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Technology, Time Preference and the Return on Capital (Companies)
Albert Wenger – Jun 10, 2014
Just as a quick recap. I have argued in Computers and the Return on Capital that having cheaper information flows will in the long run drive the risk free rate of return to the time preference. I then examined how [...] Read more
Reset The Net – With Care
Albert Wenger – Jun 5, 2014
Today a broad campaign called Reset The Net has launched with the tagline “Don’t ask for Your privacy. Take it back.” Today also marks the one year anniversary of the Edward Snowden leaks that showed the extent of the NSA [...] Read more
The End of Categories
Albert Wenger – Jun 4, 2014
We like to put things in categories: public versus private company; for profit versus charity; professional versus amateur; creator versus consumer; journalist versus blogger; teacher versus student; and so much more. Of course not all categorizations are binary. In academia, [...] Read more
Technology, Time Preference and the Return on Capital (Individuals)
Albert Wenger – Jun 2, 2014
In my post on Computers and the Return on Capital I made the point that cheaper and more ubiquitous flows of information will drive the risk free return on capital towards the time preference (assuming that capital can also flow [...] Read more
Consumer Surplus and Returns to Capital
Albert Wenger – May 28, 2014
Yesterday’s post on the impact of computers on the return of capital didn’t mention the shift from producer to consumer surplus. Tren Griffin rightly called this out on Twitter. I have written a lot about the rising importance of consumer [...] Read more
Computers and the Return on Capital (First Up, Then Down)
Albert Wenger – May 27, 2014
Having examined the impact of computers on wages the logical next question to ask is what this means for the returns on capital. Here is the TL;DR version: higher returns in the short run and lower returns in the long [...] Read more
Computers and Wages (The Great Divergence)
Albert Wenger – May 22, 2014
As I argued in my last post, there is good reason to believe that computers are substitutes for labor in general. Their apparent complementarity with skilled labor was the result of substituting skilled labor for unskilled labor rather than being [...] Read more
Computers and Skilled Labor (Substitutes or Complements?)
Albert Wenger – May 20, 2014
Earlier this week I posted about production functions which must have felt very dry but I promise there is a payoff (terms defined in the previous post are linked). Let’s consider a production function with three factors: computers, skilled labor [...] Read more
Production Function (A Quick Overview)
Albert Wenger – May 19, 2014
So I have been meaning to write more about what is happening to labor and capital as we transition from industrial society to information society. To do that well I need lay some groundwork first though by talking about the [...] Read more