Lynne Kiesling On Thursday President-elect Obama named law professor Cass Sunstein to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an executive-branch office with the mission of analyzing and coordinating federal regulation. Most recently, Sunstein is known for his work with Richard Thaler on “choice architecture” and behavioral public policy, including their book Nudge. Others …
Lynne Kiesling Very interesting story in today’s Wall Street Journal about BYD, a Chinese firm manufacturing electric vehicles. One of the most interesting points in this article: despite the global economic downturn, BYD is increasing its operations, first in China and then planned for US and Europe, because entry barriers are lower in the electric …
Lynne Kiesling [Note: FTW=for the win, for those of you who don’t waste your time in the jargon of the tubez of the Interwebz.-ed.] I am glad to hear that the big buzz from the Consumer Electronics Show 2009 is induction chargers for electronic devices. Wikipedia’s got a nice explanation of inductive charging if you …
Lynne Kiesling Welcome Master Resource to the party! It’s a free-market energy blog with a decidedly Julian Simon-esque flavor, so I think these will be welcome online voices in our upcoming energy policy discussions. And thanks to Steve Horwitz for the pointer, and his kinds words about Knowledge Problem.
Lynne Kiesling Yesterday Apple announced two changes to its iTunes policies: they are introducing price discrimination, and they are removing DRM copy protection from the songs sold through iTunes. Resulting from extensive negotiations between Apple and record companies, these are two long-anticipated and welcome changes, and they are the consequence of competition in two different …
Apple’s New Itunes Pricing and Drm-free Songs: the Results of Competition Read More »
Lynne Kiesling I am happy to have seen more nuanced net neutrality discussions this fall than in the past. In November this Eric Raymond post caught my eye because it dealt with the problems a libertarian faces in net neutrality policy: Mistake #1 for libertarians to avoid is falling for the telcos’ “we’re pro-free market” …
Lynne Kiesling In the ever-evolving (despite the efforts of RIAA) music industry, I find TuneCore very interesting. They have a fee-based music distribution system, under which an artist pays a fee and can have their single sold through iTunes, Rhapsody, etc. One of TuneCore’s most striking offerings is a flat $10 fee to distribute a …
Lynne Kiesling One topic that has gotten some attention in 2008 is “food miles”, or the estimate of the environmental impact of the total resource use and transportation required to get food from grower to consumer. One argument for eating more locally-produced food is that it reduces the transportation impact; however, in making that argument …
Lynne Kiesling Two items have kept my attention over the holidays with respect to the Blagojevich fiasco. First, back when the story first broke, our local NPR station interviewed my colleague Adam Galinsky on the psychology of power. Adam’s research is fascinating, and in this interview he communicates very effectively how positions of power affect …
The Blagojevich Saga: the Psychology of Power, and Rent-seeking Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Here’s an interesting list of “energy myths” from Chris Goodall at The Guardian. What I find useful about his discussion is not the “myth debunking” per se, but rather his comments on why he considers them myths. The “wind is unreliable” myth, for example: Actually, during some periods earlier this year the wind …
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