Economics – Page 3 – Knowledge Problem

John Neufeld’s Selling Power: Economics, Policy, and Electric Utilities Before 1940

Economic history, Economics, Electricity / By Lynne Kiesling

At the fantastic economic history website EH.net, I recently reviewed John Neufeld’s new book, Selling Power: Economics, Policy, and Electric Utilities Before 1940. TL;DR: if you’re interested in the electricity industry you should read this book, even if you aren’t an academic. You’ll gain an important historical perspective on how we got to where we are, …

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NIST Smart Grid Advisory Committee

1 Comment / Economics, Electricity, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

The electric power network is becoming increasingly digital. I started working on digital technology and smart grid topics in 2004, and served on the GridWise Architecture Council 2005-2009, focusing on enhancing understanding and use of interoperability principles in business and regulatory decisions. One of the important partners in expanding awareness of interoperability and its importance …

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Worstall: Hurricane Harvey Is When We Need Price Gouging

2 Comments / Economics / By Michael Giberson

Tim Worstall reminds us of the value of relying on prices to help get resources to where they are most useful: The economics of this is really terribly, terribly, simple. As a result of the disaster–of any disaster that is–some things are in short supply. Perhaps because some of the supply got damaged, or perhaps …

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Solar Eclipses and the Electric Grid: Markets and Automation

1 Comment / Economics, Electricity, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Yesterday’s solar eclipse across the US amplified a dominant issue in electricity policy discussions over the past couple of years — does increasing use of distributed energy resources like solar photovoltaics make the grid more resilient, or does it lead to imbalance and inadequacy? In California during the eclipse (Financial Times), solar generation dropped compared to …

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Announcement: New Job at Purdue

3 Comments / Economics / By Lynne Kiesling

This week is an exciting one for me, as I’m starting a new job. I have left Northwestern University and have started in a new position at Purdue University, where I will be a faculty member and the Associate Director of the Purdue University Research Center in Economics. The research center emphasizes applied microeconomic policy research, …

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Nancy Maclean’s Generalized Rewriting of James Buchanan’s Views on Democracy

2 Comments / Economics, Liberty, Politics, Uncategorized / By Michael Giberson

I have only read a small bit of Nancy MacLean’s book on James M. Buchanan, public choice, and politics. I’m reluctant to buy a copy, but I wanted to see if it was as bad as some critics have said. (Now you know something of my limited knowledge of and pre-existing bias against the book. …

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Fun with Footnotes (a Game of Scholarly Discovery)

4 Comments / Books, Economics, Liberty, Politics, Social change / By Michael Giberson

“Let’s … have … fun … with … footnote[s],” MacLean said.* Here is a simple game of scholarship that anyone can play and everyone who plays by accepted norms of scholarship wins!** How to play: Take the recently published book Democracy in Chains, open it randomly to a page in the text, find a footnote …

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Apple’s Jack and Incumbent Vertical Market Power

5 Comments / Economics, Technology / By Lynne Kiesling

Apple’s controversial decision to remove the universal 3.5mm audio jack from its just-released iPhone 7 has several economic dimensions. All of them are a consequence of Apple’s proprietary architecture (colloquially known as “Steve’s walled garden”) and the extent to which Apple is trying to/able to exercise incumbent vertical market power. How much market power …

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Pharmaceuticals and Multi-layered Government-granted Monopoly

Economics, Regulation / By Lynne Kiesling

Mylan’s price increase of the EpiPen in late August has caused consternation and a lot of debate about the reasons why Mylan has been able to increase the EpiPen price so dramatically above its production cost. Don’t forget that production cost includes the time and resources that comprise FDA compliance costs, even for generics like …

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Elasticity of Supply Reduces Hotel Price Spikes

1 Comment / Economics, Travel / By Michael Giberson

Major sporting events can substantially boost demand for hotel rooms and, given the difficulty of building new hotels on short notice, lead to price hikes and consumer complaints about price gouging. As I wrote four years ago, “Super Bowls usually produce price gouging complaints,” but the complaints were especially high that year given the selection …

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