Lynne Kiesling Recently the New York Times ran a Sunday magazine article from Jeff Himmelman profiling some companies in the solar industry in the US. The main thrust of the article is that despite the industry’s technological and economic challenges, it’s starting to look like a better investment: Two factors have hurt the industry’s growth. …
Lynne Kiesling This summer, corn prices are high. Drought, extreme weather, and other factors combine to increase corn prices, and one of those factors is the federal ethanol mandate/renewable fuels requirement implemented over 20 years ago (as an oxygenate requirement) and extended in 2005. Roger Pielke Jr. points to a Purdue research paper that suggests …
Can We Finally Get the Ethanol Mandate Monkey off of Our Backs? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling One of the themes of my collection of links on Friday was that economic liberties are civil liberties, that a dichotomy between them is a false one. Philosopher Aeon Skoble explains why in this short Learn Liberty video. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWAyEzyp2xQ&feature=player_embedded]
Lynne Kiesling Some arguments and ideas catching my eye this morning: At their Why Nations Fail blog this morning, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson point out that central planning predates Marxist ideology historically, and is an instrument that political elites use to control and “extract resources from society”. At the Huffington Post, economist Ben Powell …
Lynne Kiesling Andy Morriss (Univ. of Alabama Law School) and Don Boudreaux (George Mason University) have an excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, A Coca-Cola Solution to High Gas Prices. The punch line: environmental fuel formulation regulations balkanize wholesale fuel markets and make prices more volatile as a consequence. This is not a new …
Obsolete Boutique Fuels and Failure to Arbitrage Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Steve Horwitz has a great post at the LSE blog that provides an introduction to and summary of the Austrian economic theory that’s relevant to macro policy questions, including the current Eurozone crisis. Most people know that Austrian economics provides a critique of the Keynesian policies emphasizing government stimulus spending, but what’s the …
Lynne Kiesling Back in July and also a couple of other times over the past two years, Mike has written here about the Jevons effect — when an increase in energy efficiency reduces the per-unit cost to the consumer of doing the energy-consuming action, moving her down along her energy demand curve and increasing her …
More on Rebound, Backlash, and the Jevons Effect Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Starbucks is having an internal energy efficiency competition among its stores. The goal for each store: reduce energy use by the most during a 30-day period, starting from last Wednesday. 10 stores are involved, and while the article is not specific, it looks like they are all in Washington state. The goal is …
Lynne Kiesling As a fellow cook, food lover, and economist who incorporates Austrian entrepreneurial theory into my work, I love Mike’s post commemorating Julia Child’s birthday today. Let’s push it even further. One way to create value in cooking is through new combinations of what Mike calls “raw elements”. We can think of three categories …
Michael Giberson At the Freakonomics blog, a Q&A with Peter Leeson about his book The Invisible Hook. Here is the first exchange: Q.The Invisible Hook is more than just a clever title. How is it different from Adam Smith‘s invisible hand? A. In Adam Smith, the idea is that each individual pursuing his own self-interest is led, …
An Invisible Hook Q&a, and Other Items of Interest Read More »
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