Special Interests and Technological Change

Technological Change and Technological Strategy

Special Interests and the Media: Theory and an Application to Climate Change.

A journalist reports to a voter on an unknown, policy-relevant state. Competing special interests can make claims that contradict the facts but seem credible to the voter. A reputational incentive to avoid taking sides leads the journalist to report special interests' claims to the voter. In equilibrium, the voter can remain uninformed even when the journalist is perfectly informed. Communicati...

Update on special interests and focused practices.

Uncertainty and Technological Change

I would like to begin with two generally accepted propositions: First, technological change is a major ingredient of long-term economic growth, and second, technological change is characterized by a high degree of uncertainty. Understanding the nature of these uncertainties and the obstacles to surmounting them is not a trivial matter. Rather, it goes to the heart of how new technologies are de...

Technological Change and Cities

The United States is in the midst of a technological revolution, driven in large part by rapid advances in microelectronics. There has been much speculation about the impacts of the “information superhighway” on society as a whole, but surprisingly little is known about the potential effects of this technology revolution on the spatial distribution of jobs and people either broadly or in urban ...