In the shameless self-promotion department today, I am quoted in the Orange County Register’s editorial today. I think that the FERC standard market design is baby steps, and at well over 300 pages does smack of micromanagement. The important question is, do those baby steps get us toward freer, more competitive markets? Are there better …
This Washington Post editorial from Monday is very good. It discusses FERC’s standard market design proposal, which is open for public comment through mid-October, and the snipey comments that state regulators have been making about it as an unbridled power grab. I think the editorial lays out the argument pretty well, although the standard market …
Here’s an interesting New York Times article (registration required) from Sunday on BP’s Marlin deep-water oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, and the economics of its being worth pumping. Very worth a read if you are interested in the economics of world oil markets.
I have a column on Tech Central Station today, on the importance of consumer choice and demand responsiveness in electricity pricing. I will have more to say on this over the next few weeks, but for now, it’s back to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.
I am leaving today for a week-long conference on the works of Adam Smith. There’s so much more to him than the “invisible hand” that most people associate with him, and this week will give me a chance to dig into all of that. I’ll post as possible.
The California Power Exchange will not die. After a year and a half of bankruptcy and the disappearance of anything resembling a market for electric power in California, the PX is still around. This article summarizes the soap operatic nature of its ongoing existence. The article does one thing that drives me nuts — it …
A period of extreme stress in energy markets because of trading liquidity and debt problems at energy companies. There is value there, but it’s hard to see right now with so much uncertainty.
Between writing a book chapter on retail pricing, demand responsiveness and dynamic pricing in electricity, and having a contract accepted on a house, I lost last week. Wow. More to come over the next few weeks on dynamic pricing and the importance of demand response in getting efficient, integrated wholesale and retail electricity markets. And, …
Yesterday Joanne Jacobs posted a quote from Adam Smith on education and teacher retention. Just to add to what Joanne said: Smith experienced what he considered to be the worst of incentives when he attended Oxford University, where the faculty droned on and on and on, and didn’t seem to care whether the students were …
This Townhall.com column by Walter Williams illustrates a very important point about markets: they are not things, they are not places, they are not individual people. Markets are the interaction of our choices and decisions, based on our private, local knowledge. What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in …
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