A few NotebookLM generated podcasts from Peter Cramton

A soft-floor auction asks bidders to accept an opening price to participate in an ascending auction. If no bidder accepts, lower bids are considered using first-price rules. Soft floors are common despite being irrelevant with standard assumptions. When bidders regret losing, soft-floor auctions are more efficient and profitable than standard optimal auctions. Revenue increases as bidders are incl...

On 7 April 2025, TheFutureEconomy.ca published Peter Cramton's "The Future of Mobile Broadband Can Arrive Early in Canada. " Cramton envisions a future for Canada's mobile broadband through an "open access" model. It critiques the current regulatory landscape involving the CRTC and ISED, which the author argues creates complexities and hinders innovation. Cramton proposes a shift towards a market...

This episode discusses a foundational paper by David Pearce and an applied paper on voting rules by Peter Cramton and his co-authors. Economists’ conceptions of utility and welfare reflect misguided attempts to mimic the physical sciences. The resulting tangle of ideas about meaninglessness, cardinality, and measurability forms a pyramid of misunderstandings that supports the wildly inappropriate...

In this episode of the Spectrum Policy podcast, Martin Sims interviews Peter Cramton, an expert in spectrum auctions and economics. They discuss the proposal for a wholesale spectrum regulator in Thailand, exploring the evolution of spectrum auctions, the challenges faced by mobile communications, and the rise of satellite communications. Cramton emphasizes the need for competition in the Thai mar...

Peter Cramton's response to a telecommunications journalist on February 12, 2025, outlines a market-based approach to achieving universal service in the global communications market. He critiques traditional methods, such as buildout obligations or administratively allocated subsidies, and advocates for competitive procurement auctions, a system proven effective in the U.S. under the FCC’s Rural D...

Two papers propose innovative market designs to improve efficiency and transparency in financial and energy markets. One paper models electricity market dynamics using a regime-switching model to simulate realistic price distributions and explore hedging strategies. The other paper introduces "Flow Trading," a novel market design that allows for portfolio trading, continuous-scaled limit orders, a...

Over the past 20 years, it has become increasingly clear that the 61-mile San Clemente to San Diego segment of the coastal train is unsustainable. The region's coast is eroding at 6 inches annually. The train is a few feet from the bluff's edge in Del Mar and nearly in the surf in San Clemente. Twenty years of armoring at a cost approaching $1 billion have kept the train running most days, althoug...

This photo is from Webb House at Wellesley College in 1946. The five freshmen are Harriet Cramton, wife of Roger Cramton, Mollie Kramer Hughes, wife of 'Turk' Hughes, Nicole De Messiere, Joanna Rogers Macy, and Mitzi Shfrin. Mollie's music brought us together. She is playing a guitar in the photo. Forever friends, Nicole and Joanna, were high honor students. "Jo" was head of the Chapel and dismaye...

Peter Cramton contends that the forward energy market, as presented in Cramton, Peter; Brandkamp, Simon; Chao, Hung-po; Dark, Jason; Hoy, Darrell; Kyle, Albert S. et al. (2025): A Forward Energy Market to Improve Reliability and Resiliency, is a sound proposal to improve competition and innovation in today's restructured electricity markets. https://cramton.umd.edu/electricity/ . He believes it is...

This is a fun take on the distribution of intelligence across professions.

Peter Cramton asked three questions of Perplexity. AI about platform take rates. 1) Companies often take a percentage when the platform they provide to others is used for financial transactions. For example, Substack takes 10% and its payment processor, Stripe, takes 2%. Google Ads takes about 40% from sellers and buyers combined in the Google Ad Exchange. What are some other examples of "take rat...

Summary In this conversation, Peter Cramton discusses the complexities of the Thai telecom market, focusing on the duopoly between AIS and True. He introduces the concept of TIMO, a proposed independent market entity designed to enhance competition and consumer choice. Cramton draws parallels with the electricity market to illustrate how market design can improve efficiency and responsiveness. The...

An open-access market design is presented to manage network congestion and optimize network use and value. Open access eliminates the walled-garden approach; instead, it commoditizes communications network capacity while decentralizing access to a transparent wholesale market. It ensures that scarce capacity is put to its best use by providing a platform for efficient trade. The market operates wi...

Electrifying nearly everything is necessary as the world transitions to net zero carbon emissions. Electricity demand will double with rapid innovation in supply and demand. As the share of intermittent renewables, primarily solar and wind, grows and extreme weather events become more frequent, balancing supply and demand every second becomes more challenging. Restructured wholesale markets provid...