Michael Giberson Following up yesterday’s note on randomized testing in free legal aid, here is another kind of applied experimental work: The recently ended Wikipedia fundraising campaign made extensive use of randomized testing to explore just which appeals generated the most revenue. “If everyone reading this donated $5” vs. “If everyone reading this donated $10” …
Randomized Testing for Online Fundraising Appeals Read More »
Michael Giberson Learning from randomized controlled experiments: apparently free legal representation provided by the Harvard Legal Aide Bureau tended to delay (by about two weeks on average) receipt of unemployment benefits among a group of claimants appealing an initial disallowance of their unemployment claims. Representation had no effect on the likelihood of a claimant succeeding …
Michael Giberson The world has plenty of empire builders, but Rob Bradley Jr. – founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research – apparently isn’t one of them. He wishes IER were smaller and his work was less relevant. At his blog, MasterResource, Bradley has posted an interview of him done by Stephen Hicks, …
Rob Bradley Jr. Wishes His Organization Was Smaller and His Work Was Less Valuable Read More »
Michael Giberson In New York Mercantile Exchange Inc. v. IntercontinentalExchange Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit denied NYMEX copyright protection for its settlement prices. The decision turned on application of the merger doctrine in copyright law, which governs cases in which the expression of an idea is so completely linked to the idea itself …
Michael Giberson From the Mim’s Bits column in the MIT Technology Review: “How Mechanical Turk is Broken Why the world’s most famous outsourcing hub for tiny tasks is littered with spam and shoddy workmanship.” Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is Amazon’s site for linking companies seeking small web-based tasks requiring at least a bit of human intelligence …
An Example of Ways Poorly Constructed Markets Can Fail Read More »
Michael Giberson A handful of energy news stories and commentary on the energy outlook: John Tierney’s energy resource optimism and James Hamilton’s response at Econbrowser. I like the response of the first commenter, Ricardo, to Hamilton: “It is not that crude oil will be with us forever but that energy sources will always give us …
Energy News and Outlook: Meet the New Year, Same As the Old Year Read More »
Michael Giberson I’m quoted in a brief Marketplace radio news story on the new Pickens plan, in which Boone Pickens has dropped the wind power push and now just promotes public policies to induce switching vehicles to natural gas. Of course Pickens dropped wind power from his private investment plans about a year ago, when …
Michael Giberson From the Financial Times beyondbric blog, some somewhat puzzling news from China about how the government’s decision to raise gasoline prices was leading to long lines at gasoline stations. In Beijing on Tuesday, long lines began to form around gas stations across the city. It was one of the first tangible signs of the …
Chinese Government Having Trouble Getting Fuel Prices Right Read More »
Michael Giberson A couple of interesting readings: The New York Times reports, “Gas Prices Soar in Iran as Subsidy Reduced.” (Also: Washington Post, Wall Street Journal.) Cape Wind Project still has half of its capacity up for sale. (Local utility claims it can find cheaper renewable power elsewhere.) The Economist, “Why do firms exist?” on …
Iran Cuts Fuel Subsidies and Other Energy and Economics Links Read More »
Michael Giberson TAKORADI, Ghana — The impoverished West African nation of Ghana become the world’s newest oil producer Wednesday, pumping crude for the first time from an offshore field worth billions of dollars in the Gulf of Guinea. President John Atta Mills turned the oil valves Wednesday during in an inaugural ceremony broadcast live from a storage vessel …
Oil Flows in Ghana, is the Resource Curse Soon to Follow? Read More »
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