Lynne Kiesling A recent essay from legal scholars Todd Zywicki and Josh Wright analyzes the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and over at Volokh, Ilya Somin adds to their analysis based on his own research. Both pieces are founded on an important core idea — paternalistic regulation that is grounded in the desire to mitigate …
Paternalistic Regulation and the Knowledge Problem Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Grant McCracken always has insightful interpretations of various human/social phenomena, and in this recent post he offers one that he calls “concatenating capitalism“. In discussing “eco-entrepreneur” Joshua Onysko and his work developing his Pangea Organics products, Grant makes a decidedly beyond-Schumpeterian observation about the role of entrepreneurs in transforming the economy and the …
Lynne Kiesling The International Energy Agency has put a quantitative estimate on an effect that we all suspected — this year’s economic recession is contributing to a reduction in global carbon emissions. They estimate that 2009 carbon emissions will be 2 percent lower than 2008, with 75% of the reduction attributable to the economic slowdown …
Lynne Kiesling The title to this post is my phrasing of an idea from Austrian economics that I think is incorrectly ignored in standard macroeconomic theory. I don’t have much insight to add, but this Arnold Kling post had two statements in it that I find very important. The first is Arnold quoting John Quiggin: …
Lynne Kiesling Mike already anticipated me and beat me to it with his great post surveying the Cochrane and Critical Review reactions to what Alex Tabarrok today calls “Krugman’s theya culpa” in the New York Times magazine. I think all of the commentaries that Mike linked to are well worth reading and considering; not surprisingly, …
Tyler’s Nyt Article — Important and Well Worth Reading Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Today the Fraser Institute has released its 2009 Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report. Written by James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, with assistance from other authors as well, this report is one of the most valuable quantitative comparative economic analyses of the form and extent of economic freedom around the world. As …
Lynne Kiesling I’ve been reading a lot of neuroscience-related books this summer (more on that later …), and I’ve really been enjoying Jonah Lehrer’s blog The Frontal Cortex. If you are interested in the connections between the brain and human action and human decision-making, you will get a lot out of it. I will have …
Lynne Kiesling Toby Considine is a must-read on the conceptual issues underlying this challenge: how do we use communications technology and data standards at interfaces to enable decentralized coordination and emergent order in electricity distribution and retail electricity markets? Seriously, he’s been my go-to guy since I met him at the GridWise Architecture Council constitutional …
Lynne Kiesling Matt Welch does a sharp and thorough textual exegesis of parts of President Obama’s speech to Congress on healthcare (health care?) last night, in his article on the accusations of lying that are flying around Washington these days. Matt’s final paragraph struck me, not just because I think he (and President Obama, in …
Choice and Competition Protect Consumers of Healthcare … and Electricity Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Ron Bailey’s Hit & Run post, Ant Hills=Brains=Cities, reminded me of some really important, fundamental ideas that tend to get lost as we natter about financial regulation, health care regulation, climate regulation … Emergent orders abound, and occur at all sorts of different scales — molecular, cellular, all the way to complex social …
Emergent Orders Are All Around Us, Especially in Cities Read More »
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