Lynne Kiesling My article on smart grid from the June print edition of Reason is now available online. Here’s the conclusion for a bit of a teaser: The obsolete electro-mechanical electric power network, built by and for a monopoly industry, cannot support the kind of growth experienced during the last 20 years in so many …
Lynne Kiesling I talk to a lot of different folks with different backgrounds in economics. Perhaps it’s because of the specific and arcane nature of “utility economics”, but many of the folks I meet think of economics as being very focused on forecasting, financial analysis, and quantitative estimates of various investments, rate/tariff policies, etc. Frankly, …
Lynne Kiesling Here are a couple of interesting and related articles on urban dynamism and what economists call economies of agglomeration. Digital communication technology was supposed to reduce those economies of agglomeration, right? We can work from anywhere, don’t have to be physically co-located, and that includes developing countries too … so, as Ed Glaeser …
Glaeser and Florida on Urbanization, and Nashville’s Lure Read More »
Michael Giberson Auctions, especially auctions of government property, are not a tool of the rich… As principles of market design become more thoroughly articulated and widely understood, the sphere of governmental discretion will shrink. More and more, politicians will be forced to play by the rules. That’s David Warsh writing on the relationship between the …
Auctions As Tools to Limit Government Discretion Read More »
Michael Giberson Way to go, Sen. Goss. Now grandma in Wilmington is gonna go three days without a flashlight ‘cuz you don’t understand basic economics. That is the conclusion of a post on Carolina Politics Online about a proposal by North Carolina state senator Steve Goss to not limit the state’s price gouging law to …
Price Gouging Policy As Rendered in Everyday Politics Read More »
Lynne Kiesling In today’s Wall Street Journal, Bjorn Lomborg has one of the clearest articulations of the bootleggers and Baptists dynamic in carbon policy, and nails one of the fundamental reasons why the Waxman-Markey bill is bad policy: Naturally, many CEOs are genuinely concerned about global warming. But many of the most vocal stand to …
Michael Giberson There is by now a fairly established body of economic history work that challenges what might be called the mainstream view of the origins of state regulation of electric utilities and offers as an alternative a nakedly public choice view that state regulation was all about creation of monopoly rents. The mainstream view …
Michael Giberson The title is lifted directly out of Craig Pirrong’s post on the Treasury departments proposal to “crack down on off-exchange trading of exotic financial instruments blamed for sparking last year’s crisis” (in the words of yesterday’s WSJ article). The Treasury wants derivatives contracts that commonly trade over-the-counter to trade through a centralized clearinghouse …
No Regulator Has or Will Have the Information, Expertise, or Esp Required to Do This Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Even if it doesn’t end up being the disruptive innovation that these articles suggest, Verizon’s MiFI personal wifi hotspot device makes my little Schumpeterian heart go pitter-pat. Released yesterday, the Verizon MiFi (device by Novatel) is a credit-card sized 3G wireless router that can provide wireless Internet connection for up to 5 devices. …
Perennial Gale of Creative Destruction, Personal Wireless Division Read More »
Michael Giberson From the Pinkies website: Tom “Pinkie” Roden established Pinkie’s back in 1934, less than one year after the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified (by an extraordinary 73%), ending 14 years of prohibition. Carrying on the work that Pinkie started back in 1934, we have grown into a chain of fifteen wine …
Where I Am Not Shopping for Alcohol in Lubbock, Texas Read More »
Copyright © 2022 Knowledge Problem Archive