Economics – Page 142 – Knowledge Problem

Jetblue Comes To O’hare, But Ua and Aa Don’t Roll Out the Welcome Wagon

Lynne Kiesling For anyone interested in competitive dynamics and the evolution of markets over time, the airline industry is an absolute candy store. Take, for example, JetBlue’s upcoming entry into the Chicago market. According to this Chicago Tribune article, JetBlue will start its O’Hare operations on January 4 with five flights in total, to JFK …

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Solar Power Without Silicon

5 Comments / Economics, Electricity, Energy markets, Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Did you know that there is excess demand for silicon? No, I bet you didn’t. Actually, there probably isn’t excess demand, because prices have been rising to signal the scarcity and people are looking for substitutes. All sorts of technologies use silicon, and supplies are scarce and prices high. One technology that uses …

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Regulating Hedge Funds

1 Comment / Economics / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson At Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cower links to a year-old paper asking and trying to answer the question: Should hedge funds be regulated? [PDF] Generally the authors dismiss consumer protection reasons for hedge fund regulation, but do express some concern over systemic risk. (Systematic risk explained via Wikipedia; here is an NBER paper saying …

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Intellectual Property and Viral Marketing

Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling This past weekend I directed a Liberty Fund conference on intellectual property. I am fascinated by IP, in particular by the features it has in common with networks and with common-pool resources: incomplete and uncertain property rights. In an environment where it’s either beneficial to have incomplete and uncertain property rights, or where …

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What’s So Great About Tacit Knowledge?

Complexity, Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

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 …

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Buy A Contract on Lance’s Marathon Time

Economics, Professional sports / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Here’s one for the “markets in everything” file: you can buy a contract at TradeSports with your prediction of Lance Armstrong’s NY Marathon time. Lance’s time, his training, etc. have been a topic of much discussion in some of the online places I frequent. Now all of us chatterati can put our money …

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Power Company Executives on Carbon Emission Policy

4 Comments / Economics, Electricity, Environmental policy / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Check out this interesting Wired article with some electric company executives on carbon policy. It indicates that there is not uniform agreement among utility CEOs regarding appropriate carbon policy, its timeline, its breadth, and its costs and benefits. There is an oblique reference to AEP’s participation in the Chicago Climate Exchange, but no …

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Some Interesting Oil Market Articles

3 Comments / Economics, Energy markets / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling On Friday Saudi Arabia signaled its desire to control world oil prices through OPEC’s decision to reduce production by 1.2 million barrels per day. Lots of observers have noticed that 5 years ago OPEC’s unstated trigger/target price was $30/barrel, but now it seems that they are targeting a price of $60-70/barrel. Clearly, political …

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Cellphone Gives India’s Traditional Sardine Fishermen Bargaining Power

Economics, Environmental policy / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson Kevin Sullivan, writing in the Washington Post, delivers a fantastic story about how the spread of cellphones among traditional fishermen in India has reshaped the industry: Rajan said that before he got his first cellphone a few years ago, he used to arrive at port with a load of fish and hope for …

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Thanks to Adam Smith Institute and Trust But Verify

1 Comment / Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

Lynne Kiesling Since I still have not managed to get trackbacks to work on my MT installation, a separate post to thank the Adam Smith Institute and Trust But Verify for linking to my post on Floyd Landis mobilizing the cycling community for a wisdom-of-crowds analysis of the validity of his doping charge.