Hockey Helmets, Concealed Weapons, and Daylight Saving: A Study of Binary Choices With Externalities

Abstract

This paper is about binary choices with externalities. These are either-or situations,not choices of degree or quantity. An externality is present when you care about my choice or my choice affects yours. You may not care, but need to know-whether to pass on left or right when we meet. You may not need to know, but care---you will drive whether or not I drive--- but prefer that I keep off the road.You may both care and need to know. The literature of externalities has mostly to do with how much of a good or a bad should be produced,consumed,or allowed.HereI consider only the interdependence of choices to do or not to do, to join or not to join, to stay or to leave, to vote yes or no, to conform or not to conform to some agreement or rule or restriction. Players will accept hockey helmets (or not) by individual choice for several reasons. Chicago star Bobby Hull cites the simplest factor: vanity. But many players honestly believe that helmets will cut their efficiency and put them at a disadvantage, and others fear the ridicule of opponents. The use of helmets will spread only through fear caused by injuries like Green's-or through a rule making them mandatory. . . One player summed up the feelings of many: It's foolish not to wear a helmet. But I don't because the other guys don't. I know that' silly, but most of the players feel the same way. If the league made us do it, though, we'd all wear them and nobody would mind. Shortly after Teddy Green of the Bruins took a hockey stick in his brain, the player, Don Awrey, commented to a Newsweek(1969) reporter, WhenI saw the way Teddy looked, it was an awful feeling . . . I'm going to start wearing a helmet now, and I don't care what anybody says. A voluntary helmet may be seen as cowardly,but nobody thinks a baseball player timid when he dons the batting helmet without which the league will not let him bat. Motorcycle helmets are not only worn regularly,but probably worn more gladly, in states that require them. When ever ascribed motives matter, the way a choice is organized or constrained will itself be a part of the outcome and affect the payoffs.