Lynne Kiesling I loved seeing pictures a couple of weeks ago of an endangered Bengal tiger and her cubs from a hidden camera. Large predator wildlife that roam and are territorial often face reductions in their territory when humans move in; in the Bengal tiger territory in India, both traditional farming and the construction of …
Lynne Kiesling Fracking and energy self-sufficiency is the topic of the week at the Becker-Posner blog. Becker’s contribution provides a stream-of-consciousness overview that is consistent with the past fracking discussions here; it touches on fuel source competition, the quest for self-sufficiency, the environmental impact of fracking, and the likely effects of fuel export regulation. I’m …
Lynne Kiesling Last week was our spring break, and I finally took some time to read Gary Taubes’ 2008 book Good Calories, Bad Calories. Taubes is an investigative science journalist who has been writing for years about the science of nutrition and epidemiology, and the book focuses on a long, careful, detailed narrative about how …
Nutrition Experience, Research, and Orthodoxy, with Some Economics Parallels Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I am happy to say that Learn Liberty has published another video that we did together. This one is a short one in which I talk about government regulation of monopolies, essentially laying out Schumpeter’s argument that when entry costs are low, monopolies do not persist because monopoly profit serves as a lure …
Learn Liberty Video: Should Government Regulate Monopolies? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling This may be the beginning of what I’ve been arguing for over the past decade plus … today in Smart Grid News, Jesse Berst reports that Constellation Energy has teamed up with Best Buy to enable customers to come into the store, switch their retail provider, and buy home energy management devices (see …
Innovative Retail Competition: is It Finally Starting … and in Chicago? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling While we’re at Learn Liberty, and in light of today’s Congressional Republican federal government budget proposal, here’s economist Antony Davies on the implications of our government’s indebtedness. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID4xay5RITY&feature=player_embedded] When we covered this in my intro macro class this winter, it was sobering for my 18-20-year old students to realize that they are the …
Lynne Kiesling Got two spare minutes and want to spend it enriching yourself? Then watch this great Learn Liberty video from Aeon Skoble. Aeon’s a philosopher who also reads a lot of economics, so he’s in a distinctive position to make this important point — both economists and philosophers use the word “value”, but we …
Lynne Kiesling Fear is a strong motivating factor, having evolved over millennia as we have protected ourselves against predators. Fear supports self-preservation by making us risk-averse and cautious. But such a deep, visceral, evolved emotion does not always serve our long-term objectives of thriving; it leads to maximin outcomes, and it is often mismatched to …
How Fear Affects Policy: Adam Thierer on Technopanics Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I was glad Mike mentioned Alex Tabarrok’s recent Launching the Innovation Renaissance in his recent post on the Honeywell-Next patent lawsuit, because reading Alex’s new TED book was on my to-do list for this past weekend. Alex’s focus in this book is U.S. innovation policy and ways that we could improve the institutional …
Alex Tabarrok on Innovation, Barriers to It, and the Warfare-welfare State 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 »
Copyright © 2022 Knowledge Problem Archive