Economics

Quality, Broadband, and Spectrum: What the Doj’s At&t/T-Mobile Lawsuit Misses

Lynne Kiesling Yesterday’s announcement that the US DOJ would challenge the merger of AT&T’s wireless business with T-Mobile’s was surprising, and their approach to the merger seems to be more conventional and rooted in old HHI-market share and price effect metrics. Their analysis suggests that due to the substantial overlap in the existing separate AT&T …

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Whales and Electricity, and Sustainability

Lynne Kiesling A few weeks ago I was thrilled to speak at the inaugural Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy, organized by the University of Illinois-Chicago in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University, Illinois Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago. The students were from diverse fields and between them and the other …

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Smart Appliances and the Innovation Cycle

Lynne Kiesling Appliance and consumer electronics manufacturers are starting to incorporate digital technology with energy-related applications into their products … but as with most new technologies, the first commercial stage of the innovation cycle takes the form of “because we can” product differentiation rather than use-specific innovation. Take the example that Technology Review highlighted this …

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The Industrial Revolution Required More Energy Resources Than Provided by the Annual Cycle of Photosynthesis

Michael Giberson Tony Wrigley’s new book is Energy and the English Industrial Revolution. He provides some flavor of the fundamental thesis of the book in a post at VoxEU.org: “Opening Pandora’s box: A new look at the industrial revolution“: The most fundamental defining feature of the industrial revolution was that it made possible exponential economic …

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Passage of Wisconsin’s Anti-price Gouging Bill Boosted by President Bush’s Public Remarks

Michael Giberson Wisconsin didn’t have an anti-price gouging law in 2001, so the state government’s response to post-9/11 reports of gasoline price gouging was pretty limited. While the Wisconsin governor called for an investigation of gasoline retailers, for all practical purposes the investigation was limited to fighting collusion in price setting and instances in which stations …

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Post 9/11 Gasoline Price Gouging in Wisconsin: Two Views

Michael Giberson The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, created a great deal of uncertainty and fear among Americans. In the retail gasoline market, some (but not all) consumers reacted to the uncertainty and fear by heading to a gas station to fill up their tanks. Some (but not all) gasoline retailers reacted to the …

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