October 2009

A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud, and Policy Toward Devices That Emit Carbon Dioxide

Michael Giberson Just because someone is professionally qualified to discuss a tree, a rock, or a cloud does not make them expert on what makes good public policy toward trees, rocks, or clouds.  Need an example?  Here is a clip from an interview with climate scientist Ken Caldeira on Yale Environment 360.  Caldeira is currently …

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Market Designs for Tres Amigas: How About Trilateral Market Coupling?

Michael Giberson More thoughts on economic issues related to the Tres Amigas project, an ambitious proposal to connect the Western, Eastern, and Texas electric grids via a three-way high tech transmission link located in eastern New Mexico. (Earlier: Tres Amigas intro and Economics for …). Europeans have had several years of experience connecting separate national …

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External Costs of Energy Production, Auditing the Energy Star Program, and More

Michael Giberson NewsWatch:Energy puts together a pretty good list of energy links, today noting the National Research Council’s new “Hidden costs of energy: Unpriced consequences of energy production and use.” (Surprise: coal looks bad. But note that much of the harm arises from a small number of coal-fueled generators.  The rest of the coal-burners are …

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Roads and Paths As Common-pool Resources, and the Problem of Governing Them

Lynne Kiesling Yesterday at Reason’s Hit & Run Tim Cavanaugh wrote about something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time: the institutions we use for governing the shared use of paths between cyclists and motorists on roads, and among cyclists, walkers, runners, rollerbladers, etc. on multi-use paths. Tim’s starting point was Christopher Beam’s …

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Economics for Tres Amigas

Michael Giberson Tres Amigas is a proposed project to link the Eastern Interconnection, Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection (ERCOT) by means of a high-tech three-way superconducting AC-DC-AC connection. You might wonder what economics has to say about such an unprecedented and innovative proposal. Consider this summary from Ralph Turvey, “Interconnector Economics,” Energy Policy, 34 …

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Why Have 31 States Passed Anti-price Gouging Laws (and 19 Not)?

Michael Giberson Cale Davis, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Applied Economics at Montana State University, produced a thesis examining why some states do and others don’t have anti-price gouging laws.  The abstract of “An Analysis of the Enactment of Anti-Price Gouging Laws“: Anti-price gouging (APG) laws …

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Florida Price Gouging Laws: Too Vague or Just Flexible?

Michael Giberson ExxonMobil, among the companies under investigation by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumers Services for price gouging following Hurricane Ike, has asked the state agency to explain just what price gouging is according to Florida law. [ExxonMobil] officials claim the state’s rules for price gouging are too broad. They have written to …

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