Michael Giberson From Newsday: Two Nassau County legislators Thursday called on the State Senate to join the Assembly in extending the ban on zone pricing for gasoline, which they said unfairly charges more in well-to-do communities than in those less so. For readers not up on their New York geography, Nassau County is the portion …
Michael Giberson The Dallas Morning News is back with the second half of its investigative report into consumer protection problems in the Texas retail power market. In this article the DMN focuses on the owner of Freedom Power, one company serving the prepaid power segment of the Texas retail market. (Yesterday I commented on part …
Consumer Protection in the Texas Retail Power Market, Part 2 Read More »
Michael Giberson The Dallas Morning News has published an in-depth story detailing the apparent lack of effort put into consumer protection issues in the restructured retail power market in Texas. The story focuses on the prepaid end of the business, which mostly services customers lacking established credit and unable to post a deposit. Rates tend …
Is Consumer Protection Lacking in Texas Retail Electric Power Market? Read More »
Michael Giberson At least some retail gasoline consumers in New York expected that the zone pricing ban implemented last year would tend to equalize retail gasoline prices in an area. Rochester TV station WHEC discovers that a year after the law was signed by the governor, and about 10 months after the zone pricing law …
New York’s Zone Pricing Ban Not Eliminating Retail Gasoline Price Differences Read More »
Michael Giberson Al Roth at Market Design, “Reserving spaces in crowded places,” notes that authorities are cracking down on the illegal practice of reserving prayer spaces and renting them out to worshipers. He quotes from the Saudi Gazette: “It is forbidden to reserve places in the mosques, unless the person has left for urgent reasons …
Michael Giberson The true number of hits for the “true number may be higher” are lower than reported. Mind Hacks (via Cheap Talk and Marginal Revolution) points out news reports often stress when stating an estimated value that the “true number may be higher,” but infrequently that the “true number may be lower.” The primary …
No Results Found for “True Number May Be Lower or Higher” Read More »
Michael Giberson Research by Ian Ayres, Sophie Raseman, and Alice Shih indicates that providing energy consumers with information on energy consumption relative to a peer group tends to reduce energy use. Here is their abstract: By providing feedback to customers on home electricity and natural gas usage with a focus on peer comparisons, utilities can …
Peer-based Comparisons Can Induce Consumers to Reduce Energy Use Read More »
Michael Giberson The post title was extracted from the conclusion of Henry Neilson’s article, “Price gouging versus price reduction in retail gasoline markets during Hurricane Rita” (Economic Letters, October 2009), but I’m not sure the evidence supports the conclusion of altruism. Neilson collected gasoline price data in the Byran-College Station, Texas, area for several weeks …
“Gas Station Owners Were Surprisingly Altruistic During That Time of Crisis” Read More »
Michael Giberson President Obama has created the “SAVE Award,” a process by which federal employees can submit ideas for “how their agency can save money and perform better.” A committee of OMB officials will review the submissions and submit a short list to the President, and the President will pick the winner. The federal employee …
Can a Keynesian Beauty Contest Improve Obama’s Suggestion Box for Federal Employees? Read More »
Michael Giberson From a reliability perspective, the crucial aspect of the real-time wholesale prices is that they result from the security-constrained economic dispatch, which is based on a real-time assessment of grid capabilities. Experience has shown that market prices work best to support reliability when prices are locational, because locational prices that are consistent with …
Power Prices Work Best to Support Reliability when Prices Are Locational Read More »
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