,
8 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
Thread: Economic Naturalist Question #5. Why do many fast-food restaurants promise a free meal if you are not given a receipt at the time of purchase? 
In an earlier thread, I explored why introductory economics courses appear to leave little lasting imprint on the millions of students who take them each year:
Students learn more effectively when they pose interesting questions based on personal experience, and then use basic economic principles to help answer them. This exercise became what I call my “economic naturalist” writing assignment.
When my former student Sam Tingleff asked why free meals were offered when clerks failed to provide receipts, he noted that most fast-food patrons are not on expense accounts and are thus unlikely to require receipts for reimbursement.
He then observed that restaurateurs attempt to deter theft by requiring cashiers to reconcile the cash collected at their stations with the sales rung up at their registers. Those who fall short are typically responsible for the difference.
One way cashiers can circumvent this control is by neglecting to ring up a proportion of their transactions. This tactic works because it is difficult to match specific changes in a restaurant’s food inventory with individual transactions at any given cash register.
Thus, if a cashier failed to ring up a customer’s $20 meal, he or she could pocket the $20 without creating an accounting discrepancy at the end of the day.
Owners could hire supervisors to verify that cashiers ring up every sale. But owners have avoided that expense by providing an economic incentive for customers to monitor cashiers for free.
