A great question to ask as a student of economics – well, really, a student of anything – is “where else is this applicable?”
Because learning the definition is one thing, understanding its application is another. Understanding the applications, its costs and its benefits, and being able to transfer the idea over on to other domains and sectors – well, that is something else altogether.
Consider MPN, for example. That’s mobile number portability. Something that we take for granted these days. Although Indian readers might be interested to know that we are one of only two countries to use the donor-led system, rather than the recipient led system.
Now, students of microeconomics will (should) know that this encourages competition, because substitutability goes up. I don’t need to be locked up with one service provider for my entire life, in fear of having to update my number among my contacts every time I change service providers. It also therefore ensures that operators will provide better service, because customers have the ability to “vote with their feet”.
So far, so obvious.
But as I said up top, the real challenge as a student is to ask yourself, where else can I use this idea?
Can, say, education be made more competitive? Can and should students be allowed to switch colleges midway through acquiring a degree? Or can we have unbundling of colleges where you can buy courses from a variety of different colleges to make your own degree of choice?
Sucheta Dalal asks the same question in an excellent article on Moneylife – but with the focus being on account portability in banks.
What is the most effective solution to poor service, mis-selling and harassment by banks which are entrusted with your hard-earned savings? Simple. Bank account portability; or the ability to vote with your feet and switch to a better bank. The idea of bank account portability, which will truly force banks to compete for their customers, has been on the cards since 2012, when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) initiated the process of creating unique customer identification code (UCIC). Since then, almost every hurdle to implementation—technology issues, high costs, absence of unique codes, etc—having been substantially addressed; but account portability is nowhere on the cards.
https://www.moneylife.in/article/bank-account-portability-what-is-preventing-this-game-changing-move-for-customers/62915.html
The rest of the article speaks about why it is an excellent idea (duh!), how most of the groundwork has already been done (awesome!) and how the incumbents think it is a really bad idea (double duh!).
Incumbents will always – always! – find reasons for why “it just can’t be done”. But anything that makes a sector more competitive, and more responsive to its consumers, is by definition A Good Thing.
Or so we teach in micro, at any rate.
EconForEverybody 