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Thread: Economic Naturalist Question #6. Why are newspapers, but not soft drinks, sold in vending machines that allow customers to take more units than they paid for? 
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.
My former student Brendan Quigley's paper began by noting that when you put coins into a soft drink vending machine and push the button, a cold can of cola tumbles down the chute. If you want a second can, you’ll need to deposit more coins.
In contrast, if you put your coins into a newspaper vending machine, the machine opens, providing easy access to the entire stack of today’s edition. You’re entitled to take only one, of course, and most customers observe that limit.
But why, he asked, are newspaper machines built to such low security standards? One reason is that such machines are much less costly to build. There is no need for complex mechanical devices to feed only a single newspaper out through a slot.
The coins trip a simple lever that releases the latch on the machine’s front door, which resets once the door is closed.
But soft drink vending machines would also be cheaper if constructed in a similar way. So the reason for the design difference, Mr. Quigley reasoned, must reside not on the cost side of the cost-benefit test, but on the benefit side.
The key distinction between the two products is that whereas a dishonest consumer would benefit from taking more soft drinks than he paid for, he would have little reason for taking more than one newspaper.
Having ten copies would make him no better off than having only one. And that’s why newspaper vending machines are built to lower security standards.
