Inspired by a story in today's Scotsman that 'Toilet Roll Contributes to MSPs GBP10million Expenses" (link here), I thought I should write about the toilet roll regime at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning in Lesotho (that's where I am working).
There is no toilet paper in the toilets. Instead everybody gets allocated one roll per week. Which you can collect on Mondays, and only Mondays. If you miss it, you get none for the week.
I am not sure how this happened. I can only assume that toilet paper used to be freely available in the toilets and that there was massive over-use of this luxury item. Essentially, toilet paper was a freely available common resource, and this resulted in over-consumption (for anyone with an economic mind) - a tragedy of the commons, if you will.
Giving everyone their own allocation then makes sense. You are far more cautious in using your own resources than common resources. Even better, if you can use less (think of it as cutting costs in economic terms), then you get to take the rest home (that is, you get to keep the profit by being more efficient).
A brilliant scheme! And almost certainly one that only a Finance Ministry, packed with economists, could dream up.
Of course, getting the incentives correct is difficult. Who decided that 1 toilet roll per week was the correct amount? At the moment, in case anyone is interested, a lot of toilet rolls are being taken home. But is this because too much toilet roll is being given out, or because people, being allowed to keep the profits, are being particularly efficient? I couldn't tell you.
Out of curiosity, I am wondering if anyone else's work allocates surprising resources to individuals, when, at first sight, it should be a common resource (?)
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