Bardonomics

Image: Youkai Chou It's a happy day. Through some divine stroke of luck you have found yourself with two free tickets to the Rugby Sevens / insert-event-you-want-to-attend. What should you do? Is it a better idea to sell your coveted tickets to the highest bidder or to take along a friend and have a good time? What's a reasonable way to think about this decidedly pleasant dilemma?  Homo economicus , the imaginary friend of every economist, may have some advice for you. So who is  Homo economicus ? He is the relentlessly optimising, perfectly rational, purely self-interested character   who serves as a model for human behaviour. Numerous core economic theories are formulated through the study of how this creature would behave and interact under certain conditions. Fortunately, for economists and everyone else, humans are indeed often rational actors. For instance, the central economic tenet that, all other things being equal, an increase in the price of a good or