Robert Frank is an economist at Cornell who often does interesting work. His latest book follows in the Freakonomics framework, using economic analysis to explain all sorts of trivial features of daily life. Sometimes these stories can be interesting ( i have one about why houses sell above list price in a hot real estate market -- I'll pass it along if the demand warrants), sometimes they miss the mark. Frank missed the mark this morning on Marketplace radio. He tried to explain why some cars have the gas cap on the driver's side and some have them on the passenger side. His explanation was that if all cars had the cap on the same side, then we would have very long lines at the pump because only one side of the pump could be used. WRONG!!!! The obvious answer to this one is that people line up from opposite directions. Suppose all gas caps were on the driver's side. Half of the cars line up from one side of the gas station and use one side of the pump and the other half line up in the opposite direction on the other side of the pump. There is no need to have the gas cap on different sides.
--Dean Baker
