Lynne Kiesling

New Areas for Innovation Push Back Against “The Great Stagnation”

Economics, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Happy New Year! Here’s a little dose of technology optimism to start your year off: 2012 was a good, solid year for innovation, and there’s room and opportunity for even more. This TechCrunch article describes some burgeoning innovation opportunities in health care, education, transportation, and entertainment. Here’s one thing to bear in mind …

New Areas for Innovation Push Back Against “The Great Stagnation” Read More »

Landsburg on Pigou and Coase

2 Comments / Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling I appreciate this post from Steve Landsburg on Pigouvian models, Coasian models, and policies addressing external costs (and the comments are valuable too). The foil for his post is an Elizabeth Kolbert New Yorker column, in which she uses two examples to illustrate her argument in favor of a Pigouvian carbon tax — …

Landsburg on Pigou and Coase Read More »

Deck the Halls with Macro Follies!

Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling For your holiday enjoyment, from John Papola and EconStories, Deck the Halls with Macro Follies! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uKnd6IEiO0] John’s wry video does a great job of laying out the macroeconomic debate over the drivers of economic well-being — is Malthusian/Keynesian aggregate demand stimulus to overcome a general glut effective, or is saving to invest in …

Deck the Halls with Macro Follies! Read More »

Adam Thierer on Crony Capitalism and Technology Policy

Economics, Technology, Telecom / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Adam Thierer of the Mercatus Center on corporate welfare, and why he doesn’t like the phrase “crony capitalism”: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LYOlQDqfXY] Here’s Adam arguing against a proposal to nationalize Facebook “to protect user rights”.

Physical and Virtual Aren’t Always Substitutes

3 Comments / Economics, Education, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Whether the topic is retail sales or higher education (or some other application), the role of digital technology raises the question of how, if at all, online activity substitutes for physical, face-to-face activity. That relationship differs case-to-case; you wouldn’t expect the effects of online shopping on bricks-and-mortar shops to have the same patterns …

Physical and Virtual Aren’t Always Substitutes Read More »

A Tip of the Hat to Popehat

Liberty / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling I’d like to offer an enthusiastic hat tip to Popehat for writing the blog post that I had worked on all weekend in my head, but couldn’t pull off that incisively. Over the weekend the Volokh Conspiracy’s resident authoritarian and author of TSA policies, Stewart Baker, wrote a bizarre post expressing his bewilderment …

A Tip of the Hat to Popehat Read More »

I, Pencil: The Movie

Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Whether or not you’ve read Leonard Read’s famous essay I, Pencil, I recommend this short video rendition, courtesy of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE] It captures poetically the fascinating, marvelous coordination that we achieve through markets, enabling prosperity and well-being beyond what we would each individually be able to achieve alone. And at …

I, Pencil: The Movie Read More »

Disruptive Innovation in Education

1 Comment / Economics, Education, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling The disruptive digital innovations that have transformed music, movies, and news are now changing business models in higher education. This month’s Cato Unbound features a set of essays on the possible effects of changes like universities offering MOOCs (massive online open courses) at zero price. In the lead essay, Alex Tabarrok argues that …

Disruptive Innovation in Education Read More »

Two New Blogs of Note

2 Comments / Books, Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling I hope you are enjoying a fun and relaxing holiday weekend! I’ve been using it, among other things, to catch up on my reading, made more enjoyable by two new additions to the rotation: askblog: Arnold Kling has started blogging again, this time at his own new site. Given that his tagline is …

Two New Blogs of Note Read More »

Some More Worthwhile Price Gouging Links

Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling I cannot recommend highly enough the EconTalk conversation between Russ Roberts and Mike Munger on price gouging. Some hurricane, some gasoline, some John Locke, some Aquinas, well worth your time. Their discussion of Locke is fascinating. The comments from readers/listeners are also quite good. On the same topic, Art Carden posts a useful …

Some More Worthwhile Price Gouging Links Read More »

Author name: Lynne Kiesling