Economics

Industry Concentration and Shakeouts in the Music Industry

Economics, industrial organization, Media, Music

While papers such as Klepper (2002) and many others argue that technological innovations lead to shakeouts, Scherer (1965), Mansfield (1968, 1983), and Mueller (1967) suggest that market concentration and large firm size are only weakly associated with innovation. Alexander (1994) shows one case, the music industry, in which technological changes actually resulted in a de-concentration […]

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Labor Mobility and Industry Agglomeration in Silicon Valley

Economics, industrial organization, labor

A frequent example used in the study of industry agglomeration is the hi-tech electronics agglomeration in Silicon Valley, California. The general problem to investigate relates to what advantages either the agglomeration in itself or Silicon Valley confers to businesses that result in agglomeration. The next-largest agglomeration in the same industries, Massachusetts’ Route 128, eventually fell

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Do Psychosocial-Cognitive Factors Explain Variety in Tastes and Experience?

Economics, industrial organization, Psychology

“Variety” in one form or another can be predictive of an individual’s choice to pursue self-employment, whether it is preference for variety, actual experience of variety, or a combination of both. Variety in experiences can manifest itself in different ways. Sources of knowledge about entrepreneurship can appear in family history, among friends, in education, in

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Lobbying, Subsidies, and U.S Multinational Corporations

Economics, Law, lobbying, politics

In 2006, U.S. interest groups spent $2.44 billion on reported lobbying expenses- approximately $5 million per Congressman.[1] A large portion of that expenditure came from multinational corporations (MNCs), the famed special interests who generate and control large amounts of money and are behind the sinister conspiracies in action thrillers. Notwithstanding fantastical story-telling, it is important

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The Fragility of Socialist Utopias: Some Problems of Central Planning and Rationalist Design

Economics, Political Philosophy, socialism

From time to time an author or thinker will create a work, often in the Utopian genre, which lays out a detailed design of an ideal society. Fourier’s phalanestères are one example: they are described as the structure of a social unit, all the way down to the number of inhabitants and to the shape

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Anti-laissez-faire Ideas since the Founding: 1870-1918

capitalism, Economics, Political Philosophy, property rights, socialism

Most libertarians would say that capitalism is dead in America. Many on the left would say that it is still raging. It’s ultimately a matter of what you define as “capitalism” (voluntary exchange vs. large corporation mercantilism), but we can be sure that the voluntary exchange aspect is killed day by day, and has been

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