Lynne Kiesling Megan McArdle is in line for a new iPhone at the Apple store at Clarendon, in Arlington, Virginia. My favorite of her economist-y observations: The line’s a little disorderly, but no matter, because in a touching display of spontaneous order, the first people here started a paper list to keep track. Of course, …
Michael Giberson My posting will be light over the next two weeks or so as I switch jobs and move a little more than half-way across the country. Beginning with the fall semester I will be teaching in the energy commerce program at Texas Tech University‘s Rawls College of Business.
Lynne Kiesling Over the past six years here at KP I’ve discussed the development of high-temperature superconductor technologies and their application to electric power systems, and today we have reached a milestone in that development: Power executives, engineers, and the media gathered recently to officially throw the switch at the $60 million Holbrook Superconductor project, …
Superconductor Electric Cables Move from Lab to Market Read More »
Michael Giberson Chapman University law professor Tom W. Bell put together a brief statement of principles that the CFTC is encouraged to keep in mind as it considers its stance toward prediction markets. I was among the twenty or so folks who joined Bell in the statement, which he submitted to the CFTC in response …
Prediction Market Petitioners Urge Cftc to “First, Do No Harm” Read More »
Michael Giberson Maybe you already knew this, but I just learned a few days ago that the United States Association for Energy Economics has a working paper series online, hosted at the SSRN. Your research paper can be included (see guidelines here). And while we’re talking about the USAEE, note that the 2008 annual meeting …
United States Association for Energy Economics Working Paper Series Read More »
Michael Giberson Greg Mankiw called it “the Pigou Club in a Nutshell“, quoting the following from Tim Kane: we should aim to tax the bad things (noise, gasoline, trash, violent crime, evil foreign dictators) and untax the good things (homegrown profits, employment, innovation). But take another look at that list of “bad things”: noise, gasoline, …
Lynne Kiesling The New York Times has an article today that supports the anecdotal evidence I reported last month: consumers are substituting out of low fuel economy cars and into high fuel economy cars. With gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon, consumers are overwhelming dealerships with demand for the littlest vehicles in the showroom. Mr. …
Michael Giberson Arnold Kling has some interesting insights on what is sometimes pejoratively referred to as price gouging: One of the issues that [Russ Robert’s didactic novel, The Price of Everything] raises–the very first one, in fact–is the morality of raising prices when something becomes scarce, such as flashlights after a weather disaster. Russ makes …
On the Morality of Raising Prices in an Emergency Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Note these items from the Financial Times: 1. Peugeot and Mitshubishi enter an electric car alliance, striving toward plug-in hybrid vehicles. The same article notes that Bosch and Samsung have entered into an alliance to develop better lithium-ion batteries. 2. Ford and GM call on the federal government to support plug-in hybrid development; …
Lynne Kiesling This ars technica article on energy storage provides a concise summary of the challenge of energy storage and the current technology options. Focusing on the power needs of datacenters, the article describes the intermittency problem associated with renewable sources (in normal language, the sun doesn’t necessarily shine and the wind doesn’t necessarily blow …
The Importance of Energy Storage for Integrating Renewables Read More »
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