The Austrian Economists (Free subscription) | 10/13/2009
|Peter Boettke| I have made a major sin of omission the past 24 hours in pointing to the various discussion of Nobel in not pointing to Lynne Kiesling at Knowledge Problems. Lynne is one of the most gifted economic teachers...
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/28/2009
Lynne Kiesling The NPR Planet Money folks do a great job of communicating complicated economic ideas with more nuance and sophistication than any other media folks around. The most recent episode of This American Life is an outstanding example: 392: Someone Else’s Money This week, we bring you a deeper look inside the health insurance industry. The dark [...]
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009
Lynne Kiesling Over at Truth on the Market, Josh Wright has organized a forum for discussing whether or not the U.S. federal merger guidelines used by the DOJ and FTC need to be revised, to accompany the public comment process on the question that the agencies have initiated. The commenters are all heavy hitters in antitrust, [...]
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009
Lynne Kiesling If you aren’t listening to EconTalk (and you should be, it’s wonderful!), you will miss Russ Roberts talking with Charlie Calomiris about financial crises. Truly, simply, unequivocally outstanding. Charlie brings the perspective of an economic historian along with his prodigious background in macroeconomic theory and his deep institutional knowledge about banking...
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009
Lynne Kiesling I am doing a lot of reading and thinking, trying to make some headway on a way-overdue paper, and have been reading a striking working paper from David Colander, Richard Holt, and Barkley Rosser, “The Complexity Era in Economics” (August 2009). Their insights are directed toward the evolution of economics methodology and the absorption [...]
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/19/2009
Lynne Kiesling Yesterday at Reason’s Hit & Run Tim Cavanaugh wrote about something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time: the institutions we use for governing the shared use of paths between cyclists and motorists on roads, and among cyclists, walkers, runners, rollerbladers, etc. on multi-use paths. Tim’s starting point was Christopher Beam’s article...
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/16/2009
Lynne Kiesling A couple of nights ago I was reading Matt Welch’s introduction to the November issue of Reason, in which Matt wonders why we have heard so little discussion of the defeat of communism on its 20th anniversary. This fall is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall on November 9, 1989, [...]
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/16/2009
Lynne Kiesling Courtesy of this Boing Boing post, I am enjoying Laura Levine’s rock & roll photographs very much. Is that Michael Stipe with hair? See more of her excellent photos here. The early R.E.M. photos are charming, and the Michael Hutchence photos are bittersweet. And I love the Iggy Pop/Chrissie Hynde photo; I’m on a bit [...]
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/16/2009
Lynne Kiesling Too bad that David Zetland’s latest idea is impossible in a world with politics: People are discussing a soda tax. Forget that — just stop subsidizing the corn that’s made into the HFCS that goes into soda. End obesity and a stupid ag subsidy at that same time. Next! My version for health care would be People are discussing [...]
TRUTH ON THE MARKET (Free subscription) | 10/14/2009
Lots of good reactions to the Nobel for interested readers. This post from Lynne Kiesling and this from Peter Klein (Williamson’s last student) are a good place to start as is just about anything over at Organizations and Markets the last few days. My earlier thoughts are here, including some disappointment that the prize was [...]
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/13/2009
Lynne Kiesling Wow. Paul Romer’s blog post congratulating Elinor Ostrom for yesterday’s Nobel is dramatic. And, in my view, entirely accurate. I really appreciate his “skyhooks and cranes” invocation: Most economists think that they are building cranes that suspend important theoretical structures from a base that is firmly grounded in first principles. In fact,...
Taking Hayek Seriously (Free subscription) | 10/13/2009
Peter Boettke, Lynne Kiesling, Peter Klein, Vernon Smith, David Henderson, Don Boudreaux, and other Hayekian economists are all applauding the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Lin Ostrom and Oliver Williamson. Here’s Boettke on Ostrom: We can talk in more depth in the comments on Lin’s great range of work from the analysis of local [...]
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/13/2009
Lynne Kiesling Today David Henderson has penned the traditional Wall Street Journal commentary on yesterday’s Nobel award to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson. He provides an excellent summary of the importance of their work, and I recommend it to you highly. In fact, David’s theme reconciles what some commenters have observed as a political or ideological [...]
Knowledge Problem (Free subscription) | 10/13/2009
Lynne Kiesling This story will have you shaking your head in disbelief in multiple dimensions. The electricity industry in Mexico is government-owned but decentralized, with multiple public distribution utility companies. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, over the weekend the Mexican government took over the second-largest of these government-run distribution companies, Luz y Fuerza...
Signifying Nothing (Free subscription) | 10/13/2009
... a lecture by Ostrom on sustainable development), Ilya Somin , Dan Drezner , Virginia Postrel , Lynne Kiesling , Margaret Soltan , Julian Sanchez , and Alex Tabarrok . Not to neglect the economists, Tabarrok also discusses Williamson’s equally valuable contributions .
