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Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. She is currently on leave.
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Megan was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra-dry skim-milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster-recovery firms at Ground Zero � all before the age of 30.

While working at Ground Zero, Megan started Live From the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. She has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic, along with its owner, in August 2007.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington, D.C., where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.
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Market failure

By Megan McArdle

Feb 11 2009, 5:26 PM ET Comment

The law of unintended consequences doesn't only afflict government actions.

Craigslist springs up to facilitate low cost transactions between individuals:  good!

The market for used furniture booms, allowing people to furnish their houses more nicely/cheaply, while giving a little extra cash to those parting with unwanted furnishings:  good!

The boom in used furnitures spreads bedbugs, leading to a quasi-epidemic in some areas:  eeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

Now I'm afraid to buy any used furniture at all, other than from an antique dealer.  (Which means, I'm not buying any used furniture).  As far as I can tell, the only real way to get rid of a bedbug infestation is to throw out practically everything you own.  It's not worth saving a couple of hundred dollars on a futon if it means I might have to throw out thousands of dollars worth of other furniture.

When markets fail, we're supposed to recommend government intervention, but damned if I can think of one that would solve this problem.  I think we're stuck with Caveat Emptor.




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