February 2011

Another Court Dismisses Price Fixing, Price Gouging Claims Against Martha’s Vineyard Gasoline Retailers

Michael Giberson The Martha’s Vineyard Times: A panel of judges sitting in the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court ruling that gasoline prices on Martha’s Vineyard have not been illegally inflated by a conspiracy among retailers, according to a report by “The Docket,” the news blog of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. …

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Another Comment on United States V. Keyspan Corporation

Michael Giberson “By the Justice Department’s calculations, Keyspan’s anti-competitive actions resulted in it receiving almost $49 million. The settlement submitted by the Justice Department would let Keyspan keep $37 million from its anti-competitive actions. Netting $37 million for anti-competitive conduct is not a penalty, it is not a deterrent, it is a reward.” “Anything short …

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You Think the Kids Are Alright? Well Look at This Tiny Blue Pin on My Shirt and Think Again

Michael Giberson From the press release: NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Mark Ruffalo and other Oscar nominees will wear a blue water droplet pin during Sunday night’s Academy Awards as a way of asking Americans to be stewards of our treasured water supply, which is currently in jeopardy due to extreme drilling and includes natural gas hydro-fracking. The …

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John List’s $10 Million Crazy Idea Field Experiment in Education

Michael Giberson Bloomberg Markets Magazine has a feature on economist John List and his $10 million research project on education. Along the way we get an introduction to List’s work on field experiments in economics, a splash of lab-based economics back story, and the reaction of education specialists who think List’s project is wholly off …

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The Law on Fracking Oil and Gas Wells

Michael Giberson Looking for a thorough examination of the law with respect to fracking? This article, “American Law and Jurisprudence on Fracing,” appearing in the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation Journal looks pretty good. (Abstract of the article here; PDF of full article here.) From the conclusion: Given the size of the potential reserves made …

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Ups Turns to Lng, Not Cng, for Natural Gas Fueled Long-haul Trucks

Michael Giberson The low cost of natural gas and the high cost of petroleum products like diesel and gasoline have produced a lot of interest in natural gas as a transportation fuel. It is an idea that’s been around for a while and works fine in practice. Most of the interest and effort has gone …

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Crude Oil Prices Reacting to the Middle East, North African Unrest

Michael Giberson What’s up with crude oil prices? A few updates from around the web: FuelFix.com: Oil Prices 101: Why is our crude so expensive? Financial Times EnergySource: “Either the Saudis step in or oil prices are going to the moon (and other predictions)“ Reuters: “NYMEX-US crude hits $103 on Libyan worries, eyes data“ Associated …

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More on Cushing and the Wti-brent Crude Oil Price Spread

Michael Giberson James Hamilton explains a bit more about market conditions driving the split between two benchmark crude oil prices, West Texas Intermediate and Brent.  See “Brent-WTI spread” at EconBrowser. Hamilton directs his reader to additional detail in a post by Gail the Actuary at the Oil Drum (originally posted as “Why are WTI and Brent …

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Effects of Anti-price Gouging Legislation on Supply Chain Dynamics

Michael Giberson Jason Maynard has produced a thesis examining “The Effects of Anti-Price Gouging Legislation on Supply Chain Dynamics“: Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to model the effects of anti-price gouging (APG) legislation on the costs to businesses during the recovery period of a disaster. A system dynamics model of a business’s replenishment …

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