Archive for 19 March 2007
Utility Strategy
| Steven Postrel |
Skeleton of a Harvard Business Review article:
How do you get sustainable advantage in a service business today? One approach: Become a new-wave utility. Think about Google or Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, etc. on the Internet; think about UPS or FedEx, Grainger, Ryder, Public Storage in logistics; think about McDonald’s, Starbucks, 7-Eleven, in convenience food consumption. (more…)
John McMillan (1951-2007)
| Peter Klein |
For several years I used John McMillan’s book Games, Strategies, and Managers as a supplemental text in my managerial economics courses. I was saddened to learn that McMillan died last Tuesday at the age of 56 after losing a battle with cancer. Here is an obituary. McMillan taught at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, edited the Journal of Economic Literature, and wrote many articles and books, including Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets.
David Warsh says “Give him a couple of paragraphs — on the evolution of folk football into rugby, soccer, and American football; or the various ways to rig an auction; or the reasons China and Vietnam grew so successfully out of their planned economies while Russia did not — and he could make economics jump right off the page and into the mind of his reader.”
Secondary Markets
| Peter Klein |
Bet these guys prefer cap-and-trade to Pigouvian taxes:
I think this was a case of command and control, however.
Speaking of secondary markets, my longtime associate Dwight Lee proposes setting up a market for citizenships. “America’s homeless and panhandlers . . . are actually quite wealthy. Almost all own an asset — their United States citizenship — that is worth several hundred thousand dollars. The problem is that they are denied the right to sell that asset.” Dwight has a unique talent for spotting potential gains from trade where others fear to tread. . . .
Political Economy of the Internet
| Peter Klein |
Some time ago I wrote a short, popular piece on the political economy of the internet, focusing on its origins as a set of federal government projects. For a more comprehensive, scholarly take, see this paper by Massimiliano Neri, presented at this past weekend’s Austrian Scholars Conference.
Thanks to Cliff Grammich
| Peter Klein |
Many thanks to Cliff Grammich for joining us as a guest blogger over the last several weeks. We look forward to his continued participation as a regular reader and commentator. Also, Cliff has promised to share the results of work he’s doing on global attitudes toward markets and other research projects of interest to the O&M crowd.
Comment Spam
| Peter Klein |
Like most blogs we filter our comments for spam, and lately the spam filter has been picking up a number of false positives. If you leave a comment on the site (and are not pushing Cia!lis or re.fin.ancing) and it does not appear right away, please let us know.
Discover Who Is Citing You in Books
| Nicolai Foss |
We academics are a narcissisic bunch. I know colleagues who check their citations on Google Scholar or the SSCI on a weekly basis. Of course, I myself would never, ever indulge in such egocentric excesses!!! That being said, however, I am still mildly interested in who may think that my modest contributions are good enough to cite.
A constant source of irritation is that while it is rather easy to find out who is citing you in the journals, it is more difficult to find out who is citing you in books (this may not matter to deans and research bureaucrats, but it is still nice to know). Until, that is, I discovered books.google.com — which allows you to do exactly this! Enjoy!
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