The Becker-posner Blog
Coming soon, a blog by Gary Becker and Richard Posner. Should be fun.
Coming soon, a blog by Gary Becker and Richard Posner. Should be fun.
Michaal Giberson The future of broadband over power lines (BPL) may depend upon the outcome of a battle between an irresistible object and an immovable object. In this case the irresistible object is the potential value created by deployment of BPL, and the immovable object is the well-established law and principles of regulatory ratemaking. Ray …
Lynne Kiesling Yesterday the New York Times had an article on a new method of producing hydrogen from electrolysis using nuclear power (registration required). The new technique still is not a net production of energy, but it has drastically cut the amount of energy required to isolate the hydrogen: The heart of the plan is …
Technological Change And Hydrogen By Electrolysis Read More »
Lynne Kiesling In catching up on the mail and newspaper yesterday after returning home, I was excited to read Virginia Postrel’s Wall Street Journal Weekend section column on shopping and fashion magazines (subscription required). Virginia sees an independence and creativity in the emergence and popularity of shopping magazines relative to old fashion stalwarts like Vogue …
Lynne Kiesling Thanks to the invaluable Will Wilkinson for his link to this U. of C. Chronicle article profiling Ronald Coase: Coase said that ?it?s very difficult to imagine a system that would work better than one with private property rights and a market: mechanisms that have proved themselves repeatedly against regimes where central authority …
Lynne Kiesling One nice thing about the MT 3.1 upgrade is that the TrackBack function is much more intuitive and painless. So we’re TrackBackers now here at KP … There is still some goofy stuff with the Java scripting, and it sure looks different depending on the OS and the browser I use. But so …
Lynne Kiesling Still wondering what to drink with your turkey on Thursday? Josh at The Food Section has a wineblog roundup of wine recommendations for Thanksgiving. Alder Yarrow at Vinography makes a recommendation near and dear to my heart: Domaine Les Pallieres Gigondas, imported into the US by Kermit Lynch: Domaine Les Pallieres lies in …
Pat Lynch At a conference on economics and social processes that I attended this past weekend, Vernon Smith, raised an issue that has bugged me quite a bit since we began our invasion of Iraq. Why has this administration said so little publicly about the development of capitalism, not merely democracy, in Iraq? Vernon said …
Lynne Kiesling So far, so good on the MT 3.1 installation. MT-Blacklist plugin and import of the blacklist have gone well. The only goofy thing still going on is that the java scripting for the buttons down the left side of the management and posting pages has made the buttons all overlap. But it’s manageable. …
Lynne Kiesling [NOTE: this post is a continuation of the immediately preceding one.] The second Economist article (subscription required) goes into more detail regarding the problems and proposed reforms. First, the article usefully references Innovation and Its Discontents, a new book on patenting by Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner (two of the most knowledgeable IP …