January 2011

BPA Won’t Pay Negative Prices to Get Wind Power Producers to Curtail

3 Comments / Electricity, Energy markets, Environmental policy / By

Michael Giberson At a December 2010 meeting, the federal Bonneville Power Agency announced that it would not pay wind power producers in its area to curtail during overgeneration events that sometimes result from the way the agency manages water flow through hydropower facilities to comply with environmental regulations. When reservoirs are full, the BPA’s dams …

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Please State the Nature of the Economic Emergency: a Note on Price Gouging Laws

3 Comments / Economics, Politics / By

Michael Giberson The moral intuition that undergirds price gouging laws may be described as “it is wrong to take advantage of people in distress for personal economic gain.” In states with price gouging laws, the laws are typically in force only during officially declared emergencies. This limitation – that they are enforced only during declared emergencies …

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Julian Simon and John Tierney Were Just Lucky, He Guesses

1 Comment / Economics, Energy markets / By

Michael Giberson Cornucopian views on resources are back in the news a bit due to John Tierney’s column at the New York Times in which he reports the settling of a wager on oil prices entered into in 2005 with oil industry analyst/peak oil proponent Matt Simmons. In brief, Simmons bet Tierney oil prices would …

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Technological Developments Useful in Eventually Producing the Equivalent of Neal Stephenson’s “Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer”

Miscellany, Technology / By

Michael Giberson As any reader of Neal Stephenson’s book The Diamond Age knows, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer would be quite handy to have. Unfortunately, technology hasn’t quite advanced to the point necessary to actually produce such a thing. A recently published research report seems like one small step in the right direction. From a …

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In Which the Author Explains the Likely Origin of the Idea for a Professional Code of Ethics Among Economists

2 Comments / Economics, Miscellany / By

Michael Giberson For more economists caught in the act of navel gazing, check out The Economist‘s forum on the question of whether economists need a professional code of ethics. If you want some background, the urge for a code of ethics came about something like this: Since the end of 2008, economists have been professionally embarrassed by …

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Randomized Testing for Online Fundraising Appeals

Economics, Miscellany / By

Michael Giberson Following up yesterday’s note on randomized testing in free legal aid, here is another kind of applied experimental work: The recently ended Wikipedia fundraising campaign made extensive use of randomized testing to explore just which appeals generated the most revenue. “If everyone reading this donated $5” vs. “If everyone reading this donated $10” …

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