Tablet computers (and smart phones) are bad. They are bad for consumers and kill innovation. They move power from the owner of the device to its manufacturer, and denying the use of a cheap base for research and development, the very base that made the tablets possible in the first place, and, if PCs follow suit, innovation will become much harder. They deny consumers choice, are sometimes impossible to update (a security nightmare) and are inflexible. Continue reading
Market failure
Market failures, actual and implied by regulatory interference
How big business undermines the free market.
The FT has the best mainstream media take I have seen on something I have been saying for a long time. Continue reading
Efficient markets, bamboozled journalists and stupid regulators
The media seems to have reached a consensus that the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) has been discredited by the financial crises. I have been somewhat bemused by this, as I could not see the connection. Continue reading
Linux is fruit juice, Windows is cola
A discussion about why Linux has been so slow to take off made be realise that, essentially, Windows is like cola, Linux is like fruit juice. Its marketing that matters. Continue reading
Product specifications and consumer stupidity
New research provides more evidence that people simply are not rational in choosing what they buy, a fundamental assumption of economics. I have previously discussed problems including consumers inability to understand many products.
If this is the market working, what is failure?
Brain Caplan thinks markets work fine despite having to wait 19 years to be able to a product with a tiny marginal cost of production: i.e. he spent 19 years waiting on the supplier’s whims just to buy allowed to buy some music. Continue reading
Good Regulation, bad regulation
If the continual tightening of regulation in the financial sector good or bad? It depends.
It appears that subjecting Wall Street investment research to legal pressure to be more independent has made things better. The effect has been that sell side analysts are now reasonably willing to make sell recommendations. Continue reading
Technology confuses everyone
A blog post by a leading IT security expert explains why the market for security products fails because buyers are unable to evaluate products. This is a more striking example than those I presented earlier because it concerns sophisticated professional buyers like banks and intelligence services. Continue reading
How to exploit monopolies and distort markets
Here are a few ways in which a company can exploit a strong market position to extend an existing monopoly, eliminate any remaining competition, and extract the greatest revenues at the lowest cost. Continue reading
Private monopoly vs public monopoly
The most sane (albeit not against a very high standard) of a number libertarian (or, at any rate, very pro-market) bloggers in Britain that I read, admits that network effects mean that many markets tend to “collapse” into monopolies. I would add that many more markets tend to become oligopolies or cartels. In the face of this, why does he still believe that leaving everything to the markets is the best way to run an economy? Continue reading