John Nash passed away yesterday. He was killed, along with his wife, in a taxi accident. Nash is not a figure who had a recent and continual impact on economics but he is perhaps the person who had the single idea with the most important impact on economists of anyone. That idea was equilibrium or …
Did the iPhone kill BlackBerry?
Yes and no. I raise this issue today because of the extract from a soon to be released book, Losing the Signal: The Rise and Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. I happen to have read this book for a forthcoming review of it in …
Mathiness: A Guide for the Perplexed
From my twitter feed at the annual American Economic Association meetings, we knew it was coming: Paul Romer (the founder of endogenous growth theory) had levelled an attack on many macroeconomic theorists including his advisor Bob Lucas. The nature of this attack would have to arrive in May when the article appeared in the American …
One week with the Apple Watch
So I have had the Apple Watch for a week. "Of course you have," you may say. But my spouse has had it too and she is not one to adopt things early. That may assure readers that perhaps some more objectivity may come with this review. I waited a week so that I could …
Is climate policy compatible with Tesla's battery-fueled dreams?
Many of the targeted behavioral responses to climate change involve reducing energy consumption. This makes sense as the majority of energy consumed (pretty much throughout all history) has involved burning of fossil fuels, and this, in turn, is responsible for the ridiculous buildup in greenhouse gases, notably CO2. So the main thrust of smart climate …
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Step right up, sell Google your patents
One of my longest research projects has been centered on the market for ideas — the idea that innovators can sell their ideas to others rather than take them to markets themselves. The problem is that while conceptually something like a market for ideas sounds like a good idea where exactly it is has been …
Some customer service fun with Comcast
https://static.medium.com/embed.jsA customer service call
The last two digits of a price can signal your desperation to sell
While someone’s bargaining position can be shaped by competition, we economists know that there is a big gray area in our ability to predict negotiated prices. Competitive options for buyers and sellers can define a limit beyond which they will not go, but there is still a range of prices that fall within those limits. …
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Are we kidding ourselves on competition?
The traditional textbook model of competition in an oligopoly goes likes this. Firms choose prices and other variables (like product quality, advertising and R&D) to maximise their own profits and disregard the impact of their actions on (a) competing firms and (b) consumers; although with the latter since they want them to buy products they …
Is Tesla disruptive?
Apparently not, according to Tom Bartman, an associate with Clay Christensen’s research group at Harvard Business School. In a report from Harvard Business Review, they apply a framework to understand whether a new firm, like Tesla, will disrupt an old one, like GM or Toyota. The framework asks 5 questions: Does the product target over-served …
Digitopoly 