October 2010

Natural Gas, Helium, Offshore Wind Power, and Cap-And-Trade Design Issues

Michael Giberson A handful of stories of interest: The boom in shale gas has been a boon to homeowners who use gas, local economies with the resource, and manufacturers who make stuff with it, but it has “upended the ambitious growth plans of companies that produce power from wind, nuclear energy and coal. Those plans …

Natural Gas, Helium, Offshore Wind Power, and Cap-And-Trade Design Issues Read More »

Roast Potatoes, Elinor Ostrom, Whole Foods Competitors

Michael Giberson Some food for thought. For months and months, it seems, these three items – “Roast potatoes,” “Elinor Ostrom,” “Whole Foods competitors” – have dominated the “Top Searches” list in the Knowledge Problem site stats. We blog a lot about energy, economics, and public policy. Once in a while a bit of food or drink …

Roast Potatoes, Elinor Ostrom, Whole Foods Competitors Read More »

The Differences Between Renewable Energy and Renewable Power in North Carolina

Michael Giberson Under North Carolina’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard, poultry waste burned to boil water to generate steam to turn a turbine generating electricity will earn RECs which can be sold to electric utilities needing to meet the state’s new renewable energy standard. Also under the law, poultry waste burned to boil …

The Differences Between Renewable Energy and Renewable Power in North Carolina Read More »

Cole on Coase and Cattle

Michael Giberson Arizona is re-thinking its open range law. Dan Cole, blogging at Law, Economics & Cycling, is reminded of Ronald Coase (and specifically Robert Ellickson’s law review article “Of Coase and Catttle“). Cole summarizes the situation: Arizona is an “open range” state, which means that cattle can roam at will. Ranchers do not have …

Cole on Coase and Cattle Read More »

Getting Hooked on Hayek

Michael Giberson Streetwise Professor dubs F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom “An Intellectual Gateway Drug.” Craig Pirrong writes: “Amazingly, Hayek’s 60+ year old Road to Serfdom is the subject of contemporary political discussion even though in many ways it is about a world that disappeared long ago–and in, fact, never really existed, though Hayek feared that such a …

Getting Hooked on Hayek Read More »

Review of Kiesling and Kleit (eds.) Electricity Restructuring: The Texas Story

Michael Giberson In the current issue of Regulation, Tim Brennan reviews Electricity Restructuring: The Texas Story, edited by Andrew Kleit and our own Lynne Kiesling. After a lengthy introduction discussing how deregulation came to the electric power business (mostly it hasn’t, but parts of the industry have been reorganized), Brennan gets down to the book …

Review of Kiesling and Kleit (eds.) Electricity Restructuring: The Texas Story Read More »

Uncapping Prices in Secondary Ticket Markets

Michael Giberson David Harrington has an article in the new issue of Regulation on the consequences of state repeal of laws that put caps on ticket resale prices: “Uncapping Ticket Markets.” Harrington used StubHub data to compare NHL ticket resale prices in states that repealed price caps on resales to prices in states that hadn’t …

Uncapping Prices in Secondary Ticket Markets Read More »

Tinderbox

Michael Giberson The blogosphere is a tinderbox and an errant spark can trigger a storm of fire. In this case the spark was a news story about a city fire department refusing to put out a house fire for a home outside the city limits.  For Salon writer Alex Pareene, curiously, this story implies something …

Tinderbox Read More »

All the Life-extending Benefits of Caloric Restriction, Without Actually, You Know, Restricting Calories?

Michael Giberson The dramatic finish to an article in The Economist: If inherited epigenetic changes were causing daughter rotifers to produce more catalase, it would raise the question of whether a similar thing happens in other species and, if so, whether it might be induced artificially, without all the tedious business of a lifetime’s starvation. …

All the Life-extending Benefits of Caloric Restriction, Without Actually, You Know, Restricting Calories? Read More »