Economics

Whole Foods-wild Oats Merger: An Antitrust Concern?

1 Comment / Economics / By

Lynne Kiesling Instead of worrying about XM-Sirius satellite radio, should antitrust authorities investigate the Whole Foods-Wild Oats merger? Here’s my unsurprising answer (particularly unsurprising to my three very close friends who are antitrust economists): probably not. The core first questions are the same: what are the relevant substitutes, and would consumers be better or worse …

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Personal Carbon Offsetting

5 Comments / Economics, Environmental policy / By

Lynne Kiesling Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about voluntary purchases of carbon offsets and their efficacy. Importantly, this article points out that private options exist for those who want to negate the carbon effects of their behavior. The couple highlighted in the story used Climate Care. Other organizations that provide carbon offset purchase …

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Markets For Human Eggs

Economics / By

Lynne Kiesling This Houston Chronicle article on human eggs highlights how markets can lead to mutually beneficial solutions: As more older moms look for help getting pregnant, younger women have become increasingly willing to part with their eggs. Some do it to help relatives and friends, or from a sense of altruism, but others openly …

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Congressional Patent Reform: I’ll Believe It When I See It

Economics / By

Lynne Kiesling This week Congress held hearings about patent reform; here’s the Wired article on the hearings. Members of Congress claim to be more in unison on this topic than usual, and yet, reform is slow, and when it happens the unintended consequences tend to swamp the purported benefits. This CNET article provides a good …

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Self-assembling Nanotech Batteries

Economics, Electricity, Energy markets, Environmental policy, How cool is this? / By

Lynne Kiesling I’ve often wondered how nanotechnology can contribute to increased efficiency, load factor, and conservation of energy. My first thoughts were probably wrong; we don’t need nano-scale devices to perform remote monitoring and automated repair and self-correction within the wires network itself. Regular small-scale devices can do just fine for that. But here’s some …

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The Costly Lesson Venezuela’s Citizens Are Learning About Their Demagogue

58 Comments / Economics / By

Lynne Kiesling Four years of Chávez’s price controls have led to serious food shortages. Such shortages have sporadically appeared with items from milk to coffee since early 2003, when Chávez began regulating prices for 400 basic products as a way to counter inflation and protect the poor. Yet inflation has soared to an accumulated 78 …

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