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 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 »
Michael Giberson The “green power paradox” grabs Hotelling by the ankles, turns him upside down, and shakes the change out of his pockets. Harold Hotelling’s classic article, “The Economics of Exhaustible Resources,” observes that the owner of an exhaustible resource stock always is making choices in the shadow of the future. If the owner produces …
Lynne Kiesling As is the vernacular these days, your response to the title of this post is probably “I know, right?” Or, if you prefer sarcasm, you may say “no, really?” This is the conclusion of an all-too-rare piece of investigative journalism from Dan Garino at the Columbus Dispatch: Ohio’s unique system for setting electricity …
Breaking News: State Regulatory Procedures Do Not Favor Consumers Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Steve Horwitz’s column in The Freeman today is a great explication of why the phrase “market failure” is so problematic, and so often misused and abused in public policy analysis when employed to criticize market outcomes. Steve does a good job of explaining the origins of the phrase in the standard textbook case …
Lynne Kiesling Here’s an interesting juxtaposition of two prominent executives performing sound public choice analyses, and I think they complement each other, at least in my work! This weekend’s Wall Street Journal featured an interview with Exelon’s John Rowe, A Life in Energy and (Therefore) Politics. Exelon is the third largest investor-owned utility/generation owner in …
Exelon’s John Rowe and Google’s Eric Schmidt: Truth to Power? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling What’s a political economy-oriented economist to make of Occupy Wall Street? So far I’ve found two complementary commentaries that reflect my analysis of the deeply flawed policies of the past couple of decades that have enabled the crony corporatism that seems to be at the core of the protest (just in my phrasing …
A Political Economy Model for Occupy Wall Street Read More »
Lynne Kiesling In the always-smart-and-interesting City AM paper from London, Anthony Evans makes an important argument that has been overlooked in financial regulation debates: risk of failure is what creates system resilience, and regulation creates brittle monocultures. He writes in the context of last week’s Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) recommendations for creating regulatory divisions …
Resiliency Comes from More Risk of Bank Failure, Not Less Read More »
Lynne Kiesling A few weeks ago I was thrilled to speak at the inaugural Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy, organized by the University of Illinois-Chicago in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University, Illinois Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago. The students were from diverse fields and between them and the other …
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