Michael Giberson At the Freakonomics blog, Steven Leavitt picks up on a May 21, 2006, USA Today story headlined Ticketmaster Uses Auctions to Fight Online Scalpers. The story is reported like it is news, but USA Today has been “scooped” on Ticketmaster auctions by about, oh, two and a half years: on September 1, 2003, …
Ticketmaster Ticket Auctions, The Competition, Prices Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Ben Muse has a good, link-filled post about the ethanol tariff. I am shocked, shocked to hear that the Renewable Fuels Association argues that we should not eliminate the tariff … here’s my favorite part: Renewable fuels are produced only in countries where programs have been created to assist in their production. Thus, …
Lynne Kiesling I finally saw the new Passat ad that Grant McCracken analyzed late last week (read Grant’s post if you haven’t seen the ad). I don’t completely agree with Grant that it’s a little smug, because at least in the one I saw all of the cars with the megaphones were brash, garish, expensive …
Lynne Kiesling One thing I like about Greg Mankiw is his sincerity. It resonates through all of the posts on his relatively new blog, which I am enjoying. It also fills in some of the areas where I don’t pay such careful attention in economics, because I think the intersection of his research interests and …
Lynne Kiesling One day last week, there was a large color IBM ad on the back page of the front section of the Wall Street Journal. This ad talked about the value to homes, businesses, and electricity companies of having plugs that could communicate information back to the electricity companies and network operators. They’ve run …
The Business Case for Advanced Metering Technology Read More »
Lynne Kiesling While I’m in England, Mr. Stumbling & Mumbling has a post on income inequality in 1987 and today. Punch line: no change; the progressiveness of direct taxation and the regressiveness of indirect taxation offset each other. But what caught my attention was how he led in to his discussion: Remember 1987? When Nigella’s …
Chefs More Important Than Politicians: A Sign of Progress Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Due to a sustained shortfall in rain, portions of Southeast England now face a drought order for the coming summer: England’s first drought order in a decade was imposed in the South East today as fears continued about a water crisis in parts of the UK. Sutton and East Surrey Water was granted …
Here’s A Thought: Instead of Drought Orders, Try Prices! Read More »
Michael Giberson Peter Singer posts a short piece, “Why pay more for fairness?“, critical of the views of Cato Institute’s Brink Lindsay on Fair Trade coffee. Lindsay responds at Cato@Liberty. Lindsay quotes Singer saying: Pro-market economists don?t object to corporations that blatantly use snob appeal to promote their products…. So why be critical when consumers …
Michael Giberson You have read about prediction markets, maybe you have even participated in one, and now you want to go to the next level. You have an idea for a market, but you don?t know how to make one. Even if you have the technical know how to set up a market, if you …
Lynne Kiesling Stephen Brown and Richard Alm of the Dallas Fed have an Economic Letter on the effects of economic freedom on oil supplies. It’s a very interesting read, with lots of insights. Having oil is one thing. Delivering it to a growing market is another. World economies differ greatly in their capacity to organize …
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