Over at the New Yorker, Ken Auletta has a fascinating piece about the future of publishing as the book world goes digital. Highly recommended if you a Kindle lover, an iPad enthusiast, or a Google watcher (or, like me, all three). The article also describes an unusual battle between book publishers and Amazon about the [...]
Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
An Unusual Battle Between Amazon and Publishers
Posted in Internet, Microeconomics, tagged Amazon, Apple, Google, Internet on April 21, 2010 | 13 Comments »
Web Coupons, Privacy, and Price Discrimination
Posted in Internet, Microeconomics, tagged Internet, Microeconomics, Pricing, Privacy on April 17, 2010 | 6 Comments »
Suppose you’ve got a successful business, selling your product to a diverse set of customers. Life is good. But you’d like to increase profits even more. What should you do? One option from the MBA playbook (among many) is to think creatively about your pricing. Maybe there’s a way to distinguish your customers from each [...]
Now Available in Dozens of Languages
Posted in Blog Admin, International, Internet, tagged Blogging, Google, International on March 17, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Good news for international readers: Thanks to Google Translate, you can now read this blog in several dozen languages. Just click on the language you want in the box to the right. (For those of you reading this via email, Google Reader, etc., here are some example links: German and Spanish.) P.S. Kudos to the WordPress [...]
Google’s Public Data: Much Improved
Posted in Data, Internet, tagged Data, Google, unemployment, Visualization on March 11, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Google recently released some major improvements in its public data efforts. If you click on over to Public Data, you will find a much broader range of data sets including economic information from the OECD and World Bank, key economic statistics for the United States, and some education statistics for California. Google has also included [...]
Google and Me, Part II
Posted in Blog Admin, Internet, tagged Blogging, Google, Internet on November 22, 2009 | 5 Comments »
My existential crisis is over. As of last Thursday, Google is again including this blog in its search results. So, welcome to all the new readers who’ve come here after Googling information on the Eggo shortage and the debate about whether kids should get one H1N1 shot or two. This is probably of interest only [...]
Netflix Avoids the Sunk Cost Fallacy
Posted in Business, Internet, Technology, tagged Business, Netflix, Wired on September 28, 2009 | 5 Comments »
The highlight of this month’s Wired magazine is a profile of Netflix and its CEO, Reed Hastings. The theme is Netflix’s strategy to thrive even as their business model changes (e.g., as on-line streaming replaces DVDs by mail). The opening paragraphs document an impressive willingness to change course: It had taken the better part of [...]
Netflix Boosts Prize Economics
Posted in Business, Internet, Teaching, Technology, tagged Netflix, Prize on September 22, 2009 | 1 Comment »
By at least one metric – the number of people who have mentioned it to me – my brief post about Netflix appears to be my most popular one so far. The post linked to a remarkable slide deck about the corporate culture that Netflix has embraced in its quest for excellence. Most memorable line: [...]
Google and Me
Posted in Blog Admin, Data, Internet, tagged Blogging, Google, Internet, Search, unemployment on September 12, 2009 | 3 Comments »
A strange this happened last week: Google misplaced my blog. I’ve run all the usual diagnostics, and I can confirm that Google still knows that my blog exists. But it no longer appears in any of the searches – e.g., “natural gas price”, “unemployment”, “budget deficit”, or “brooke boemio” – that used to help new [...]
Voyaging Through U.S. Jobs
Posted in Data, Internet, Technology, tagged Data, Internet, jobs on September 7, 2009 | 4 Comments »
In honor of Labor Day, you may want to check out Job Voyager by Flare. It provides a graphical history of the rise and fall of different types of jobs in the United States from 1850 to 2000. Here’s what you get for “Farmer”: Back in 1850, farmers accounted for more than 40% of reported [...]
Craigslist’s Business Model
Posted in Business, Internet, Technology, tagged Bloomberg, Business, Craigslist, Strategy, Wired on August 26, 2009 | 3 Comments »
The magazine Wired regularly publishes some of the most interesting articles about economics and the modern world. Last month, for example, they had a great article about the antitrust threats looming over Google. The month before, it covered the economics of Somali pirates, which I never found time to write about. And the month before that, [...]
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