Tyler Cowen thinks Bitcoin is going to “plummet in price.” While I agree with my colleagues Jerry Brito and Andrea Castillo that the price is not really what’s interesting about Bitcoin, it is always worth grappling with Tyler’s…

Greg Mankiw has an essay forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that purports to defend the one percent. Mankiw contrasts the standard “social insurance” view of redistribution with his own “just deserts” theory. He makes a few good points…

Is there a Bitcoin bubble? Jason Kuznicki thinks so and believes that he has conclusive proof. He blogs three graphs that show more or less that there is a lot of speculation in Bitcoin. But does speculation prove that there’s a bubble? Let’s…

Matt Yglesias argues that there is no such thing as a “market distribution” of wealth, because most wealth would not exist without the state. He lists “a few minor exceptions” to the maxim that market solutions are efficient:

Brookings has a new report out by Jonathan Rothwell, José Lobo, Deborah Strumsky, and Mark Muro that “examines the importance of patents as a measure of invention to economic growth and explores why some areas are more inventive than others.” (p. 4) Since I doubt…

Yesterday at Forbes, William Pentland had an interesting piece on possible disintermediation in the electricity market.

In New York and New England, the price of electricity is a function of the cost of natural gas plus the cost of the poles and wires…

See Adam Gurri for a review of where we are so far.

• As I told Kevin Grier a few days ago, I usually lose arguments with Tyler, and even with my model of “Tyler” in my head. I would not be very meta-rational, therefore, for me to “attack Tyler” as Bryan wants GMU…

Everyone seems to be worried about Bitcoin’s carbon footprint lately. Last week, an article on Quartz claimed that Bitcoin miners are spending $17 million per day on electricity in order to reap $4.4 million worth of bitcoins. And…