms can compete more and longer in a free market because their costs are lower and their margins are higher.  This was bad news for RR, who’d written a letter to the editor of a journal asking why

 “We go out and we buy a lot of products made in China. That’s how we celebrate Labor Day.”   David Letterman, 2010 Last time at Econ 101, the Supply Curve was developed and described:  firms will Supply a certain Quantity (Qs) at a given Price.  As you’d expect, they are Willing to Supply more (Qs increases) as Price increases.

Q:  “Does it really cost $600 or more for the manufacturer to ship a hearing aid to me versus to Costco or the VA?” Sincerely, RR Last post considered RR’s plaint that big competitors’ product Costs are lower than his, so his profit margins are necessarily smaller than theirs, no matter how careful he is with his operating costs.  RR wanted

Q from an independent hearing aid specialist:{{1}}[[1]]I found this question in a Letter to the Editor, entitled “Profiting From Hearing Aid Sales.”  It was published, but unanswered, in an industry journal[[1]] “I have minimum overhead… so perhaps my prices are lower than average.  However, if Costco is purchasing their aids for the same price that the VA pays (the price of

Last week’s post gave a rambling answer to a Reader’s Question from Worried Mom asking about survival of private practice.  The Answer went down the old bricks-and-mortar path, consolidated into a set of reflections that I (jokingly) referred to as my  Unified Location Theory– 17 years in the making and no better now than it was back in 1995.  I clarified

Q:  What were the last words of the Nobel Laureate economist, John Maynard Keynes? A:  “I should have drunk more Champagne.” Right! The next best thing to Champagne is writing these posts and getting readers’ comments.  Here’s a great one from a 1st generation private practice owner and worried mother. Q: Do you think private practice can survive in this

This occasional series has taken intrepid readers through economic concepts such as Utility, Decreasing Marginal Benefit and Willingness to Pay — all assumptions underlying the downward-sloping Price/Quantity Demanded curve that we call a Demand Curve.  As those posts illustrated with Jack and Jill’s different Utilities,  analyzing the logic of consumer choices given their limited resources is one way to understand

This short series has described a tiny company that stayed small and became profitable by specializing in developing and making tiny things for a tiny group of giant customers.  It did this by becoming a “manufacturing OEM”{{1}}[[1]]Original Equipment Manufacturer, as defined in post 2 in this series.[[1]] to several industries, including hearing/audio industries. At this point, we know who IntriCon

 WHAT is ItriCon?    IntriCon Corp describes itself as a “manufacturing OEM.” For the uninitiated (like me) OME stands for “Original Equipment Manufacturer.”  An OEM manufactures parts and finished products which it sells to other companies, which in turn use the parts and sell the purchased products under their own brand names.  IntriCon further describes itself as an OEM “dependent