September 2010

What Market Design Can Do for You

Michael Giberson Medicare pays medical equipment suppliers based on indexed-adjustments to a price list established 25 years ago. It is extremely unlikely that these prices are efficient. For the past 10 years Medicare has explored the possibility of pricing medical equipment via procurement auctions. Their procurement auction plan is fatally flawed. What can market design …

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Is Texas Crez a Model for Getting Transmission Lines Built Elsewhere in the Country?

Michael Giberson Current and anticipated changes in the patterns of electric power production and consumption drive the demand for new transmission lines to help get lower-cost power from generators to consumers. The biggest changes in power production have come from growth in renewable power supplies, so the expansion of transmission is seen as critical to …

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Waste Heat into Electric Power?

Michael Giberson I don’t understand the physics here – it’s some combination of quantum mechanics and carbon nanostructures – but according to this news release from the University of Arizona, it can turn waste heat into electric power. So far the interesting properties have been simulated in a computer model, but not demonstrated in a …

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China’s Central Government-based Energy Conservation Policies

Michael Giberson Tom Friedman wants to laud the China’s political leadership for their ability to get big things done economically while distancing himself from government’s authoritarian controls on politics. As mentioned in the prior post, Craig Pirrong responds that “it’s a package deal. Governments who think about people purely instrumentally, who think that they can …

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Tom Friedman Wants Us to Get Big Things Done

Michael Giberson I don’t read Tom Friedman’s columns in the New York Times, but apparently Craig Pirrong does, and I read Pirrong’s Streetwise Professor blog, and Pirrong’s latest post on Friedman reminds me again why I don’t read Tom Friedman’s columns. At least I generally avoid Friedman except when someone else calls attention to a …

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Nhl’s Experiments in Hockey

Michael Giberson Stephen Dubner at Freakonomics points to a Macleans story on some wild experimentation going on in the National Hockey League: shallower nets, moving the second referee off the ice, moving the face-off circles, three-on-three and two-on-two shootouts, and more. The article said: The unusual nature of some items tested at the camp reminded …

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Estimating Job Losses Due to the Deepwater Drilling Moratorium – Was the Good News Simply Assumed?

Michael Giberson Last week I pointed out that, “Temporary policies have temporary effects – and sometimes that is good news,” pointing to an Obama administration report that found job losses due to the temporary ban on deepwater drilling were smaller than expected. But possibly the government reached their happy results more or less by assumption …

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Queue Jumping Privileges for Cng-fueled Taxis in Dallas

Michael Giberson Dallas has implemented a policy giving natural gas-fueled taxis rights to jump to the head of the queue at the city’s Love Field Airport. Independent cab drivers in the city are protesting. (They also filed a lawsuit. A judge has denied the drivers a temporary injunction while the case it litigated.) The privilege …

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Supremo Vs. Invisible Hand: Battle over New Zealand Earthquake Recovery Approach

Michael Giberson Post-earthquake in New Zealand, a battle emerges over the best system for rebuilding: Supremo vs. the Invisible Hand. Supremo has its backers: [Construction economist John Jackson said:] Rebuilding should be led by a “supremo”, such as a senior military officer with engineering corps experience, as was chosen for Darwin, and New Orleans after Hurricane …

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