The market for fresh turkeys

Frozen turkeys can be produced year round, but fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving all need to be brought to maturity at around the same time. This column from last year's Slate puts the picture into focus: The Turkey-Industrial Complex--How do farmers produce so many birds for Thanksgiving?

"Producing fresh turkeys takes more planning. Market leader Butterball, for example—which grows about one fresh bird for every nine frozen ones—has already begun the production cycle for next year's holiday season. Eggs for breeder birds have been purchased from one of the world's two major genetic suppliers, Hybrid and Nicholas. Those eggs will then be hatched and placed in turkey farms so that they can grow and become sexually mature during the winter. (Butterball needs roughly 28,000 laying hens and 1,700 "stud" toms each year to produce the right amount of fresh turkeys.) Come springtime, these birds will produce the eggs that are destined to become the turkeys we actually eat. Hens produce eggs in 25-weeklong cycles: The first five weeks' worth go toward fresh turkey production, the rest toward the frozen turkey market. Breeder hens are normally used for a single cycle before being slaughtered and processed themselves."

Plug-in hybrid cars, and the retail market for electricity

The news is full of plug-in hybrid cars, i.e. cars with both an electric and a gasoline powered motor, which can be recharged overnight from your household electric outlet. See e.g.MIT's Technology Review on First Plug-in Hybrid to Be Sold in the United States or the AP onAuto industry on plug-in hybrids and electric cars, which begins

"Several automakers are developing plug-in hybrid vehicles and electric cars that could help meet President Barack Obama's goal of putting 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015. Many industry officials say the goal is a worthy one but will be difficult to meet. "

One difficulty not discussed in these articles is how retail electricity is sold. If your electricity bill is like mine, it consists of charges for power consumed, and charges for delivery and maintainence of the network. That is, you are charged both for the variable cost of the electricity you use, and a share of the fixed cost of the infrastructure. However, and strangely, you are charged for both by the kilowatt hour of electricity you use. That is, for each kilowatt hour, you pay an electricity part and an infrastructure part (and you can see this because your electricity utility is now required to offer its delivery service to multiple providers...)

This has some strange consequences, not least of which is that it makes additional electricity usage much more expensive than it would be if you instead were charged an access fee to cover your share of the infrastructure (including the peak load generating capacity), and a separate energy usage fee. Then the marginal additional kilowatt would be cheaper. In that case it might be economical for you to buy an electric car that would charge itself by being plugged in overnight, or even heat your home with electricity.

Market for toilets: NYC marathon

Providing Toilets for 39,000 Runners

The NYC marathon is a peak load event:
"Gathering and placing 2,250 portable toilets for a one-day event — and then removing them almost immediately — is a daunting task. The marathon represents the third-largest annual assemblage of portable toilets in the country, behind the Rose Bowl college football game and parade and the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D. Placed side by side, the 4-foot-wide toilets would stretch 1.7 miles. "

Apparently portable potties have a natural life cycle:
"The average special-event life of a portable toilet, Malone said, is two years — shorter if it attends a lot of concerts — before it is assigned to duty at construction sites, the “bread and butter” of the business. "

Congestion in the market for parking spaces

The NY Times has a story called The Year of the Parking Space that touches on many parking related developments in NY. The most interesting part concerns congestion: lots of resources are spent trying to find parking spots.

"Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation is trying congestion rate parking in Greenwich Village as well as in and around Midwood to reduce double parking and cruising for available spots this fall. A recent Transportation Alternatives study on underpriced curbside parking on the Upper West Side found that drivers on Columbus Avenue cruise a total of 366,000 miles a year, producing 325 tons of carbon dioxide, at a cost to drivers of $130,000 per year in wasted fuel and more than 50,000 hours spent circling in traffic.
Further down the line? The department is trying to allow people to pay for parking via cellphones.
But for high-tech parking, San Francisco trumps us. They are developing a wireless sensor network that will announce which spaces are free at any moment. "

The Transportation Alternatives report linked in the excerpt is worth looking at. It begins in a way that makes clear why this is a market design problem:

"Every driving trip begins and ends with parking. But the demand for curbside parking in New York City far exceeds the supply. This mismatch is greatly compounded by the fact that curbside parking is free or priced far below garage rates, which are 10-15 times more expensive .
The low price of curbside parking unleashes a torrent of bargain-hunting drivers. Those who find spaces stay longer to make the most of their find. And when all spaces at the curb are occupied, other cars looking for parking circle in traffic for an elusive space. The saturation of curbside parking is a direct cause of air pollution, illegal parking and traffic congestion, all of which exact high costs on New York City’s environment, economy, health and quality of life."