In a recent essay, the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Matthew Crosby asks “will there ever be an AirBnB or Uber for the electricity grid?” It’s a good question, a complicated question, and one that I have pondered myself a few times. He correctly identifies the characteristics of such platforms that have made them attractive and successful, …
The Sharing Economy and the Electricity Industry Read More »
The New York Attorney General (AG) had an op-ed in the New York Times presenting a curious mix of resistance to change, insistence on regulating new things in old way, acknowledgement that web-based businesses create some value and regulators can’t always enforce rules intelligently, and sprinkled now and again with the barely disguised threat that regulators will not …
New York Attorney General Grapples to Regulate New Web-based Businesses in Old Ways Read More »
3D printing is incredible. Take, for example, recent Northwestern mechanical engineering graduate and softball player Lauren Tyndall, who designed and printed her own more ergonomic and comfortable cast for her broken pinkie finger. Or consider the cost and energy use benefits of 3D printing of metal airplane parts in titanium, rather than machining them out …
Lynne Kiesling Got any bets in any Nobel pools? Calling up any of your chemist friends and putting on a fake Swedish accent? Yes, it’s that time again, when the 2012 Nobel prizes are announced. I have no predictions or inclinations for this year’s economics prize, but I’d be interested in yours if you’ve got …
Lynne Kiesling According to this Ars Technica story (and a linked Bloomberg article), Facebook is going to offer a new advertising model to its potential advertisers: a spot auction for real-time ads based on changes in current events or time-sensitive things like sporting event results. The service, called Facebook Exchange, will use partnerships with other …
Frontiers in Dynamic Pricing: Spot Advertising Auctions Read More »
Michael Giberson The Gulf Coast Power Association meetings earlier this week included a debate over the future of resource adequacy within the ERCOT power system. Debate moderator Eric Schubert, BP Energy Company, introduced the issue with a critique of capacity market structures that is heavy on its reliance on Hayek’s knowledge problem. It is a …
Rto Forward Capacity Markets Are Unlikely to Succeed Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Dynamic pricing has long been a topic of great interest here, in large part because digital technology is increasingly making it feasible to implement dynamic pricing in retail electricity markets in ways that can be acceptable to consumers. But dynamic pricing is fraught with challenges, and not just in retail electricity markets. Dynamic …
Dynamic Pricing and Technology in Different Markets Read More »
Michael Giberson Last Friday, April 15, 2011, Mark Edge, of the Free Talk Live radio show, interviewed me on price gouging. Generally speaking, we discuss the recent article on price gouging appearing in Regulation magazine, and we agree that even if price hikes after emergencies are troubling, there just isn’t a better way to manage …
Michael Giberson For more economists caught in the act of navel gazing, check out The Economist‘s forum on the question of whether economists need a professional code of ethics. If you want some background, the urge for a code of ethics came about something like this: Since the end of 2008, economists have been professionally embarrassed by …
Michael Giberson Tyler Cowen links to a story in the New York Times detailing the opposition of the Motion Picture Association of America to two proposed markets for forecasting movie ticket sales. Of the objections noted in the article, Cowen thinks the key issue for Hollywood is the possibility of a poor market showing making …
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