Goodbye, Europe

As our adventures in Italy come to an end, the lessons we’ve learned have coagulated into a cohesive curriculum of economic concepts. We’ve learned about the economics of construction in ancient Rome, and how landlord-tenant legal relationships developed throughout the course of the empire. We discussed where the best places to grow grapes and olives are, how weather affects the flavor of these products, and why producers choose to grow these crops instead of other crops. However, some of the most interesting economic lessons weren’t to be found in the curriculum.

One of the best examples of economics we’ve encountered so far is the lack of satisfaction from each subsequent museum – or rather, a textbook example of the law of diminishing marginal utility. The museums in Florence were more interesting than the ones in Rome – except for the Vatican museum, of course – which were better than those in Venice, and so on. We went to the Louvre – the LOUVRE – yesterday, and couldn’t muster more than a “yeah, I guess this is cool.” The Louvre, by many accounts the most spectacular museum in the world, didn’t do much for us. We’re “museum-ed out.” That’s not to say we didn’t appreciate the grandeur of the Louvre, but our utility just wasn’t as big as it was earlier in the trip.

Another fun little economic fact we picked up was that, until the 1970s, the French government standardized the price of baguettes to make them affordable for everyone. Even though this hasn’t been the case for decades, prices are still paradoxically low, even though demand is so high – the French eat something like 20 million baguettes daily. Bread bakeries, or boulangers, are the perfect example of a highly competitive market, with a mostly generic product, low barriers to entrance, etc. Today, at a premium bakery, do you know how much a baguette costs? 1 euro. A yardstick-sized baguette, a real French baguette, for 1 euro. Even sub-par baguettes at a supermarket back home cost a few bucks.

I’m now realizing that I’ve been writing in first-person plural this whole time. Oh well, I think I can speak for the group in this regard.

Thus concludes the last of my blogs for this trip, which I will treasure as one of the best experiences of my life. Goodbye Europe, until next time…