Each Thursday, the New York Times publishes a column called “Economic Scene†on page C2 of the Business Section. The authorship of the column rotates among four individuals: Alan Krueger, Virginia Postrel, Jeff Madrick, and the author. This essay is about how he came to be a columnist...

I examine how neoclassical economic theory is useful to the understanding of economic policy. I also describe what I view as the role of economic theory in economics. This talk was prepared for the conference ``Is Economics Becoming a Hard Science?'' 29--30 October, 1992, Paris, France.

This article examines three recent topics in copyright policy from an economic perspective: (i) term extensions, (ii) the orphan works problem, and (iii) mass digitization projects. Copyright term extensions will make it even more difficult to locate rights holders in the future than it is at...

This article provides an overview of Google, focusing on its economic history, specifically on three topics of interest: the ad auction, the IPO auction and the role of economics at Google.

The rapid advance in information technology now makes it feasible for sellers to condition their price offers on consumers’ prior purchase behavior. In this paper we examine when it is profitable to engage in this form of price discrimination when consumers can adopt strategies to protect...