Should Advocates of Electric Industry Restructuring Have Not Promised Lower Rates?
The people want the ponies they were promised, not the more efficient allocation of ponies that should have been offered.
Economics
Animal Conservation Through Prices
Lynne Kiesling The fundamental cause of most environmental problems — whether air pollution, climate change, or species extinction, for example — is ill-defined property rights. Ill-define property rights lead to inefficient resource use decisions, resource overuse, and accelerated resource use. The effect of human action on the rate and pattern of species extinction is an …
Who Invented the Automobile?
Lynne Kiesling Lynne’s snark of the morning: If President Obama doesn’t know who invented the automobile, perhaps he should take my Western Economic History class this spring (hint: the inventor of the automobile was German). My spring class is already full and has a waiting list (which I find gratifying), but I’d make room for …
Smart Grid Rhetoric at Yesterday’s Clean Energy Summit
Lynne Kiesling [UPDATED to add live link to NPR story} NPR just ran a story on yesterday’s clean energy summit in Washington DC. The event was organized by Senator Harry Reid and included such luminaries as Boone Pickens, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore, in addition to political representatives such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Secretary …
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An Economic History Lesson on Fiscal Responsibility
Lynne Kiesling At the Atlantic’s newish business web site, Greg Clark has a very good post on the history of government spending in Britain. He starts in the early post-Magna Carta period: In England, for example, from the Magna Carta of 1215 until the Glorious Revolution of 1689, public debt was always tiny — a …
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Gridecon 2009
Lynne Kiesling I am co-organizing an event called GridEcon in Chicago, 16-17 March 2009. GridEcon is in the suite of events that the GridWise Architecture Council co-sponsors, including GridWeek, Connectivity Week, and Grid-Interop. GridEcon has come about because we think that the policy and business discussions have moved beyond the technical interoperability issues that have …
The Continuing Relevance of the Bootlegger-And-Baptist Model
Lynne Kiesling In 1983 Bruce Yandle wrote an influential article in Regulation, “Bootleggers and Baptists: The Education of a Regulatory Economist”. His model explains how two parties with seemingly incongruent values can come together to get a regulation passed that meets the objectives of both parties. In the bootlegger and Baptist case, both parties benefit …
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Update: The Tea Party’s Brewing …
Lynne Kiesling [sorry for the pun-ed.] In doing my morning reading I find posts at EconLog from both Arnold Kling and David Henderson that are in line with my thoughts on government bailouts and increasing anger and frustration. Arnold says Starting last September, our country has gone through six months that shook the world. We …
Mortgage Bailouts and the Chicago Tea Party
Lynne Kiesling Count me in as a taxpayer, mortgage holder, and economist who thinks that the Obama mortgage bailout program is bad policy-it’s expensive with little obvious benefit, it creates bad incentives and ex post rewards bad decisions (bad decisions that were abetted by bad government policy), and it’s morally reprehensible. Peter Klein’s remarks on …
A New Paper from Me: Increasing Energy Efficiency Through Decentralized Coordination
Lynne Kiesling I’m pleased to report that EcoAlign, the marketing arm of the Distributed Energy Financial Group, has issued a white paper I wrote, “Markets, Technology and Institutions: Increasing Energy Efficiency Through Decentralized Coordination”. From the press release: EcoAlign, a strategic marketing agency focused on energy and the environment, has released the second report in …
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