August 2009

Looking for a Good Forecast?

Michael Giberson Philip Tetlock – the expert on political expertise – reviews three books on political forecasting for The National Interest, but the problem of selecting a good forecast equally applies in commerce: Reading these three books, it is easy to feel like a frustrated shopper wandering aimlessly down the forecasting aisle in the supermarket …

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Give It Away Now: Wind Power and the Price of Electricity

Michael Giberson Forbes recently ran a story by Jonathon Farey, “Wind Power’s Weird Effect,” about how sometimes high wind power output and limited transmission capability combine to produce wholesale power prices dropping to zero or below.  (Of course regular readers here have been aware of the issue at least since last November.) Much more informative …

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Appliance Sales to Get ‘cash for Clunkers’ Boost?

Michael Giberson In the news, reports of a “cash for clunkers” program for major appliances: USA Today: Appliances get their own recycled clunkers programs; Business Week:  Latest in Stimulus: ‘Cash for Refrigerators’; Associated Press: Meltdown 101: Government cash for green appliances. From Business Week: Beginning late this fall, the program authorizes rebates of $50 to …

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Crabs and Crabbers: “Interests Are Not Always Aligned”

Michael Giberson I laughed at this line in an article in the Washington Post: But one survives by catching the other and selling it to be eaten. So, as economists say, their interests are not always aligned. The article discusses the Maryland state government’s attempt to reduce the number of “limited crab catcher” licenses in …

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Highly Recommended Read on Waxman-markey: The Cap-and-trade Bait and Switch

Michael Giberson David Schoenbrod and Richard B. Stewart explain why the Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” bill isn’t, fundamentally, a market-based approach to regulating greenhouse gasses: As a candidate for president in April 2008, Barack Obama told Fox News that “a cap-and-trade system is a smarter way of controlling pollution” than “top-down” regulation. He was right. With cap …

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The Real Meaning of Al Roth’s Spam Blog Email: Time to Leave the Bargain Bin

Michael Giberson Al Roth, at his Market Design blog, mentions that his site had been flagged as possibly in violation of Blogger terms of service by his blog host’s anti-spam blog software.  He reports that he can still post, but until he gets a review by the Blogger folks he must prove he is probably …

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The End of “Cash for Clunkers”

Michael Giberson News reports indicate that the federal government is winding up “Cash for Clunkers” early next week on the expectation that claims will exhaust the $3 billion committed to the program.   Just noticed this comment by Robert Barro of two weeks back (HT to Paul Walker/Anti-Dismal): The most ludicrous (though, fortunately, small) intervention thus …

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