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Information Goods, Intellectual Property
A Category Archive (103 entries)
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October 16, 2009
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Quick reply to two interesting comments: John Jenkins writes: Does the average suicide bomber make the decision to commit suicide more than 1-2 years in advance? If not (and I would guess that "no" is the right answer), then doesn't... MORE
August 12, 2009
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Do you want to know the clearest sign that someone is a bad driver? If they think everyone else is a bad driver. Why do these people imagine that everyone else is a bad driver? Because they have unreasonably high... MORE
August 5, 2009
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Arnold writes:I think that reputation matters when exit matters. That is, if people will switch suppliers based on word of mouth, then reputation will be important.This sounds eminently plausible, but it's misleading. Imagine a world where we all choose our... MORE
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Paul Krugman can't believe how much I trust in the power of reputation to keep health insurers honest. He's right about one thing: I think reputation works wonders - not just in insurance, but throughout modern economies. I could talk... MORE
August 3, 2009
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
In 1938, Jewish businesses and synagogues through Germany were burned and looted in a massive pogrom. Historians call the incident Kristallnacht. The Nazis naturally blamed the Jews. So the Nazis were horrified when they realized that Aryan-owned insurance companies were... MORE
July 1, 2009
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
If an economist wants to ward off the spirit of laissez-faire insurance policy, all he has to do is repeatedly chant "moral hazard and adverse selection." The funny thing about this two-part mantra, though, is that the "moral hazard" part... MORE
June 5, 2009
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
What don't more people with painful, terminal diseases commit suicide? Religion dissuades some of them - that's the point of Hamlet's famous soliloquy. But most people quickly ignore religious teachings when they seriously cramp their style.Some people might worry about... MORE
May 10, 2009
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I'm old enough to remember the days when many people seriously believed that America Online's gated content was the wave of the future. Over at Cato Unbound, Adam Thierer takes apart Lawrence Lessig, influential past prophet of techno-doom:Had there been... MORE
February 22, 2009
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Marc Andreessen is the least depressing person I've heard in a long time. Listen to the whole thing. He is ready to throw the whole legacy banking system under the bus, and instead go full speed with online banking. I'm... MORE
January 20, 2009
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
Some excerpts from his 1999 book, Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" say. Chapter three is called "Spectacle."... MORE
January 10, 2009
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
A standard rule of Internet content is that unless it's pornographic, you don't have to pay for it. But I just stumbled on a weird counter-example. If you want to read even the main stories on the Good News Network,... MORE
October 20, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Great Interview with Russ Roberts and Clay Shirky. I find lots of the interview fascinating. One of Shirky's comment on Wikipedia is that it is low-cost to remove vandalism, and that helps to drive out vandalism. I hope he is... MORE
September 4, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Clay Shirky says, all of Wikipedia, the whole project—every page, every edit, every line of code, in every language Wikipedia exists in—that represents something like the cumulation of 98 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin... MORE
August 11, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
One of the best examples of path-dependence is the format of academic citations. Who cares what city a book was published in? Who ever did? But in the google age, tradition is even sillier. Volume numbers? Page numbers? These days,... MORE
August 4, 2008
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
He suggests that there are no limits to growth. In a special issue of the American Economic Review about thirty years ago, some physical chemists wrote that once the energy problem is solved, nothing is scarce. If material X is... MORE
July 8, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
He wrote, The right to decide whether or not I turn on the lights in my house is worth more to me than to my neighbors, so in principle I should be able to buy their permission. The problem is... MORE
May 22, 2008
Regulation and Subsidies
Arnold Kling
Without irony, the Washington Post headline blares, FTC Wants to Know What Big Brother Knows About You The crime under investigation is targeted advertising on the Internet, where firms use databases to try to serve ads that are relevant to... MORE
May 18, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
[UPDATE: I found the web browser on the Kindle. You have to go to the Kindle home, select menu, then select "experimental." Of course, I am one of those troglodytes who uses a PC client for email. But once I... MORE
May 12, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
There are several interesting topics covered in this podcast between Russ Roberts and Chris Anderson. The general topic is the disruptive impact of computers and communication technology, and in particular the tendency for prices to fall to zero for things... MORE
April 22, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Want to see two bright, good-looking guys discuss economics and media? Then watch the latest episode of Free Will, with Will Wilkinson interviewing Clay Shirky. The topic is one of my favorites, and these are two of my favorite thinkers.... MORE
April 20, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I really enjoyed Sylvia Hewlett's Creating a Life, but feminists were outraged. (Check out all the 1-star reviews on Amazon). Normally, I'd expect all this negative publicity to be great for sales. All publicity is good publicity, right? But Hewlett's... MORE
March 17, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Patent Failure is a new book by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer. Here is a lecture by Bessen. The book's introduction emphasizes the importance of what the authors call "the notice function." An efficient property system notifies non-owners of... MORE
March 10, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Bruce Charlton and Peter Andras write, a research foundation working in a specific scientific field might at present spend 100 million dollars per year – and might spread this money among ten 10 million dollar program grants. In all likelihood,... MORE
February 6, 2008
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
He writes, The only thing one could do with those railroad tracks was carry trains. It would have been fantastic if the miles of excess railroad tracks could have been transformed into highways to service the new growth industry coming... MORE
January 23, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Here's a gem from the first article in Henderson's Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:The rise of the self-service store, for example, was aided by consumer knowledge of branded goods. Before the advent of advertising, customers relied on knowledgeable shopkeepers in selecting... MORE
January 7, 2008
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Edward L. Glaeser and Giacomo A.M. Ponsetto write, This paper advances the hypothesis that improvements in transportation and communica- tion technology can explain both the decline of Detroit and the reinvigoration of Manhattan. While we present some suggestive evidence, the... MORE
November 20, 2007
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Joel Johnson writes, the $400 premium just to get the Kindle reader isn't the last fee you'll pay. I'm not talking about paying for eBooks from Amazon, which are priced typically at $10 or less, but for the additional fees... MORE
August 5, 2007
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Steve Hsu writes, Both the malware and spam problems are a kind of tax on the overall internet population caused by the least sophisticated users (I won't reference IQ here, but there is certainly a correlation). It's the least sophisticated... MORE
April 13, 2007
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
A commenter on a previous post mentioned a couple of essays by Paul Graham. He is one of my favorite writers, and it's been too long since I visited his site. Here is an essay on software patents. One thing... MORE
March 15, 2007
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Paul Kedrosky writes, if Viacom wins this suit and busts YouTube--and there is a very good chance it will win; it is, after all, uncontested that this is Viacom's media property we are talking about--that won't change what consumers want... MORE
March 5, 2007
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Steve Levitt asks In general, it doesn't seem like a good idea to give your product away if you are a company, but given that most newspapers do, why doesn't the WSJ? ...Either the WSJ is making a mistake or... MORE
February 19, 2007
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
This week's econtalk, featuring Richard Epstein talking about patent issues with respect to pharmaceuticals, I found to be really taxing mentally. I have thought a great deal about these issues, yet Epstein was talking faster than I could absorb. Also,... MORE
January 26, 2007
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
My latest essay includes an analysis of the comparative advantage that I have using the Internet. The Net boosts my salience the most. In an environment where what counts is reaction time, I do well. Hal Varian does the "worst"... MORE
November 27, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
David Warsh writes, Classified advertising, especially help-wanted and houses for sale, near-monopolies for daily newspapers for more than a century, have been especially hard-hit. Consolidation in the once-exotic world of trade magazines has been the rule. Significant revenues from other... MORE
September 12, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I didn't know logicians had a name for it, but they do: it's called the Argument from Silence. The argument from silence (also called argumentum a silentio in Latin) is that the silence of a speaker or writer about X... MORE
July 29, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Tyler asks his readers to help a 51-year-old American male find a high-quality wife in the international marriage market: What traits should he look for in a foreign woman? He should avoid countries which lost the Cold War. Avoid women... MORE
July 16, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Eric Crampton
I'm a fan of Hanson's idea markets. Imitation as flattery: I put together a Marsden grant proposal (New Zealand's NSF) to start up election stock markets here that would subsequently be expanded into policy and decision markets. Unfortunately, the grant... MORE
July 10, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Some economists would argue that any contracts voluntarily entered into should be enforced. That is what lead them to argue that, if I agree not to redistribute your book, then I should be bound by that agreement. In this view,... MORE
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine write, Intellectual property law is not about your right to control your copy of your idea - this is a right that we have just pointed out, does not need a great deal of... MORE
June 15, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Jim Pinkerton writes, Every country with ambitions on the international stage will soon have its own state-supported media. ...In addition, around the world, states will want to "help" their media. Not satisfied with what the free market is bringing about,... MORE
May 14, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
My colleague Don Boudreaux stands accused of being a snob. He said: Service-sector jobs are the most desirable. Until his retirement, my dad had a manufacturing job: he worked as a welder in a shipyard. Like most parents, his dream... MORE
May 10, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I'm a fan of Rick Harbaugh's work (with Nick Feltovich and Ted To) on counter-signaling. The motivating paragraph of "Too Cool for School" still blows me away: Contrary to this standard implication, high types sometimes avoid the signals that should... MORE
May 5, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Greg Perkins writes, The crucial distinction between discovery and invention lies in their object: facts of nature are what they are and exist waiting to be discovered, while inventions are objects which would not exist without a creator. So intellectual... MORE
April 27, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Austan Goolsbee, one of the new members of the "Economic Scene" rotation at the New York Times (Tyler Cowen is another), writes In their fervor to free listeners from the shackles of their iPods, French politicians have abandoned one of... MORE
April 24, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I just got back from a conference with Will Wilkinson where he mentioned that the New York Times had canonized the "man date": Simply defined a man date is two heterosexual men socializing without the crutch of business or sports.... MORE
April 5, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Two Three views. First, Michael Rosen writes, Well, first, as almost everyone involved in the patent reform debate acknowledges, we must fully fund the PTO. ...There are not nearly enough examiners to review, revise, and recognize incoming patent applications. There... MORE
March 22, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Glenn Harlan Reynolds writes, What would a new-era newspaper look like? First, I think I'd skip the "paper" part. I've visited a lot of newspaper offices, and many of them proudly display the printing presses that produce their product, just... MORE
March 10, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Michael Rosen and Thomas J. Van Gilder write, The patent system has not developed such a mechanism ["fair use"]. This is so in part because patents tend to deal more with the physical implementation of ideas rather than their expression.... MORE
March 2, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
I offer my two cents. Some of the problems with patent laws could be fixed by developing standards for "fair use." Under a "fair use" standard, there would be circumstances where one company could use another company's patented ideas in... MORE
February 21, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Yesterday GMU had a mini-debate between Dan Klein and Pete Boettke on "Is It Time to Retire the Label 'Austrian Economics?'" Dan said Yes; Pete said No. Dan's proposal, roughly, was to (a) expand the set of heroes to include... MORE
February 19, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Why is getting along with other people so complicated? Shows like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm have explored this question with hilarious results. But last week Rick Harbaugh of Indiana University came to speak at GMU, and convinced me that... MORE
February 14, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Match Point, yet another Woody Allen movie about adultery, reminds me of a question I've often wondered about: Why hasn't the lemons problem killed adultery? To be more specific, why would any women want to steal a man who lies... MORE
February 7, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
A story in the Washington Post says, A Verizon Communications Inc. executive yesterday accused Google Inc. of freeloading for gaining access to people's homes using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build.... MORE
February 3, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
One of the most effective ways to take the sting out of charity - for recipients and involuntary donors alike - is to give it a new name: "insurance." If you buy fire insurance and your house burns down, you... MORE
January 18, 2006
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen steps into an old issue, of how Internet usage ought to be priced. In purely economic terms, the idea of charging Google or other "bandwidth hogs" does not sound outrageous. The casual assumption here is that bandwidth is... MORE
December 30, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
"New Economist" writes, The latest issue of First Monday carries an article by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig which shows that on at least basic historical facts, the internet can provide a surprisingly accurate indication of the historical consensus...... MORE
December 23, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Auto insurance regulations in California are going to change. At first glance, the changes look completely reasonable: Insurers will have to base rates on the driving records of the people insured. From the Daily News: Moving to end years of... MORE
December 13, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen points to this essay suggesting that newspapers convert to nonprofit status. Over three years ago, I wrote The newspaper business is going to die within the next twenty years. Newspaper publishing will continue, but only as a philanthropic... MORE
November 25, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I'm a trusting person by nature, so it's useful for me to reflect on how deceptive people can be. The following excerpt really helped focus my attention. It's from a speech given to the Associated Press in 1933 by Adolf... MORE
November 22, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok writes The conclusion seems right to me - file-sharing increases social-welfare, so in theory a win-win solution is possible, but in practice the increase comes at the expense of music firms. That reminded me of Zimran ("winterspeak") Ahmed's... MORE
October 3, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
The Wall Street Journal reports, Google Inc. unveiled the latest such effort Friday with a proposal to provide free, wireless high-speed Internet access in the city of San Francisco. The service would allow users to bypass fee-based connections of cable... MORE
September 28, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
In a recent post, I said: If you really want to improve your group's image, telling other groups to stop stereotyping won't work. The stereotype is based on the underlying distribution of fact. It is far more realistic to turn... MORE
September 27, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I repeat the adage "All publicity is good publicity" every chance I get. So I shouldn't have needed iSteve to explain why Matthew Simmons was smart to make a sucker bet with John Tierney: What I realize now is that... MORE
September 26, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I've proposed several alternatives to the adverse selection explanation for missing insurance markets. Here's another, with a somewhat Hansonian flavor: In part, people buy insurance so they don't "look stupid" when something bad happens to them. If you get in... MORE
September 24, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
When economists notice that nobody sells insurance for X, they have a standard explanation: adverse selection. Why can't you buy flood insurance? Supposedly, because the highest-risk people will be first in line to buy it, which raises premiums, which encourages... MORE
September 22, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I normally wouldn't want to watch a movie in which "A series of racially charged events connects the lives of a disparate lot of Los Angelenos," (full review here) but the reviews of Crash were so glowing that I made... MORE
August 9, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Robin Hanson is guest blogging this week at Marginal Revolution. In his first post, he explains how he chose his big post-tenure research project: He took the unconventional step of asking other people what they thought, and averaging their responses:... MORE
July 27, 2005
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
In the second essay in a series, I write, Think of the economy as a restaurant, or, better yet, as a Food Court. Behind the Food Court there is a farm, where plants and animals grow spontaneously in adequate but... MORE
June 15, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
The prolific Edward Glaeser writes, 28 percent of Manhattan’s payroll goes to workers in a single three-digit industry. 56 percent of Manhattan’s payroll goes to workers in four three-digit industries. New York’s 20th century success primarily reflects its ability to... MORE
May 16, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
In the game Dungeons & Dragons, there is a magic spell called detect lie (or at least there was back in the first edition). A couple of my favorite high school gaming sessions revolved around the player characters flinging accusations... MORE
May 5, 2005
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
An interesting interview with Jeremy Siegel. In 50 years the United States will be more aged than all of Florida is today, but we will be, existing in a younger world. So, what I see is exactly the same pattern.... MORE
April 6, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
My student Howard Wu passed along an interesting anecdote on signaling that you're normal. True story: In my company once we received a resume sent along with a dress shoe. And the cover letter says: "now that I have a... MORE
March 28, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
I can't believe I took so long to discover Thomas Gilovich's excellent How We Know What Isn't So. I've read almost all of the semi-popular books in cognitive psychology, and this turns out to be one of the best. All... MORE
March 21, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
My initial link for Hanson's working paper was incorrect. It's now been fixed. If you couldn't find it before, here it is. My apologies.... MORE
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
A new working paper by Robin Hanson observes: "When a controversy erupts in the media, and widely differing views are expressed, it is natural to wonder which opinion is the one more favored by those who are most informed about... MORE
March 2, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
Economists love to pour cold water on new ideas: "If your plan is so great, why aren't people already doing it?" And usually we're right to do so. Most of the economy's backseat drivers aren't fit to run an apple... MORE
February 20, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
The Washington Post reports that newspapers are struggling. "Print is dead," Sports Illustrated President John Squires told a room full of newspaper and magazine circulation executives at a conference in Toronto in November. His advice? "Get over it," meaning publishers... MORE
February 17, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
The weakest part of Martin Giles' Why Americans Hate Welfare is his dismissive treatment of stereotypes. He cites a number of psychological experiments on the emergence of baseless stereotypes. But he at best downplays the growing literature on stereotype accuracy.... MORE
January 24, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Don Boudreaux looks at cases where prices should be above marginal cost. Jones builds the bridge and charges tolls to pay for it. When the bridge is not congested, the marginal cost of allowing each driver access to the bridge... MORE
January 23, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
The master of horror is of course not Stephen King, but H.P. Lovecraft. (My personal favorite is "The Dunwich Horror"). Lovecraft lived a life of aristocratic penury, and he wasn't too happy about it: "He who strives to produce salable... MORE
January 19, 2005
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Bryan Caplan
In Globalization and Its Discontents, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz tells us: Behind the free-market ideology there is a model, often attributed to Adam Smith, which argues that market forces - the profit motive - drive the economy to efficient... MORE
December 22, 2004
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Chris Anderson writes, What's really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries... MORE
December 14, 2004
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
A good intro to the economic issues surrounding pharmaceutical patents, from Richard Posner and Gary Becker. Posner writes, Invention is a cumulative process; a new invention is usually an incremental improvement on an existing one. So the more patents that... MORE
October 25, 2004
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Phil Bowermaster looks at the cost of storing all of the books in the Library of Congress catalog. The initial scanning work is the only part of the plan that's likely to present much of an expense factor. According to... MORE
September 20, 2004
Growth: Causal Factors
Arnold Kling
Charles I. Jones writes, The nonrivalry of ideas implies that increasing returns to scale is likely to characterize production possibilities. This leads to a world in which scale itself can serve as a source of long run growth. The more... MORE
July 23, 2004
Labor Market
Arnold Kling
Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane predict that computer automation is leading to a split in the labor market. Good jobs will increasingly require expert thinking and complex communication. Jobs that do not require these tasks will not pay a... MORE
May 3, 2004
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Richard A. Epstein has written an interesting essay on copyright law. He concludes, But for years now, my own private campaign has been to insist that the strength of the natural law theories rested on their implicit utilitarian (broadly conceived)... MORE
March 9, 2004
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
What do you call a technology that looks promising but always lets you down? In this essay, I point out that one example is micropayments. Another example, I argue, is virtual classrooms. Most web-based education software seems designed to enable... MORE
January 30, 2004
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Here are some interesting comments on intellectual property that have appeared recently. Lawrence Lessig defends drug patents. I don't know if the alternatives would be better - I don't believe patents are bad in every case. But I do know... MORE
November 13, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I argue that we should not fear losing our technology edge. In doing the cost-benefit analysis on government funding of scientific research, one factor that should not be given weight is national competitiveness. I can see worrying... MORE
October 27, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
I contrast Hayek and Stiglitz on the importance of imperfect information. Hayek would have the government tolerate messy competition. His point is that with the optimal outcome unknown, government resolution of issues shuts off the learning process that market competition... MORE
September 13, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
N. Stephan Kinsella argues against the concept of intellectual property. On the utilitarian argument for intellectual property, he says, It is debatable whether copyrights and patents really are necessary to encourage the production of creative works and inventions, or that... MORE
September 5, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Clay Shirky writes that the Internet helps to break the link between fame and economic success for writers. For an author to be famous, many people had to have read, and therefore paid for, his or her books. Fortune was... MORE
August 19, 2003
International Trade
Arnold Kling
Using the theory of comparative advantage, James Miller explains why robots cannot replace humans completely. Now, assume that in our simple wine/cake world robots begin large-scale manufacturing. They could easily change the relative prices of wine and cake. Perhaps if... MORE
August 7, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
James Miller has an interesting thesis concerning information goods. Since most of the cost is up-front research and development, he argues that these goods will be priced attractively for mass consumption. As easily copied informational goods become more important to... MORE
July 31, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
A number of economists and others are defending the idea of a futures market to predict terrorism. This idea was abandoned after Senators objected to it. Hal Varian writes, The Iowa Electronic Markets has been predicting election results for 12... MORE
July 29, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Andrew Odlyzko has an interesting article on price discrimination in the information age. He sees the databases that companies are gathering (from supermarket membership cards, for example) as tools for charging on the basis of price sensitivity. price discrimination will... MORE
June 16, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Derek Lowe compares the fact that prescription drugs cost less outside the U.S. to the phenomenon of price discrimination by airlines. Most consumers [of pharmaceuticals] in the US don't realize that they're subsidizing the lower prices for everyone else, whereas... MORE
April 9, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
The signal-to-noise ratio in our comments continues to be very high. See the Economics of Hydrogen thread and the imperfect markets thread, for example. But I give the comment of the week award this week to Robert Musil. A brief... MORE
April 8, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
In 1998, Congress extended copyright terms on both new and existing works. Lawrence Lessig tried unsuccessfully to have this extension overturned by the Supreme Court. In this interview, Lessig explains the weakness of the economic argument for the copyright extension.... MORE
March 13, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
In Suits and Geeks, I discuss some information-age economic issues. As Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian wrote, "Technology changes. Economic laws do not." My essay concludes, My goal is to see ignorance reduced on both sides of the Suit-Geek divide.... MORE
February 20, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Douglas Clement does an outstanding job of providing background on the way that economists have dealt with the issue of copyright in the context of economic growth. (An earlier version of Clement's article first appeared here.) Clement's article revolves around... MORE
January 26, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
EconLog is a Web Log, or Blog. My view is that some of the value of blogs comes from the collective filtering that they provide. I sketch a sort of economic model, in which everyone lives on a circle, with... MORE
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