The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Competition, Economics Problems, Economists, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Mar 16th, 2011
I’ve just finished reading Joe Stiglitz’s account of the financial crisis. In it he makes the following comment: Competition, in this case, had a perverse effect: It caused a race to the bottom — a race to provide ratings that were most favorable to those being rated. Ughh. I guess being a Nobel Prize winner [...]
Posted in Competition, Regulation on Dec 14th, 2010
Our three year old son has happily taken an interest in all things choo-choo. Now, I know nothing about either real or model trains – and so his exploration is also a learning experience for me. At several of the train fairs we have attended recently, there have been displays by merchants touting that their [...]
Posted in Competition on Nov 3rd, 2010
To the ancients, blindness was an extremely desirable attribute of the deity of justice. Is it not ironic that this “blindness” is now one of the most common objections to competitive market processes? In issues of justice, blindness is desirable because all people are treated equally under the law – even the rich and poor, [...]
Posted in Competition, Regulation on Aug 23rd, 2010
With the latest egg scare coming to a head, I am sure that you will be reading plenty of commentary on how we need the FDA to take a greater role in food oversight, and that the powers of the FDA should be expanded. Of course, a crisis is a great opportunity to get people [...]
Posted in Competition, Standards of Living on Aug 16th, 2010
Took our family to see the excellent Toy Story 3 the other day and a couple of things came to me. Could it possibly be that movie theaters are responding to the severe and increased competition from mobile entertainment, home theater entertainment, and all of the other types of cool entertainment we have today? I [...]
Posted in Competition, Health Care on Jul 19th, 2010
OK, I lied about taking a complete hiatus. Here is a new research paper on how competition between hospitals in England impacts health outcomes (and do note that the starting point here is that there was no/little competition before the reform). The effect of competition on the quality of health care remains a contested issue. [...]
Posted in Competition on Mar 11th, 2010
What ever happened to the Chevy Volt? Remember all the fanfare a year or so ago about it? A car that was entirely electric, and GM was rolling the dice and hoping that it could sell it for something like $40,000? It was a pleasant surprise to be watching the Olympics last week and see [...]
Posted in Competition on Mar 5th, 2010
A favorite canard of the anti-capitalists, statists, marxists, liberals, and looting classes is that unfettered competition will lead to the creation of enormous monopolies, who kill off any competition, gouge their customers, reduce the quality of their products, and exploit their workers (since if they are a monopolist, workers will have no other choice of [...]
Posted in Competition on Dec 10th, 2009
I just received a 30 page packet this morning to prepare for my grading of my courses. The gist of the 30 pages … please use our online grading resources. Every professor got the same packet.
Posted in Competition, Education on Dec 7th, 2009
What did the President say about being open to serious ideas grounded in serious research? Oh, that is reserved only for climate socialism. This paper estimates the impact of charter school attendance on student achievement using data from Boston, where charter schools enroll a growing share of students. We also evaluate an alternative to the [...]
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