Marginal revolution and linkage

I've never broken that mythical 1,000 unique visits/day number. I've come close a time or two, after a Wonkette listing. Marginal Revolution linked to one of my posts yesterday, and once again I was just short of 1,000 visits, maybe today?

Anyway, I sent an email to Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at GMU and author of the said blog, in response to the piece that featured him, in last week's Post Food section. It was about applying economic principles to choosing a restaurant. See "An Economist's Palate, Applied to Dining Around D.C."

His second Rule: go where there is competition, actually under-reported economic principles.

Really his point is about agglomeration economies and clustering effects (Saxenian and others). While he was focusing on "ethnic food" (and the sociological theory of invasion-succession is relevant there) the same kind of general point about agglomeration benefits can be made of the dining options available in Bethesda. The food is general, not likely to be super unique, but the number of restaurants has clustered there, to be close to large numbers of mobile residents of Montgomery County. Plus they have the Landmark Theaters and Barnes and Noble, and other attractions.

So we had an e-conversation about it... and he included a link to Richard's Rules for Restaurant Driven Revitalization.