The share market speaks: the boom in marijuana shares
03 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of crime, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, financial economics, industrial organisation Tags: marijuana decriminalisation, marijuana legalisation
Over the past two years, investors bid up penny stocks, which are stocks that trade for less than $5 a share, for marijuana from a $500,000 market to more than $7 billion.
The sale and use of marijuana is now approved for medical purposes in 22 states and the District of Columbia and is legal for recreational sales in Colorado and Washington state.
Among those will have to put their money where their mouth is, their entrepreneurial forecast is marijuana legalisation is only going to spread and the legal marijuana market is going to grow. Florida will vote on legalizing medical marijuana, and recent polls suggest the measure has the support needed to pass.
In February 2014, President Obama signed a law that allows states to experiment with industrial hemp. In response, 17 states have removed barriers to hemp production.
HT: Vox.com/marijuana-legalization-maps-charts-facts and https://twitter.com/business/status/479287579263524864
Many doubts have been raised about all types of ultrasonic pest repellers
02 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
Consider the sheer number of transactions and people involved in economic arrangements
30 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
Environmental and Urban Economics: Professor Stavins’ Climate Change Piece in the NY Times Today
25 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in climate change, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate change adaptation, global warming
He makes the following points:
- Global GHG emissions continue to rise
- The UN’s goal for sharply reducing emissions over the next few decades will be a very difficult target to reach
- It will be very costly to reach this goal
- He cites current cost estimates of what we would have to sacrifice to achieve the carbon reductions…
To my deep surprise, he never mentions climate change adaptation. That a very serious Harvard economist is not willing to even mention this topic says something on several levels.
The IPCC has only made a small investment in investigating the possibilities for adaptation to help us to minimize several of the threats we will face from climate change.
In my humble opinion, too many economists are working on the economics of climate change mitigation in part because there is so much demand by policy makers (and private consulting) for such studies. But from a research perspective, we have hit sharp diminishing returns.
In contrast, we need active researchers to more fully explore the politically incorrect topic of climate change adaptation.
via Environmental and Urban Economics: Professor Stavins’ Climate Change Piece in the NY Times Today.
Barriers to entry alert: do late entrants have a chance
22 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, economic history, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, liberalism, technological progress Tags: Austrian economics, barriers to entry, creative destruction, Israel Kirzner, market process
September 21, 1999 – Google came out of beta; the 17th search engine to officially enter the market.
Kirzner defines a competitive market as a market where no potential participant faces non-market obstacles to entry:
Following a long tradition in economics going back at least to Adam Smith, Austrians define a competitive market not as a situation where no participant or potential participant has the power to make any difference, but as a market where no potential participant faces nonmarket obstacles to entry.
(The adjective “nonmarket” refers, primarily, to government obstacles to entry; it is used to differentiate such obstacles from, for example, high production costs that might discourage entry. These latter do not constitute noncompetitive elements in a market; to be able to enter means to be able to enter a market if one judges such entry to be economically promising-it does not mean to be able to enter without having to bear the relevant costs of production.) That is, a situation is competitive if no incumbent participant possesses privileges that protect him against the possible entry of new competitors.
The achievements that free markets are able to attain depend, in the Austrian view, on freedom of entry, that is, on the absence of privilege.
Timeless Tips for ‘Simple Sabotage’ — Central Intelligence Agency
21 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, organisational economics, personnel economics, war and peace Tags: sabotage
The more accurate opinion polling question
19 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in election campaigns, entrepreneurship, market efficiency Tags: opinion polls, prediction markets
“Regardless of whom they supported, which candidate did people expect to win? Americans consistently, and correctly, said that they thought Mr. Bush would.
A version of that question has produced similarly telling results throughout much of modern polling history, according to a new academic study.
Over the last 60 years, poll questions that asked people which candidate they expected to win have been a better guide to the outcome of the presidential race than questions asking people whom they planned to vote for, the study found.”
Via http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/us/politics/a-better-poll-question-to-predict-the-election.html
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