Economics

New Economic Freedom of the World Report, and Some Suggestive Connections

2 Comments / Economics, Liberty / By

Lynne Kiesling Last week the new Economic Freedom of the World report was released, and it’s pretty sobering. The Fraser Institute and a large international coalition of think tanks collaborate to publish this annual report, and the research papers written over the past 20 years using the EFW data indicate the positive role that economic …

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Sanchez on Netflix

1 Comment / Economics / By

Lynne Kiesling You probably received the same apologetic email from Reed Hastings of Netflix that I did on Monday, stating the impending decision to split Netflix’s streaming business and its DVD subscription business. Foresightful or bad business decision, PR nightmare, or all of the above? The best analysis of its likely drivers and impacts is …

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Resiliency Comes from More Risk of Bank Failure, Not Less

1 Comment / Complexity, Economics / By

Lynne Kiesling In the always-smart-and-interesting City AM paper from London, Anthony Evans makes an important argument that has been overlooked in financial regulation debates: risk of failure is what creates system resilience, and regulation creates brittle monocultures. He writes in the context of last week’s Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) recommendations for creating regulatory divisions …

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Economist’s Babbage Column on Network Reliability

9 Comments / Economics, Electricity / By

Lynne Kiesling The usually-reliable Babbage columnist at the Economist has written a misguided commentary on last week’s power outage in San Diego and its broader implications (and, unfortunately, Glenn has picked it up on Instapundit, which will magnify the effects of its misguidedness). He starts by summarizing what’s known about the fault that led to …

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Yergin on Oil

2 Comments / Economics, Energy markets / By

Lynne Kiesling In Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Daniel Yergin has a thorough, thoughtful essay on oil: There Will Be Oil. It’s largely a reflection on “peak oil” ideas, and how innovation and technological change have reduced the cost of identifying and accessing more oil reserves: This is actually the fifth time in modern history that …

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More Oil Available in North America Than Previously Thought

1 Comment / Economics, Energy markets / By

Michael Giberson To Julian Simon-inspired resource optimists, this is news of the most ho-hum sort. Oh, so we think more resources now are available than previously expected because of improvements in technology? Nothing new under the sun. Humanity’s many-centuries-long trend of energy resources becoming cheaper continues into the indefinite future. If you believed that world …

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Stimulus Failure: A Costly Lesson on Keynes and Say’s Law?

6 Comments / Economics / By

Lynne Kiesling Macroeconomics and I have never gotten along, and for years I couldn’t figure out why — I’ve just never understood much of the underlying logic, why the analyses start where they do and make the assumptions they do (the only exception to this is my undergrad class with William Hart at Miami when …

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Be Indomitable. Refuse to Be Terrorized.

4 Comments / Economics, Liberty, Transportation, Travel / By

Lynne Kiesling This week we have many introspective analyses of the consequences of an evil act perpetrated 10 years ago. Those consequences are a mix of good and bad, ranging from no successful coordinated attacks in the U.S. to foreign wars with gruesome human and financial costs. The consequences in which I am most interested, …

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Another Good Response to the Obama Administration’s Mistaken Antitrust Policy

2 Comments / Economics, Regulation, Telecom / By

Michael Giberson George Priest, professor of economics and law at Yale, clearly outlines the main errors of the Obama administration’s decision to oppose the AT&T/T-Mobile merger and cites relevant evidence backing the view: It is very difficult at an abstract level to know what the effects of a merger or acquisition will be on competition …

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