Hearing Economics

Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the Western world?”  Bankers? Oil companies?  Health insurers?  None of the above; they are actually academic publishers… their monopolistic practices make Walmart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch a socialist.  {{1}}[[1]] George Monbiot writing in The Guardian, quoted in The Robber Barons of Academia,  The Week, 3 Sept 2011.[[1]] Thus speaks British social activist

Audiology: Practice Management was published in 2000 as part of an Audiology book “trilogy” edited by Ross Roeser, Mike Valente and myself.  In that first edition, we egregiously took on the ambitious task of predicting the future of practice management. At least we were modest enough to prevail upon other, better positioned thinkers to make the predictions.{{1}}[[1]]Jerger JJ, Skafte MD, Kolind

Economics is all about  individuals, companies, nations parlaying their limited resources into trades that maximize outcomes. At least they think or hope that their trades will have that effect. We’ve talked about some of the underlying concepts in previous posts: Utility is a person’s internal measures of perceived benefit from acquiring something; rationale behavior is needed to make the best trades

“The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed.”{{1}}[[1]]William Gibson, science fiction author[[1]] 2011 was a BIG year for insider trading, centimillionaires{{2}}[[2]]At least $100 million[[2]], wire-taps, and hidden microphones.  Time to call in James Bond. Directors of Wall Street firms connived with hedge fund tycoons who were detained as flight risks and slammed with 11 year prison sentences.  But, the intrigue

This week’s post is long because it is a dialog between two, maybe three, people over the past few days:  myself,  a self-anointed Mystery Shopper, and the Mystery Shopper’s friend, Hubert.  See what you think.  Consider how YOU would have responded and send in your corrections/additions/redacts and other commentary to improve my crabby response.  This is your chance to be

Hearing Economics is pleased to host Christine Diles, AuD as a guest blogger this week.{{1}}[[1]]Christine Diles, Au.D. and Bill Diles, M.A. have owned Kenwood Hearing Center Sonoma County, CA for over 30 years.   They have expanded the practice  to 3 full time locations with a staff of both audiologists as well as hearing aid dispensers.  Dr. Diles is a

The market can stay irrational far longer than you or I can remain solvent.  John Maynard Keynes By golly,  the hearing aid market may be a bit irrational right now. “Irrational” in Economic-Speak means that consumers are making choices which are not maximizing their self-interest, probably because said consumers lack sufficient information to make informed (self-interested) decisions.  For economists, being

This post is the beginning of a series that will pop up once in awhile on this site, with the intent of giving instruction on basic Economics concepts in small, hopefully palatable doses.  Today’s concept is Decision Costs, which can be tallied up as either Accounting Costs or, more usefully, as Economic Costs. Say you’ve saved up $40,000 and plan

Hearing Economics is pleased to host a guest blogger this week, and I am even more pleased to take a week off.  This post is the first in what is hoped will be a series on various pricing strategies adopted by those in our field.  We invite others to submit posts describing their Pricing approaches.  For those of you who

  No, TG does not stand for Thanksgiving, but happy Thanksgiving anyway to those readers in the USA.  As we join together, let us give a moment of silence to remember HearUSA. When it’s all said and done, you’re just another number and HearUSA’s number turned out to be #11-23341-EPK. The graphic story is shown above. The blow-by-blow account follows. HearUSA’s