I’ve written before at this august site about how Uber’s business model is to arbitrage state and federal law and replace a monopoly with a different monopoly. They obviously placed a high value on the arbitrage. How high? About $100 million.
Read more...Sanders’ financial transactions tax plan hasn’t gotten the hearing it deserves.
Read more...Since the launch of the pioneering Iowa Electronic Markets almost thirty years ago, prediction markets have grown to become a familiar fixture in the forecasting landscape. Among the most recent entrants is PredictIt, which has been operating for about a year under a no-action letter from the CFTC.
Read more...How many of the textbook explanations of the Great Depression were proven wrong, yet despite that, were misapplied to the Great Recession.
Read more...Classical economics recognized the costs of rent extraction, excessive borrowing, and encouraging speculation over commerce. Ideologues have turned those lessons on their head.
Read more...The big obstacle to reducing carbon emissions isn’t economic costs, but inertia and the impact on powerfully placed special interests.
Read more...Correlations between media attention and capital flows to investment vehicles are well established. However, the question arises of whether this is due to new information conveyed or if it is just an artefact of the attention itself. This column employs fund rankings from the Wall Street Journal to investigate the issue. It shows that media attention does drive these investment decisions, even if no new information is conveyed. It further argues that financial intermediaries are aware of this effect and exploit it.
Read more...James Galbraith examines the used forecast by Christine Romer and David Romer to attack Gerald Friedman’s favorable review of Sanders’ plan. He’d already shellacked the methodology in a 2014 book.
Read more...An introduction to Michael Hudson and his latest book.
Read more...How the struggle over who controls the commons, the monied classes or a broader group of citizens, reveals the fundamental contradictions of capitalism.
Read more...A new study shows that health care consumers do not comparison shop, undermining a key assumption behind the ObamaCare marketplace
Read more...Is accounting suitable as a basis for business rationality?
Read more...Supposedly ‘competitive’ policies on tax favor multinational firms over smaller, locally-based ones and also reduce market competition.
Read more...Bernie has unapologetically rejected sclerotic visions of what is ‘politically possible’. And now he should add the Job Guarantee to his list of issues.
Read more...Relocalization has the potential to increase political accountability and revitalize communities. But how do you make it happen?
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