I came across during my research on collusion in auctions, from “Bidding Markets” by Oxford economics professor Paul Klemperer: One of the biggest problems faced by firms who wish to collude or predate is how to signal their intentions to rivals when ordinary communication is illegal. Unfortunately for regulators, the formal rules of auctions often […]
Author Archive | Sasha Volokh
Math bleg:
Can anyone recommend to me any simple functions with the following properties: f(0)=0, f(infinity)=1, and f'(0)=infinity? I.e., a function that could be used for the probability of getting a policy change as a function of your lobbying expenditures; but I’d like to have that first-derivative condition so I’m guaranteed to have an interior solution when […]
Leaders of the Crimson Guard:
Fun fact of the day — did you know that the President and Prime Minister of Poland are identical twin brothers? (They also co-starred, at age 13, in a children’s movie called The Two Who Stole the Moon.) Query: If both of them are evil, would it be appropriate for one of them to call […]
Check out my colleague
John Mikhail‘s post on universal moral grammar on the Georgetown Law Faculty Blog.
Takeover by Norway:
I recently came across this list of people in the line of succession to the British throne. People have taken the trouble to list the first 800 or so people in line, taking care (according to the Act of Settlement of 1701) to skip over anyone who is Catholic, is married to a Catholic, or […]
Bon mot from my father Vladimir,
who’s traveling from Houston to Austin today: Drang nach Austin. P.S. Of course, there’s nothing new under the sun. In January 1998, one Edward A. Cowan made the same joke on LIEDER-L.
Movie recommendations:
On previous trips to Europe, I saw (and later recommended) Bella Martha (released here as Mostly Martha) and Pani e tulipani (released here as Bread and Tulips). (Query: Go together like mint and juleps?) Sadly, Vaya con Dios — a road trip movie about monks (in modern times) and the redeeming power of a cappella […]
Dispatch from Moscow:
While strolling through Smolensk Square, en route to the Arbat (for an indication of the importance of the Arbat, see here, here, here, here, etc., if you know Russian, as well as (on a different note) here), I ran across a book vendor with the following book: Harry Proglotter and the Magic Shawarmatrix. The blurb […]
Better living through public service:
I know what’s on everyone’s mind these days: Incoming Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Specifically, why would a CEO of Goldman Sachs want to be (1) Treasury Secretary, (2) in the last two years of an administration (3) that doesn’t have the coziest relationship with the Treasury Department? My colleague Marty Ginsburg has two possible explanations: […]
Research bleg 2:
Well, my first research bleg kind of came up a bust, but maybe I’ll have better luck on this one. My understanding is the prison guards union in California pushes for tougher criminal law. (1) Do prison guards unions do this in places other than California? (2) Are prison systems themselves, perhaps Departments of Corrections?, […]
Research bleg:
I have a couple of these, which I’ll post separately. This first one is about the Clean Water Act: Are there any good sources out there arguing that stricter NPDES permit requirements would have perverse (i.e., bad for the environment) effects? UPDATE: By “stricter NPDES permit requirements,” I mean “making more activities subject to NPDES […]
My neighbor
Neal Katyal, on The Colbert Report.
A tragedy of the commons:
Nate Oman has an interesting post about how, for a slave in the American South, it may well have been worse to be owned by a church than by a private owner. Nate writes (based on an account of a friend’s doctoral research) (paragraph break added): In most congregations, church property was not controlled by […]
Russian music bleg:
On my recent post on Russian chanson, commenter M writes: “And it’s terrible- even worse than generic Russian pop, which in turn is worse than generic American pop. (There are many very good Russian musicians and bands, but this stuff is just amazingly awful.)” I’m going to Moscow in a couple of weeks. In light […]
Russian chanson:
Check out this article about the booming genre of Russian pop music inspired by crime, prison, and gulags — perhaps a Russian version of “gangsta rap.” The article calls Vladimir Vysotsky, who died in 1980, the “godfather” of this genre. A previous post of mine on Vysotsky is here. Hat tip: Todd Seavey.