Alex Tabarrok reviews Al Roth‘s new book, Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design, in the Wall Street Journal. An excerpt: Most economic theory focuses on commodity markets, in which anyone willing to pay the price gets the good and anyone not willing to pay the price doesn’t. In …
Al Roth’s New Book on Matchmaking and Market Design Read More »
Michael Giberson Stanford’s alumni association magazine has a good article on recent economics Nobelist Al Roth. Several things about the article will trigger resistance among some free market readers, beginning with the title (“The Visible Hand”) and the subhead (A new breed of economist, Alvin Roth brings an engineering sensibility to fixing markets.). Deep into …
Michael Giberson Al Roth, at his Market Design blog, mentions that his site had been flagged as possibly in violation of Blogger terms of service by his blog host’s anti-spam blog software. He reports that he can still post, but until he gets a review by the Blogger folks he must prove he is probably …
The Real Meaning of Al Roth’s Spam Blog Email: Time to Leave the Bargain Bin Read More »
Michael Giberson Want to learn more about market design? Al Roth has an article, “The Art of Designing Markets,” in the October 2007 edition of the Harvard Business Review. The article is available to subscribers online, or perhaps you can find it at your local bookstore. The introduction: Traditional economics views markets as simply the …
Lynne Kiesling Over the past week there has been quite a discussion online of the California Energy Commission’s proposal requiring mandatory customer thermostat reponse to emergency demand reduction signals. This New York Times article from Friday also discusses the CEC proposal, as does this ABC news affiliate story from San Francisco. See also the discussion …
Programmable Thermostat Regulations in California: Big Brother or Control Freaks? Read More »
How should state and federal governments make decisions concerning offshore federal resources the development of which may affect nearby states? Two approaches: one, give the Trump administration a huge political negotiating chip, with which it can reward friendly politicians, or two, a transparent system that seeks to treat all U.S. citizens fairly. Pick one. Last …
An opinion piece at MarketWatch makes a bundle of analytical mistakes as it tries to build the case that persons with conservative political views should prefer the energy policy views of Hillary Clinton over those of Donald Trump. In this case I read the “Clinton” and “Trump” names as a kind of stand-in or representative for …
What Energy Policies Ought Conservatives Favor–a Good Example of Bad Policy Analysis Read More »
The Economist is running a series on classic articles that have transformed economics, starting with George Akerlof’s 1970 “Market for Lemons” paper. Akerlof catalyzed the field of information economics by pointing out possible consequences of asymmetric information in the case where one party to a transaction has more complete information about product quality than the …
The Economist on Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard Read More »
Should we make it politically profitable for policymakers to do the right thing, or should we make it less profitable for policymakers to do anything? Abigail Hall, writing a pair of posts for the Independent Institute blog The Beacon, urges liberty-minded people not to get too excited about electing the “right people.” (First post, second) …
Should We Make It Politically Profitable for Policymakers to Do the Right Thing Read More »
Michael Giberson The recent Economics Nobel announcement, which went to Lloyd Shapely and Alvin Roth for theoretical and practical innovations in matching processes, has prompted some misguided carping among market-oriented commentators. The Andrew Coulson post from Cato-at-Liberty (which Lynne quoted favorably yesterday) is one example. Robert Wenzel is another (calling it a prize for “work …
Copyright © 2022 Knowledge Problem Archive