I find this sort of thing fascinating.
With candy sales banned on school campuses, sugar pushers are the latest trend at local schools. Backpacks are filled with Snickers and Twinkees for all sweet tooths willing to pay the price.
“It’s created a little underground economy, with businessmen selling everything from a pack of skittles to an energy drink,†said Jim Nason, principal at Hook Junior High School in Victorville.
This has become a lucrative business, Nason said, and those kids are walking around campus with upwards of $40 in their pockets and disrupting class to make a sale.
the candy black market thrives!
via Freakonomics blog, naturally.
When my son was in second grade, the teacher would bribe the kids to be good by giving them funny money as a reward. Every now and then, they’d have a swap meet where kids could bring in old toys and whatnot and swap them with each other for the funny money.
The fascinating thing to me was that an exchange rate between funny money and real money spontaneously arose amongst the kids. It was possible at these swap meets to exchange a funny money dollar for a real quarter.
that is amazing – i wonder then if economics is something we are wired for? are we inclined on an instinctual level to create “markets” and barter? is it a cooperative strategy which helped our prehuman ancestors survive?