Competition in the Digital Age
Last week I commented in this space about the Tea Party's desire to make a symbolic cut in government by eliminating the American Community Survey and the Economic Census at the US Census. This would change economic statistics in the US, upending a system that has been in place since the end of World War …
Continue reading "A dumb compromise to save the ACS and Economic Census"
Some folk like to read blogs. Some folk like to listen to podcasts. Why not give everyone the option to do what they prefer? Now it is possible to read or listen to many of the essays that appear in my IEEE Micro Economics column (and appear here in digitopoly). The IEEE deserves credit for …
Brett Danaher of Wellesley College and I have a new working paper (Reel Piracy: The Effect of Online Piracy on International Box Office Sales) attempting to find evidence on whether piracy, in particular movie downloading via BitTorrent, depressed international movie box office revenue. Our approach is based on the following two insights. First, Hollywood movies …
Continue reading "The Marquee Result of the "Reel Piracy" Study"
One of the most famous quotations in economics points out how the market system enables each person’s self-interest to benefit others: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. That’s from The Wealth of Nations. But …
On December 13, the New York Times reported that selling MetroCard swipes isn’t larceny, “and it overturned the 2009 conviction of a New Jersey man who, having served a day in jail for the crime, had fought his case all the way to the State Court of Appeals.” Subway officials had long treated the sale …
A few years ago I had the idea of using iTunes song prices to form an index to illustrate whether currencies were under- or over-valued. The iTunes index indicated significant over valuation of currencies relative to the US dollar in a way that was not correlated with the Economist's Big Mac index. While this may …
MIT is expanding and enhancing its offerings of free online courses. Anyone with access to the Internet can take the courses and earn a certificate demonstrating mastery of the subject. Students will have a chance interact with each other electronically and most of the grading will either be done via an app or by students …
Hat tip: Andrew McAfee
<sarcasm alert> Tired of the self-referential and self-important? Then do not attend a conference on communications policy in Washington D.C. (or watch the latest debate among the Republican candidates for president). What is the next best anecdote to that tone? A bit of humor to punctuate the bubble, of course!<End of alert> Need some humor …
This morning, I discussed Race Against the Machine with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and rest of MSNBC's Morning Joe gang at 30 Rock. Here's the video. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640
