Lynne Kiesling Why is it so difficult, in terms of politics and transaction costs, to define and enforce property rights in fish? If we fail to do so, some important fish species are likely to go extinct due to overfishing, such as the bluefin tuna. Migratory fish like the bluefin pose the biggest policy challenges, …
Overfishing and the Impending Collapse of Fisheries Read More »
Lynne Kiesling On Friday at Environmental Economics, Tim Haab wrote about the implications of New Source Review for innovation in a regulated industry, and how to represent it in the standard Pigouvian model (do go read the whole post, it’s very useful). The basic question is this: does the stifling of innovation that results from …
Electricity Generation, New Source Review, and Waste Read More »
Lynne Kiesling If you like to cook and to eat well in Chicago, you can’t avoid chef Grant Achatz (nor should you want to!). His signature restaurant, Alinea, was recently named the best restaurant in the U.S. and one of the best restaurants in the world, and he is a creative, if controversial, innovator of …
Dynamic Pricing for Foodies … and for Electricity? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Steve Strogatz is a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell and a master of explaining abstract mathematical principles to non-mathematicians. He also posts occasionally on the New York Times’ Opinionator blog, and his post on Sunday was a real treat. Using the domestic conundrum of how to flip your mattress to maximize its …
Group Theory, Visualization, and Mattress Longevity Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Yesterday Google announced that their ever-growing sustainability strategy now includes investing in wind generation. Although they pursue these opportunities through their philanthropic arm, they claim that they are looking for meaningful returns on their investments in addition to their sustainability impact: To reach a clean energy future, we need three things: effective policy, …
Lynne Kiesling I’ve seen two interesting things today in the ongoing debate between Apple and Adobe over Apple’s refusal to allow developers for the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad to develop Flash-based applications. First is an open letter from Steve Jobs with an extensive discussion of Apple’s long relationship with Adobe (including an ownership share …
Apple and Adobe: It Depends on What Your Definition of “Open” is Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I was intrigued last week to read Bruce Yandle’s short piece in Regulation discussing Pigou and his ideas about taxation in the context of modern “Pigouvian” policy proposals. I recommend his essay highly; it communicates eloquently how Pigou’s ideas are currently being used as a justification for a variety of forms of taxation. …
Pigou As Public Choice Economist, Not a Pigouvian Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I’m overly eager for the new album from The National, so much so that when I looked at the release date I paid attention to the day and not the month. Doh! So now I have to wait until MAY 11, grrrr. Two other great bands, LCD Soundsystem and Band of Horses, have …
Lynne Kiesling I’ve been meaning to write about the libertarian paternalism series at Cato Unbound for a week or so, but have been too busy to pull it off. Happily, Ilya Somin has a good post that touches on a couple of the themes I wanted to raise (and I second his recommendation to read …
Lynne Kiesling I love this story; it’s like Knowledge Problem + Aguanomics = individual choice, efficiency, conservation, and elegance. Water conservation is a large and growing concern, in large part because our public policy does such an abominable job of creating a framework/market design to send good scarcity signals to diverse individual users, and to …
Technology + Dynamic Pricing Conserves Water Too (duh) Read More »
Copyright © 2022 Knowledge Problem Archive