Logrolling with Friends

This past summer I went backpacking in Colorado. On the last night of a 4-day hike, my friend Charlie asked me if he could have my freeze-dried lasagna in exchange for his freeze-dried risotto (an objectively worse meal). I initially thought to say no, but I realized that I could give up lasagna (the food I slightly preferred) and trade this favor for something in return that I really prefer. I asked Charlie if he would be willing to clean up the food & cooking area in exchange for the trade in food. He accepted. I did Charlie the favor of eating the worse food and he did me the favor of cleaning up.

As I continued thinking about this moment, I realized that I logroll with friends all the time. Back in Charlottesville, if Charlie cooks dinner, I do more of the dishes. If my other housemate John cleans the bathroom, I take out the trash. We exchange favors all the time without talking about it. Splitting up housework isn’t always easy, but it’s worked well in our house and we exchange favors without even discussing them. Since each favor is: 1. relatively contemporaneous (actions & benefits are immediately noticeable) & 2. held to the customary contract of friendship, there isn’t much favor shirking, two potential problems that Weingast & Marshall foresaw with logrolling. Since these favor trades rarely (if ever) impose costs on others outside of the exchange (there are no negative externalities) and we trade when our benefits exceed costs, I have found logrolling to be a great tool to achieve allocative efficiency.

The Balcony Dilemma

Recently, my friend Bella asked me whether it is worth it to pay an extra $10 rent for the balcony I immediately replied  “I would even give up $50 because the marginal utility of balcony is very high for me”. I think everyone would be willing to bear the $10 cost because the MC of living in an apartment without a balcony outweighs this cost considerably.

Bella is moving to an apartment with her three other friends. She and two of her friends easily agreed to pay the extra ten bucks for the apartment. However, one of her friends, Caroline, refused to pay that cost which makes the situation complicated. This group of four people is really good friends so the MC of excluding Caroline and moving to a three-bedroom apartment is highly costly. Therefore, this is not an option. 

When Bella asked me how to resolve this situation, Coase’s theory came to my mind. When I asked her how much she would be willing to pay to get the balcony, I got the answer of “as far as $20”. Thus the situation would be easily solved if Bella would be willing to cover Caroline’s balcony fee as well. Unfortunately, this situation was not that simple. The reason why Caroline didn’t agree to move to an apartment with a balcony was stemming from her fear of heights which is much more costly than the $10 fee. As a result, the MC of Caroline is higher than the MB of Bella and her two friends. Hence, they end up moving to an apartment without a balcony and bear the cost caused by Caroline out of their love for her (which may not be valued by any currency). 

Avoiding externalities during Thanksgiving

 Thanksgiving is a very traditional holiday. Most people typically celebrate it the same way every year, and for a majority of Americans that means traveling to visit family. This year, there are significant externalities to travel regarding the pandemic. A large number of college students around the nation like myself, will be heading home for Thanksgiving, and many of them will not return to school until late January or February. However, the tight window for travel from essentially today to next Wednesday presents an enormous opportunity to spread COVID-19 which will present negative externalities for every American for the foreseeable future. To avoid this externality, and personal harm, many families (especially older members) are choosing not to gather this year.

This is not the only avoided externality that occurs as a result of not gathering for the November holiday. Every year, millions of Americans suffer during Thanksgiving because one or more of their extended relatives is vegan. Creating an edible and enjoyable Thanksgiving meal is a near impossible task for anyone who has a vegan in their family. Now, don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with people choosing to follow a rigorous diet of any form. However, in order to make family feel comfortable around each other during the festive meal, lots of families want to make sure that everyone eats the same thing. This results in significantly less enjoyment of the meal for most non-vegans in the family who are forced to eat the food with no animal products. This year promises hope for those Americans, a year of meat, gravy and a proper pumpkin pie.

Biden's Struggles with Inefficient Bureaucracies, Barriers, and Trump

As we sit back and watch anything but a usual presidential election and transition happen, I started thinking more specifically about the repercussions of Trump not formally conceding the election. Biden and the rest of his transition team face a significant number of barriers to entry as they try to prepare for Biden taking office in January. For example, Biden and the rest of his transition-team are being locked out of crucial Covid-19 pandemic data and government agency contacts, leaving the Biden team with a major lack of crucial information and potentially an even more delayed response to the surging pandemic. Once again, inefficient federal bureaucracies are delaying key processes and getting in the way of what we need, when we need it.

Since a formal transition cannot begin until Trump concedes the election, Biden is not allowed to meet with any federal agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services, to start working on the country’s next steps. The initiation of the official transition itself is inefficient – the General Services Administration (GSA), which is led by a Trump appointee, has to sign off on the election and will not do so since Trump has not conceded. Time after time again bureaucracies are slowing down crucial processes. A major source of slack/insulation in this situation is that the bureaucracies that Biden wishes he could talk and work with right now are monopoly suppliers of information, as they are the only ones with the government specific insider information. This leaves Biden with no alternatives and these agencies with no incentive or reason to act differently, since there is no competition for efficiency or information. For now, we just have to wait and see how this transition plays out and hope that with time it doesn’t become even messier than it already is. 

A Public Choice Explanation for What's Up with the USPS

As we wrap up this semester, I thought it would be interesting to evaluate one issue using different methods and theories we've discussed over the past few months. Over the course of this semester, the USPS has gotten a lot of attention for its issues with funding and its public status. Despite being a massive bureaucracy (they employ over half a million people), the USPS has a big funding problem, causing some to reconsider its role as a government entity. 

The USPS and public choice first crossed my mind when we read Friedman, who argued that the USPS, a government monopoly, should be privatized to stimulate competition. Allowing new entrants into the mail delivery industry in his opinion would result in the industry being "revolutionized." However, I believe Friedman's thinking is narrow, as there are other benefits to the USPS that are very important. For example, having postal services as a public good benefits rural communities, who most likely would lose access to postal services under a private system because of the lack of profitability in those regions. 

The next time I though of the USPS was when we were discussing the Niskanen model in class a few weeks ago. Niskanen's model helped explain why USPS faces more budget issues than other government bureaucracy. Consumers elasticity of demand is fairly high for the USPS, as there are many substitutes. Higher elasticity results in less room for the senior bureaucrat to increase the budget. Moreover, during the past few decades, the elasticity of demand has gotten even more elastic, as new substitutes like Amazon, UPS, and e-mail have grown in popularity, making it so the USPS has even less power to expand their budget. This is because there is less sponsors surplus they can try to take when expanding the budget than more inelastic agencies, like Defense or Homeland Security.

A Free Rider Friendsgiving

Last year, a group of friends and I from several houses gathered for a "Friendsgiving" celebration at UVA. We had a Google sheet to sign up to bring different classic Thanksgiving dishes, and we had everything from turkey and cranberry sauce to sweet potato casserole to green beans to cider to pumpkin pie. Because of our number, we of course faced the classic economics problem: free-riding. No one discussed it then, but looking back now I can clearly see why several of us did not contribute. When there is a large number of people receiving a group benefit, individual members are incentivized not to contribute. By my estimation, there were about four people or so who brought nothing. I myself was added onto the signup sheet with two of my housemates without my knowledge, an easy opportunity not to help out. However, feeling it to be my obligation, I duly contributed to a wonderful evening.

To overcome this problem, the key is restricted benefits. Our hosts could have easily prevented anyone from entering who had no contribution to the meal, or made them pay to enter. But that is not how friends treat each other, and tempers could have flared. We did have enough food for everyone and all the food groups were covered, but this could have easily not been the case. In fact, it might have been better if we had had fewer people, since there would have been less temptation to free ride as each person would know Friendsgiving would not happen if they did not contribute. Instead, we had several free riders. And that was ok, because we loved them, and we were happy to show them grace.

(But also next time, pandemic permitting, I will be guarding the door.)

Some Interesting Benefits of Ranked-Choice Voting

During and after the election I monitored the results of Maine’s ranked-choice voting Senate race because, after we discussed it in class, I was interested in the effect it might have on the results. It was cool watching the news anchors on election night discuss Susan Collins’ need to obtain 50% of the vote so that the ranked-choice aspect of the election didn’t kick in. I’ll admit, I really wanted Susan Collins to miss the threshold so that we could see the effect of transferred votes, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Since the election I have done some more reading and was interested to learn of a few more benefits to this different voting method. 

I found a cool opinion article in USA Today, written by Andrew Yang and Bill Weld, that discussed the effect ranked choice voting might have on campaign strategies. They said that due to a candidate’s goal of winning second-choice votes in addition to first-choice votes, that candidates would shy away from negative ads as to not sour the impressions of the opponents’ supporters. Ranked-choice voting then has the effect of more respectful and polite elections, something I believe all would appreciate especially in this day and age. Another interesting effect ranked choice voting has, according to an article on FairVote.org, is that it is more likely for women and minorities to not only run for office, but win their elections as well. One way ranked-choice voting can increase representation is due to the decreased effect of two similar candidates “splitting the vote”. Say for example (in an egregious oversimplification) that two women are on the ballot against one man: if almost all women support a female candidate, and most men support the male candidate, the female candidates might split supporters, but as long as the male candidate doesn’t win a simple majority, one of the women should gain the supporters of the other and the effect of this split is diminished greatly. Obviously this example is an oversimplification, but I thought the research data about how ranked-choice voting could directly lead to more representation was fascinating, and makes me curious about what other positive effects it could have.

How Uber and Lyft Flipped an Election

One of the most interesting amendments to appear on the ballot this November 3rd was Proposition 22 in California. Proposition 22 would change the law so that app-based transportation and delivery drivers could remain defined as independent contractors and adopt labor and wage policies specific to their line of work. This would allow Uber and Lyft to be exempt from the current California labor law, AB5 or the "gig worker bill," which requires companies that hire independent contractors to reclassify them as employees. Classification as an employee means that drivers would receive employer-sponsored benefits, but also retain less flexibility in their working choices. 

Six weeks prior to election day, the proposition had only garnered the support of about 39% of the constituency, with another 25% remaining undecided. However, on election day, a whopping 58% of voters supported the amendment - how did this massive surge in support occur? 

The approval of the proposition can be attributed solely to the efforts of Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and other gig economy companies in a perfect representation of capture theory. Capture theory is Stigler's theory that regulation is acquired by an industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit. In this case the gig economy industry, lead by its key players, spent over $200M to acquire "yes" votes on the ballot for the initiative. They argued that as their businesses currently remain unprofitable, this exemption from having to pay for employee benefits is crucial to their future health. The firms employed TV and digital marketing in order to reach a wide range of constituents, and utilized in-app advertising to reach gig economy workers and customers. Additionally, Uber and Lyft threatened to leave California, raise prices, and/or cut jobs if they were required to reclassify their drivers as employees and modify their business model. This threat likely scared many voters into defaulting to the safe, status-quo vote of "yes." The most impressive results from their efforts were the significant numbers of drivers and minorities who supported the proposition. Going forward, this approved proposition will be operated and enforced to the benefit of Uber, Lyft, and other firms within the industry who will retain their market shares and current business models. 

Splitting Checks & Principal Agent Problems

 I was recently out to dinner with a group of my friends. We were having a great time until the check came. The restaurant informed us that in groups larger than 6 they just split the check evenly for as many people were in the group. Some members of my group were very angry because they had intentionally ordered cheaper items and were now having to pay for those who had opted for more expensive items. 

Splitting the check evenly raises an instance of the principal agent problem.  If looking from the viewpoint of someone on a budget (the principal) then the agent (the more affluent friend) did not have their interests aligned with the principal in terms of keeping spending low. This leads the friend trying to save money to have to pay a much higher price than the actual cost of their food. I myself am quite the eater so I feel like I am part of the problem, but I wish restaurants were able to split more evenly so I didn't feel as much guilt in these instances. 

It Was a Fun Idea in the Moment

 In class the other day I made a passing joke about holding out on signing Professor Coppock's release form. Professor Coppock responded with a thinly veiled comment that being a holdout 'might' affect my final grade come the end of the semester. This got me thinking about how things would actually play out if I decided to holdout on signing the form and whether or not it was really worth it. 

The first question to ask is what is there to gain. Several articles I have found estimate that authors of textbooks make 12% in royalties from sales. Professor Coppock is a co-author so let's assume he makes 6%. Each textbook of the third edition of Principle of Economics sells for $95. Professor Coppock has 1,000 students in ECON 2020 on average each semester. Therefore, we can assume he makes $5,700 from sales of his textbook each semester. As the release form stipulates that my likeness can be used in any subsequent versions of the textbook then it looks like Professor Coppock will be making a comfortable amount of money from the use of my face. I think he could spare a couple hundred dollars in compensation for me.

The easiest way to go about being a holdout in this situation is to simply refuse to sign the form. This would make most or all of the footage that Professor Coppock has unusable. I'm sure he would want to avoid this so it's hopeful that he would agree to any demands I make. However, Professor Coppock holds some power over me because he can disincentivize me by threatening me with a bad grade. If he did take that course of action then I could appeal to the University. Professor Coppock is undoubtedly more trusted and valued by the University than I am so they might side with him. My next step would be to call on my fellow students as witnesses as I'm sure some of them heard our exchange in class. But then my fellow students might be holdouts and ask for part of the money that I receive from Professor Coppock in exchange for testifying. Then this brings up issues of making them keep their word. If I give them the money before they testify then they might renege on our agreement ex post facto. That way they would get the money but still remain in the Professor's good graces. If they testified before I had to give them the money then I could just renege on our agreement. 

Ultimately the time, money, and effort that I would have to put into being a holdout far outweighs the benefits that I could receive. I guess I should've known better than to trifle with an expert in economics. 

Congressional Control and Scott Pruitt's EPA

 

The discussion of the competing theories of bureaucratic discretion and Congressional control made me want to find a modern example to see how each theory holds up. Given the prominence of the EPA as well as the controversy surrounding Scott Pruitt's tenure it seems like a compelling example. In 2017, Trump’s appointed EPA head, Scott Pruitt, began a drastic rollback of environmental protections that were pursued under the Obama administration. He loosened Obama-era fuel standards for cars and light-duty trucks, convinced Trump to exit the Paris Climate Accord, and repealed the Clean Power Plan.

The case of the EPA seems to confirm much of Weingast and Moran’s findings; both the Senate and the President exerted control as the principle in Pruitt’s one-year tenure. For instance, Pruitt’s decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan was prompted by an executive order from Trump. Additionally, his confirmation was no rubber stamp. Senate Democrats attempted to delay his confirmation vote by dragging out the debate. He was ultimately confirmed by a narrow 52-46 margin. Most surprisingly, Pruitt even advocated to restrict the budget of his own agency, arguing the EPA had become bloated. From the perspective of Niskanen, in which the agency head seeks to maximize their agency’s power, this choice is incomprehensible. Finally, when Pruitt’s tenure became mired in corruption scandals, the legislature exercised its ability to institute sanctions. Various oversight bodies launched a total of 15 investigations into his actions, including a Republican-led one from House Oversight committee. These ultimately led to Pruitt’s resignation in 2018. 

Principal-Agent Problem in Soccer

As a big soccer fan, I was thinking about why the best soccer players in the world would end up playing in Turkish teams later in their careers. Even though they get offers from much better leagues like Premier and La Liga they somehow end up getting retired in one of the teams in the Turkish League. 

This situation is a great example of the principal-agent problem stemming from different interests among coaches and players. Coaches (principal) transfer star players (agent) to their teams according to the players’ former stats and performances. Thus, the coaches don’t really make biased decisions because they receive adequate information regarding the transferred players. The main difference between what the European teams and Turkish teams offer star players is not the salary, it is the length of the contract. Turkish teams generally offer much more longer-term contracts to those players than European teams. Long-term contracts are very compelling offers especially for star players over 30 years since they can enjoy big salaries without worrying about getting fired if they show low performances. Hence, they don’t feel much economic pressure to perform which makes them more risk-averse. They don’t take risks which can lead to injury or hurt their stats because they act in their individual interests rather than in the principal’s interest.

How Primary Elections Are Cheating the Median Voter

 In Johnson’s “Voting, Rational Abstention, and Rational Ignorance” we learned that primary elections have the potential to prevent a single mode electorate and contribute to the ambiguity of candidate’s platforms. Individuals who are active voters in primary elections tend to be more partisan in their beliefs, or in terms related to the median voter theorem, on the far right or far left of the spectrum. Because these individuals are more inclined to participate, the candidates in the general election will most likely vehemently oppose one another on close to every issue. This forces voters in the middle to either abstain from voting or choose a candidate that represents the extreme.

More often than not, in districts where one party historically dominates, the general election is secondary to the battle in the primary. For example, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (NY-14) win in the 2018 democratic primary essentially decided the general election, and her toughest battle was against the Democrat incumbent Joseph Crowley. When the real competition is in the primary, candidates are more likely to shift closer towards the ends of the electoral spectrum and therefore produce policies favored by their voting base who adhere to extreme ends of the spectrum. This of course only leads to further partisanship in congress with most candidates representing extreme ends of conservatism and liberalism leaving little room to compromise for the median, and moderate, American voter.

Maybe our p value isn't so low after all?

 When we've talked about p, or the probability that an individual vote is decisive, in class, we have reasoned that in most US elections, this value is minimal, effectively 0. However, the most recent presidential election has taught us otherwise. According to this article, Georgia is preparing to recount the state's votes by hand to verify the results. There may be a recount in my home state, Pennsylvania. President Trump has been pursuing legal actions in a number of states to fight the results of this election. 

Clearly, the presidential (along with some House and Senate elections) were incredibly close in a handful of states this year. If you live in one of these crucial swing states like I do, then your p value is larger than you think. Sure, you likely did not and will never single-handedly decide an election. However, this p is still much larger than the p value for those that live in "safe" states, like the now reliably blue Virginia. This was also true in 2016, when Trump won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by the slimmest of margins. In that election, turnout was not very high- the electorate didn't really believe there was an incentive to vote! But in 2020, turnout was at historic levels. It may be because more people felt that their p was higher, more people wanted to perform their civic duty, or maybe there was just a lot more self interest and expressive voting in 2020. I suspect that the third option is true. But the slim margins of victory in crucial states in the last two presidential elections have definitely proved that, if you live in the right state, your p value is not 0. Your vote counts. 

Majority Rule Runoff Election Takes Center Stage

    The Congressional seat runoff in Georgia has come to the forefront now that the presidential election has been decided.  Democrats will have control of the White House come inauguration day, January 20th, 2021.  The next major battle in United States politics is over which political party will gain control of the Senate.  Georgia utilizes the rarely used majority rule, runoff election format to pick the Senate members from its state.  After the election, no candidate was able to meet the majority threshold.  Now, a runoff election will take place in January with the top two vote-getters going head to head.  After one candidate is elected, then another runoff will occur to elect the second winner.  A majority, runoff election has never had a larger impact on the decision making process in the United States.

    The Senate contains 100 seats, and currently, there are 48 Democrats and 50 Republicans in the Senate.  The two seats that are up for grabs in Georgia could be pivotal since control of the Senate is hanging in the balance.  If two Democratic candidates can secure the spots, then the Senate is split 50-50, and the Democrats will effectively have control over the Senate.  They will have control because in the case of ties the vice president, Democrat Kamala Harris, will cast the tie breaking vote.  If one Republican candidate is able to win either runoff, then the Republicans will retain control of the Senate. All eyes in the political world will be focused on the majority rule, runoff elections in Georgia for the next couple of months as the struggle for political power in the United States continues.

The Butterfly Ballot Incident

 Last week, Americans painstakingly checked their phones for days in hopes that the election results would finally come in. the last time citizens have been made to wait past election night was 2000, and it took over a month instead of a few days. The country waited on Florida's recount, as the margin was too close to call between Gore and Bush. Palm Beach County faced particular controversy in their recount process due to a design flaw in their ballot. The butterfly ballot design led to over 2,000 democratic voters democratic voters to mistakenly vote for the Reform party candidate, Pat Buchanan, leading to Bush's victory in a traditionally blue county. Since Bush won the state of Florida by less than 2,000 votes, and in turn the election, this design flaw in one county multiplied into a presidential election scandal.

Through our discussions of Condorcet's paradox (and our class constitutional convention results), we have explored the importance of voting rules for outcomes. In the Bush versus Gore election, if the voting rules had set forth a uniform ballot design instead of allowing Palm Beach County to choose the confusing butterfly layout, Al Gore would have won the election. Isn't it crazy to think that a simple design flaw in one county determined the presidency.

photo of butterfly ballot: 

The ballot was so confusing because the second hole punch was to vote for Pat Buchanan. A hasty voter could very easily mistakenly think that this second hole punch was for Al Gore.

 

 

Voting with your feet in the age of COVID

 Tiebout's Pure Theory of Local Expenditures paper makes a lot of assumptions -- some more unrealistic than others. Though the assumptions of perfect information, perfect mobility, and lack of externalities between localities (among others) remain unimproved by the Coronavirus pandemic, it's much easier to make a decision to move when you can continue telecommuting to your old job. In this article by the Kinder Institute,  authors suggest that for companies continuing the remote work model, employees could end up working from the location of their choosing. A poll from Gallup even found that most workers don't want to go back. This will affect recently graduated college alumni in particular, who are applying to jobs that aren't tied to a location at all. 

In a world where your job is in your computer, objections to Tiebout's occupational mobility assumptions are rendered useless. While not everyone will adopt the telecommuting model, many will take the opportunity to vote with their feet to a new location that better suits their preferences for the provision of public goods. 

SCOTUS: A Case for Term Limits Over Court Packing

Olson speculates that the free rider problem becomes more relevant in the context of large groups as opposed to smaller groups. By expanding the number of SCOTUS seats, the influence of each justice on the groups decision would be reduced and potentially lead to rational ignorance or lack of effort by a justice to assert their viewpoint as the decisiveness of their decision would be reduced. Really, the only consequence that justices face is scrutiny of the public eye. By keeping the SCOTUS smaller, this scrutiny is greater for each justice, thus encouraging them to make decisions more reflective of constitutional principles and the constituencies that led to their appointment in the first place.

 

Even with just nine justices, an analysis by Kalt and Zupan reveals a significant principal agent problem between the SCOTUS and the American people. Justices have lifelong appointments to the court and thus have few monitoring procedures in place to mitigate shirking of constituent ideologies. In fact, after their appointment, the market never meets again to assess whether a justice’s job is approved of. Since justices are approved by the Presidency and the Senate, there is an immense incentive for voters to remain rationally ignorant. If people have no incentive to acquire knowledge about a political candidate, they certainly have a smaller incentive to obtain knowledge about potential court appointees, and vote for politicians based on their preference for a particular judge. Knowledge surrounding when court seats will open and potential appointees, is extremely difficult, if not impossible to find. Lastly, justices essentially have perfect monopolies over their seats as the barriers to entry are extremely high, so high that the justice either has to be criminally convicted, resign or die to be replaced. Enacting term limits, with the potential to be reappointed, should reduce the principal agent problem. This would institute a performance review method to better align SCOTUS (agent) and American Peoples’ (principle) ideologies over time. Term Limits would also make SCOTUS appointments more predictable. Staggered term limits would ensure each Congress and Presidency gets a specific number of appointments, thus making the SCOTUS more of a prevalent issue to voters in Presidential and Senate elections. This should lead to judges whose ideologies better align with those of the people.

Liquor stores have captured the market for cold beer in Indiana

Previously in class, we have discussed Stigler’s capture theory, in which an industry will utilize its political power to try and acquire regulations that will benefit their economic profits. This often occurs through campaign donations and other types of “legal” (often illegal) bribes and favors to politicians that will convince the politician to act and vote in the industry’s interest.

Indiana has a law that has consistently been protected by state legislators, which restricts certain businesses from selling cold beer. The ability to sell cold beer in Indiana is exclusive to only liquor stores, while grocery and convenience stores are restricted to only selling warm beer. This is obviously very significant because anyone who would like to purchase a cold case of beer for day-of drinking must go to a liquor store in order to avoid waiting for the beer to cool in the fridge. Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever bought beer from a liquor store, so this seems sort of crazy to me, and I imagine grocery stores, especially, suffer the most economic consequences of this law. Liquor store owners in Indiana have donated large amounts of money to campaign funds in order to keep this bill in place, and as a result their profits must be much higher.

Shirking in the NHL

 The main idea of the capture theory is that representatives will serve the economic interests of their constituency which will get them reelected. The NHL provides a great example of the capture theory in action. Though the NHL carried out a successful, COVID-free postseason, scheduling the regular season is not as simple. Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner since '93, has faced challenges throughout his tenure with the NHL such as labor lockouts, expanding the league, and now a national pandemic. Bettman has also proven to be a profit-maximizing commissioner, increasing NHL revenues since he started in this position. Bettman not only seeks to maximize utility for himself in raising revenues (and likely raising his salary in doing so), but also has to look out for the best interests of the teams he works for. 

In considering the COVID risks and struggles that come along with restarting the regular season, Bettman and his group of executives have devised several plans to best start the season. These options range from operating inside a few bubble-like hubs, traveling semi-normally (much like the NFL and MLB have), or even shutting down for the year. Bettman has to juggle which option not only expresses his social interests but also the economic interests of the teams he represents. Bettman has an incentive to shirk, thinking about his own utility by increasing profits by reopening all stadiums and having a near-normal season. Yet, Bettman is likely not to do so because his job hinges both on his economic success and his ability to appease majority of his teams. Bettman has a clear, yet challenging task: get the NHL back on track with as few COVID cases as possible. His executives and the teams coaches, players, and managers are likely to monitor his plans and be consulted with throughout this decision-making process. Additionally, Bettman has already received lots of feedback about the Edmonton and Toronto bubbles, and these "performance reviews" will likely affect the future of the 2020-2021 season. Finally, there are several, qualified executives who, I'm sure, would be ready and willing to take Bettman's place if this NHL season is a failure. Therefore, shirking will probably not be an issue, especially since Bettman has proven time and time again that he can withstand any challenge that comes his way. I'm sure that he will be successful in capturing both revenues and reelection with whatever plan he employs for this upcoming season.