The platform economy reflects the business model of some of the largest and fastest-growing firms in the economy. Platform business models emerge and thrive because of the potential profit in taking advantage of transactions cost reductions to connect people for mutual benefit, and this value...

Hayek's (1945) elaboration of the difficulty of aggregating diffuse private knowledge is the best-known articulation of the knowledge problem, and is an example of the difficulty of coordinating individual plans and choices in the ubiquitous and unavoidable presence of dispersed, private,...

In this paper prepared for the Miller Upton Forum on the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, Kiesling asks why in this digital age the basic technology supporting the production and distribution of electric power has changed so little since the industry’s birth in the early twentieth century....

The plague visited unprecedented mortality on Europe for centuries, shifting the relative values of production inputs. It also changed the costs and benefits of defining and enforcing property rights. We develop a new property rights model to explain the decline in value of non-human factors of...

It is time to stop regulating the electricity industry as if it were a natural monopoly. Technology has moved on and competition must not be discouraged by regulation. Competition is not only necessary for lower prices to consumers: the particular technological developments that have taken place...

Incumbent vertical market power in deregulating markets can be anticompetitive, as seen in the current process of retail electricity restructuring. This paper uses the AT&T antitrust case’s Bell Doctrine precedent of “quarantine the monopoly” as a case study in incumbent vertical market...

In August 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new policy – the Affordable Clean Energy rule – to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing coal-fired electric generating units and power plants. The new rule establishes emissions guidelines, including...

In this paper we report the findings of an experiment that examines the effects of automated mitigation procedures (AMP) on capacity investment prices of suppliers in a wholesale electricity market. Specifically, in a 2 x 2 design we examine the effects of strong and weak market power incentives...

Since the mid-1990s the changing electricity generation technology mix has resulted in carbon dioxide emissions from generation that are 32 percent lower than their 2005 levels. What role have wholesale power markets played in enabling this decarbonization? We examine this question using annual...