Author name: Lynne Kiesling

Permissionless Innovation in Electricity: the Benefits of Experimentation

Last Monday I was scheduled to participate in the Utility Industry of the Future Symposium at the NYU Law School. Risk aversion about getting back for Tuesday classes in the face of a forecast 7″ snowfall in New York kept me from attending (and the snow never materialized, which makes the cost even more bitter!), …

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Interpreting Google’s Purchase of Nest

Were you surprised to hear of Google’s acquisition of Nest? Probably not; nor was I. Google has long been interested in energy monitoring technologies and the effect that access to energy information can have on individual consumption decisions. In 2009 they introduced Power Meter, which was an energy monitoring and visualization tool; I wrote about …

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Adapting to Technological Change: Solar Power and Fire

Here’s an important tradeoff I never really considered until reading this article: rooftop solar panels can be hazardous for firefighters. It’s an interesting example of how wide and varied the adaptations are to innovation. In this case the potential lethal electrocution from the traditional means of venting a roof on a burning building (creating holes …

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Cochrane on Aca’s Unravelling: Parallels to Electricity

John Cochrane’s commentary in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, What To Do When Obamacare Unravels, provides a strong and thoughtful analysis of what a free health care market could look like. In his argument he accomplishes two important tasks: he lays out the extent to which the U.S. health care market is not a free …

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Joel Mokyr on Growth, Stagnation, and Technological Progress

My friend and colleague Joel Mokyr talked recently with Russ Roberts in an EconTalk podcast that I cannot recommend highly enough (and the links on the show notes are great too). The general topic is this back-and-forth that’s been going on over the past year involving Joel, Bob Gordon, Tyler Cowen, and Erik Brynjolfsson, among …

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“That—that—is What We Are For: Voluntary Associations, in All Their Richness and Bewildering Complexity”

The above is a quote from Duke political economist (and friend of KP) Mike Munger, who also blogs at Kids Prefer Cheese and Euvoluntary Exchange, and is a frequent guest on EconTalk. Mike’s written a thoughtful and interesting reflection in the Freeman on what libertarians stand for. In many ways it’s a riff on Toqueville …

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Alexis Madrigal: Why Are Gasoline Prices Falling?

Freshly returned from a few months spent with his new baby (congratulations!), Alexis Madrigal at the Atlantic wonders why gas prices are falling in the US. He notes that the national average is the lowest it’s been in almost three years. He identifies a few factors that influence gas prices, most notably world oil prices. …

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