Today’s new revelations from Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing show that the NSA can, and does, use a program that surveils our Internet behavior in a general, blanket way (much in the nature of the “general warrants” that were the whole reason the authors of the Bill of Rights put the Fourth Amendment in there in the …
Nsa Surveillance Imperils the Internet As an Economic Platform Read More »
My department is currently a focal point in the debates over the future of innovation and economic growth. Technopessimist arguments from my colleague Bob Gordon (as profiled in this New York Magazine article from the weekend) join those in Tyler Cowen’s The Great Stagnation to suggest that the increase in living standards and the growth …
Over the weekend the New York Times ran a good story about how rooftop solar and regulatory rules allowing net metering are putting pressure on the regulated distribution utility business model: The struggle over the California incentives is only the most recent and visible dust-up as many utilities cling to their established business, and its …
As trenchant observers of human nature, great fiction writers are often very good social scientists. Jane Austen, one of my favorite authors, was a writer with great analytical depth and insight. In addition to the irony and wit for which she is famous, Austen’s writing reflects the philosophical and cultural mindset of the “long 18th …
At the Harvard Business Review Blog Rafi Mohammed offers a new proposal to combat price gouging. I don’t like it. First, of course, the title “The Problem with Price Gouging Laws” is exactly the title of my Regulation magazine piece on price gouging laws, and so it dilutes the amazing notoriety I gain from association …
3D printing is incredible. Take, for example, recent Northwestern mechanical engineering graduate and softball player Lauren Tyndall, who designed and printed her own more ergonomic and comfortable cast for her broken pinkie finger. Or consider the cost and energy use benefits of 3D printing of metal airplane parts in titanium, rather than machining them out …
Add this one to your long reads queue, because it’s well worth it: Tom Vanderbilt writes in Nautilus about the traveling salesman problem and how algorithmic optimization helps us understand human behavior more deeply. It’s a thorough and nuanced analysis of the various applications of algorithms to solve the traveling salesman problem — what’s the …
Complexity, Heuristics, and the Traveling Salesman Problem Read More »
The Mercatus Center’s Adam Thierer analyzes communications technologies and the policies influencing the development and use of them, and I’ve always found his work extremely valuable in my own thinking. Adam and Brent Skorup have a new Mercatus study on lobbying in the information technology sector, A History of Cronyism and Capture in the Information …
Tesla Motors is doing more than shaking up the automobile industry by producing an exciting high-end electric vehicle and establishing a network of battery-swapping stations. Tesla wants to sell directly to consumers, bypassing established dealer franchising that dominates the industry. But such dealer franchising has not been a mere transaction-cost-driven Coasian outcome — it’s undergirded …
Michael Giberson “Price gouging” is by intent a pejorative term. Nobody wants to get gouged, by a price or in any other manner. Analysts advocating or defending price flexibility for key goods and services in disaster struck areas are burdened from the beginning by the derogatory term. In an editorial essay advocating for post-flooding pricing …
Legalize Sustainable Pricing to Promote Recovery from Disasters Read More »
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