Lynne Kiesling I haven’t said much in the past few months about the personal life, although I do still have one … This past weekend was a lovely spring weekend here in Chicago, and we took advantage of it to do some local exploring. We started off Friday night at Dr. Vino’s meetup at Juicy …
Lynne Kiesling How cool is this? Purdue engineering researchers have made major progress on a new internal combustion engine design, using variable valve actuation. One remarkable innovation in this research is removing the connection between the crankshaft and the camshaft, which is what drives the pistons up and down. This design has been at the …
Michael Giberson The Washington Post has a story on “socially responsible investing,” which puzzles over the below average returns that such investment funds seem to offer: [I]nvestors often pay a price when they add social considerations to the mix. Socially responsible investing funds, including expenses, generally trail traditional competitors, according to Morningstar data. For the …
The Supply and Demand for Socially Conscious Investments Read More »
Michael Giberson Bastiat, were he alive today, would be econoblogging. Much econoblogging deploys the rhetorical form of gossip: observation and comment. Only instead of the target being someone’s ex-spouse’s new partner, or a celebrity headed to jail, it is GDP or government subsidies or tax policy. We’re a fun bunch don’t you know. Grant McCracken …
Michael Giberson How far would you go to gain another $1 a gallon on fuel? As The Independent reports, some biofuel traders in Europe, in a little trick called “splash and dash”, are shipping biodiesel to the U.S. to be mixed with a little gas to qualify for a $1/gallon subsidy, then shipping it back …
Michael Giberson …at least that would be a sensible response for senators concerned about automobile fuel economy and increasing consumption of fossil fuels. While news reports have suggested that higher prices haven’t really backed down consumption much, we all know what would happen if prices were a dollar per gallon lower. But no, market-based solutions …
Michael Giberson Via the Associated Press and MSN Money: [Michigan’s] Democratic House Speaker Andy Dillon has floated the idea of taxing utilities, possibly in exchange for eliminating the law that opened electricity markets to competition. So, Dillon is offering consumers the opportunity to be taxed more in return for having the possibility of retail competition …
Michael Giberson The Houston Chronicle reports, “Marathon Oil Corp. says regulators have warned the company that it may face legal action for allegedly attempting to manipulate crude oil prices in 2003.” Marathon allegedly traded aggressively one day in 2003 in an after-hours market to drive down the price of a commonly-used benchmark, presumably to benefit …
Marathon Oil, Manipulation, Misplaced Concreteness and the Cheesy Strategy Read More »
Michael Giberson As mentioned here before, Inkling offers a public play-money prediction market. I stumbled across them a year or so ago, and because I’m interested in market design and prediction markets, I decided to try them out. Partly because playing the Inkling markets amuses me and partly because I started doing well, I’ve continue …
Secrets of an Inkling Top Trader: Spotting Riskless Arbitrage Opportunities Read More »
Michael Giberson A number of prominent economists have signed on to a statement seeking reform of government policy toward prediction markets. The abstract: Prediction markets are markets for contracts that yield payments based on the outcome of an uncertain future event, such as a presidential election. Using these markets as forecasting tools could substantially improve …
Economists Seek Safe Harbor for Small Stakes Prediction Markets Read More »
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