Sunday, August 13, 2006

Blog is Back with Waterparks

The Walker Economics Blog is back for a new school year, and the theme of the first week of the course is the wide reach of Economics: in other words, how many topics there are that are studied or written about by economists that are not normally considered to be part of the subject.

In honor of that theme, here is a link to a blog run by Steven Levitt, the author of Freakonomics, where he wonders why there are so many water parks in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. In fact, the Wisconsin Dells Visitor's Bureau lists 6 large waterparks in the city and calls Wisconsin Dells "the Waterpark Capital of the World."

Any ideas of why they would put so many waterparks in one city in the middle of central Wisconsin? Why aren't there 6 waterparks in a random city in a warm state like Florida or Texas instead? Why not have 6 waterparks in Orlando or Las Vegas where you have millions of tourists every year?

(Feel free to discuss the validity of the answers offered by commenters on the Freakonomics blog.)