Economics

Dot’s Airline Price Gouging Investigation and a Political Economy-based Prediction

1 Comment / Economics, Networks, Politics, Regulation / By

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced it had launched an investigation into possible “unfair practices (e.g., price gouging) affecting air travel during the period of time that Amtrak service along the Northeast Corridor was delayed or suspended as a result of the May 12th derailment.” Five airlines received letters from the agency seeking …

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Dallas Morning News on Competitive Retail Power Market Fees and Rate Designs in Texas

Economics, Electricity, Regulation / By

At the Dallas Morning News James Osborne reports on the controversy over minimum use fees in the competitive retail power market that includes most Texas households. As discussed here at Knowledge Problem last week, retail suppliers sometimes design contract offers to be especially cheap for consumers using 1000 kWh per month. The state’s powertochoose.org website …

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Gaming the Rankings on the Texas Power to Choose Website

4 Comments / Economics, Electricity, Regulation / By

To help provide consumer information on competitive retail offers in the Texas electric power market, the Public Utility Commission of Texas maintains a website at www.powertochoose.org. Enter your zip code, click a button, and it will display the top ten (out of nearly 300) offers. Because the table shows the lowest priced offers first, with the average …

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Technological Change, Culture, and a “Social License to Operate”

2 Comments / Economics, Regulation, Technology, Transportation / By

Technological change is disruptive, and in the long sweep of human history, that disruption is one of the fundamental sources of economic growth and what Deirdre McCloskey calls the Great Enrichment: In 1800 the average income per person…all over the planet was…an average of $3 a day. Imagine living in present-day Rio or Athens or …

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Social Costs of Oil and Gas Leasing on Federal Lands, Carefully Considered

2 Comments / Economics, Environmental policy, Regulation / By

OVERVIEW: A report filed with the US Department of the Interior recommended that terms governing the leasing of federal land for oil and gas development be updated to reflect social costs associated with such development. While such costs may be policy relevant, I suggest social costs are smaller than the report indicates and the recommended policy …

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How Cool is This? A Transparent Solar Cell

3 Comments / Economics, Electricity, How cool is this?, Technology / By

I’ve not been sharing enough of my “how cool is this?” moments, and believe me, I’ve had plenty of them in the digital and clean tech areas lately. I find this one very exciting: Michigan State researchers have developed a fully transparent solar cell that could be used for windows or device screens: Instead of trying …

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Government Failure and the California Drought

5 Comments / Economics, Environmental policy / By

Yesterday the New York Times had a story about California’s four-year drought, complete with apocalyptic imagery and despair over whether conservation would succeed. Alex Tabarrok used that article as a springboard for a very informative and link-filled post at Marginal Revolution digging into the ongoing California drought, including some useful data and comment participation from …

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Forthcoming Paper: Implications of Smart Grid Innovation for Organizational Models in Electricity Distribution

2 Comments / Economics, Electricity, Regulation, Technology / By

Back in 2001 I participated in a year-long forum on the future of the electricity distribution model. Convened by the Center for the Advancement of Energy Markets, the DISCO of the Future Forum brought together many stakeholders to develop several scenarios and analyze their implications (and several of those folks remain friends, playmates in the …

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The New York Rev and the Distribution Company of the Future

2 Comments / Economics, Electricity, Regulation, Technology / By

We live in interesting times in the electricity industry. Vibrant technological dynamism, the very dynamism that has transformed how we work, play, and live, puts increasing pressure on the early-20th-century physical network, regulatory model, and resulting business model of the vertically-integrated distribution utility. While the utility “death spiral” rhetoric is overblown, these pressures are real. …

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