Sunday, December 9, 2007

The Negative Externalities of Blondes

Blondes apparently make men dumber. What are the policy implications?
  1. Place a tax on blond hairs, encouraging women to dye their hair another color.
  2. Pay subsidies to men who are frequently surrounded by blond women. (Economists will probably point to endogeneity problems outside the laboratory.)
  3. Regulation: Ban blond hair. Inevitably deal with the problem of defining the color.
  4. Assign property rights over women's hair color to either women or men.
Feel free to post your own suggested policies to the comments below. This is all tounge-in-cheek of course. I would also argue the existence of an adverse effect on male intelligence suggests there is a positive externality occurring on men, one which might swamp the adverse effect on intelligence. (Hat Tip: Division of Labour)

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