Happy Turkey Day
Lynne Kiesling Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. We are safely ensconced at my mother’s in Columbus and will be running in the local 8K Turkey Trot tomorrow morning.
Department Store Rebound?
Lynne Kiesling For those of us interested in the economics of things like “mass customization”, the department store is a fascinating phenomenon. A retail business model originating in the late 19th century, the department store for decades epitomized elegance, convenience, ubiquity of options. Then in the 1990s the department store fell on hard times as …
Milton Friedman Dies at 94
Lynne Kiesling Milton Friedman passed away this morning at age 94. How many of us first learned about economics from the TV series and book Free to Choose? From monetary theory to drug legalization, his intellect was strong and clear, and his ideas have had a large influence in spreading economic and individual freedom. I …
Iain Murray on Electricity Infrastructure Investment
Lynne Kiesling Iain Murray has an oped in Monday’s Examiner about environmental concerns and building new electric power infrastructure: One key problem is the sheer difficulty in building new power plants in America today. Politically powerful green lobby groups object to the building of any new plant that does not use some form of renewable …
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One Small Political Observation
Lynne Kiesling Notwithstanding the potentially pivotal role that the libertarian candidate in a Montana race played in creating a Democrat-controlled Senate (thanks to Todd Zywicki), I’m still not convinced that what the Economist observed yesterday is true: In two of the seats where control looks likely to switch, Missouri and Montana, the Libertarian party pulled …
Jetblue Comes To O’hare, But Ua and Aa Don’t Roll Out the Welcome Wagon
Lynne Kiesling For anyone interested in competitive dynamics and the evolution of markets over time, the airline industry is an absolute candy store. Take, for example, JetBlue’s upcoming entry into the Chicago market. According to this Chicago Tribune article, JetBlue will start its O’Hare operations on January 4 with five flights in total, to JFK …
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Solar Power Without Silicon
Lynne Kiesling Did you know that there is excess demand for silicon? No, I bet you didn’t. Actually, there probably isn’t excess demand, because prices have been rising to signal the scarcity and people are looking for substitutes. All sorts of technologies use silicon, and supplies are scarce and prices high. One technology that uses …
Intellectual Property and Viral Marketing
Lynne Kiesling This past weekend I directed a Liberty Fund conference on intellectual property. I am fascinated by IP, in particular by the features it has in common with networks and with common-pool resources: incomplete and uncertain property rights. In an environment where it’s either beneficial to have incomplete and uncertain property rights, or where …
What’s So Great About Tacit Knowledge?
Lynne Kiesling Over at Organizations & Markets, Peter Klein and Nicolai Foss have been talking about tacit knowledge, distinguishing it from explicit knowledge, and asking what the big deal is. Their posts and the comments on them are a good read. Why should tacit knowledge be any more or less important than explicit knowledge? My …
Buy A Contract on Lance’s Marathon Time
Lynne Kiesling Here’s one for the “markets in everything” file: you can buy a contract at TradeSports with your prediction of Lance Armstrong’s NY Marathon time. Lance’s time, his training, etc. have been a topic of much discussion in some of the online places I frequent. Now all of us chatterati can put our money …