May 2005

Musician Credibility And Popularity: A False Dichotomy

Lynne Kiesling Interesting post and comments over at Grant McCracken’s place about Coldplay, their new album, and their disdain for corporate shareholders. I really encourage you to read the whole post and comment thread. A teaser, though, because I really treasure Grant’s open, forward-looking vision as articulated here: Ours is no longer a dual world …

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Left2right: Hayek On The Institutions Of A Free Society

Lynne Kiesling I don’t read Left2Right, largely because I don’t like politics. But this post from Elizabeth Anderson about Hayek’s arguments for procedural rules for public support to those who cannot “play the game” is insightful and thought-provoking. Many of the comments are also worth reading, in particular the one from economist Steve Horowitz. Hat …

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Warren Buffett, Pacificorp, And Institutional Change In Electricity

Lynne Kiesling For years Warren Buffett has been saying that there is a lot of untapped, uncreated value to be unleashed in the electricity industry. Berkshire Hathaway’s acquisition of PacifiCorp, a retail utility in the Pacific Northwest, is its first large acquisition in seven years. Long-time KP readers know that this is the kind of …

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Networks And Disciplinary Boundaries

Lynne Kiesling While I’m over at Crooked Timber, Eszter Hargittai recently had an interesting post on disciplinary boundaries and some of the difficulties of doing interdisciplinary work. Henry Farrell follows up with, among other things, a very insightful extended quote from Susanne Lohmann and from a follow-on post from physicist Cosma Shalizi. See also MeshForum …

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Freakonomics Seminar At Crooked Timber

Lynne Kiesling On Monday Crooked Timber hosted a seminar with Steven Levitt on Freakonomics, all of which made for an interesting read. Kieran Healy, John Quiggin, Henry Farrell, Tyler Cowen, and Tim Harford discussing various aspects of Freakonomics specifically and Levitt’s work more generally. My favorite quote, from Levitt’s reponse: I just can?t get away …

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A Misguided Criticism Of Texas Electricity Deregulation

Lynne Kiesling In a Wall Street Journal article on Friday titled “Texas Electricity Deregulation Hasn’t Aided Small Power Users,” Rebecca Smith suggests that small customers in Texas are not benefitting from electricity restructuring because the fuel price pass-through has led to higher prices: Deregulated power companies operating in their former monopoly territories were forced to …

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