11 reasons free markets are not
- Most markets are oligopolies dominated by a few companies). For a market to be able to ensure sufficient competition individual companies should be not be able to significantly influence market prices. Economics text books acknowledge this.
No competition please!
Yet another example of the public sector being asked to get out of the way so the private sector can do a worse job. The BBC is restricting its downloads using DRM, in order to avoid competing too much with commercial broadcasters. (more…)
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Bad incentives in drug development
The pharmaceutical industry would like you to believe that they fund the expensive development of new drugs, they get patents in return, and this provides a nice efficient market driven mechanism for developing new drugs. There are many things wrong with this picture: (more…)
Socialised is bad?
The logic of open access to research is simple: if taxpayers pay for research, taxpayers should be able to see it without also paying (very expensive) subscriptions to academic journals. Similarly, non-profit organisations like the Welcome Foundation want the research they fund to be used by as many people as possible. (more…)
Ten effects of DRM
For those who do not know, DRM is the technology that prevents users from taking copies of various types of videos, audio and even written material in electronic form. It is an abbreviation of Digital Rights Management – and its your rights they are managing. (more…)
Is capitalism obsolete?
We now live in an economy which is very different from that in which capitalism, in its modern form, emerged and it is doubtful how relevant efficiency in production is the the key sectors of the knowledge economy. (more…)
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Beer markets – and Microsoft
My dissatisfaction about the beers that a golf club bar stocks started me thinking about what gives a firm monopoly power in the absence of any apparent reason. Unlike in software there are no apparent network effects, a dominant player has little leverage to bias distribution channels and switching costs for consumers are zero. So how can an inferior product (and I am firmly convinced it is inferior) continue to dominate the market? (more…)
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