Digital technology platforms have transformed the modern economy, disrupting existing industries and creating new ones. In this paper I synthesize Austrian capital theory with general systems theory to analyze why these digital platforms have had such a large and relatively rapid impact. In...

Digital technologies have reduced transaction costs and led to platform business models and the sharing economy. Platform business models are increasingly part of policy debates in electricity distribution and retail due to the proliferation of digital and distributed energy resource (DER)...

Recent innovations in smart grid and distributed energy technologies, innovations in solar industry financial and business models, and utility concerns about their financial viability in the face of such innovations, motivate our analysis of the regulatory institutions and their features that...

Digital technologies from outside the electricity industry are prompting changes in both regulatory institutions and electric utility business models, leading to the disaggregation or unbundling of historically vertically integrated electricity firms in some jurisdictions and not others, and...

The 1850s witnessed one of the earliest American history. During the decade the proportion of individuals receiving public assistance -- increased from 5.8 in 1850 to 10.2 in 1860, an increase of 76 percent. Previous attempts to explain the increase in antebellum pauperism have been hampered by...