Lynne Kiesling Mark Thoma draws our attention to a recent Martin Wolf column in the FT, discussing complexity and evolution as a methodological framework for economic modeling and analysis. [M]ost [economists] must also know that the economy is not characterised by perfect foresight and equilibrium, but by trial and error and evolution. That was the …
Beinhocker Book on Wealth, Complexity, and Economic Theory Read More »
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 …
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 …
Lynne Kiesling Today is a dynamism day here at KP, whether it’s marketing or technology or business models. Business Week has an interview with Frank Moss, the new head of MIT’s MediaLab. He points out the importance of several things that I think are crucial for dynamic innovation: entrepreneurship, new models of collaboration and invention, …
Lynne Kiesling Am I really the first person in my online reading network to notice that Malcolm Gladwell’s got a blog? Yee hah! There are a few people whose trenchant observations make me more productive, and he’s high on the list.
Lynne Kiesling Thanks to Ian at Truck and Barter for his pointer to Complexity Blog, from two Michigan graduate students. They are certainly hitting on some topics that overlap with our interests here at KP.
Lynne Kiesling Steve Horwitz’s musings on complexity and snowflakes is a great read that raises an important question: why are so many of us willing to accept and appreciate emergent order processes when they occur in non-human nature? Why do some think differently about snowflakes in the air and eggnog in the store? People who …
Lynne Kiesling I spent last weekend attending a Liberty Fund conference on themes of liberty and responsibility in the writings of Charles Darwin. We read selections from The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, and Darwin’s autobiography. It was a fascinating opportunity to learn about Darwin’s …
Lynne Kiesling Cass Sunstein is currently guest-blogging at Lessig’s place, and has a thought-provoking post on information aggregation, Wikipedia, prices, and Hayek. The post itself and the comments have a lot of good content, and I recommend reading them. It also follows on a prior post on information aggregation more generally, as Sunstein works on …
Lynne Kiesling Russ Roberts has an absolutely wonderful essay at Caf? Hayek. Russ uses a recent FedEx transaction, and how sure he was that his package would arrive unmolested and on time, as a starting point: My lack of worry at FedEx is different. It can’t be trust. There are too many people touching my …
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