Michael Giberson Today is a day celebrated as the day, 20 years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. Technically speaking, the wall itself was breached a few days after November 9, but this is the day an East German bureaucratic mix-up inadvertently and briefly allowed East Berliners free movement into the west. When combined with events …
Michael Giberson A discovery of significant amounts of oil in Ghana has inspired a great deal of inquiry into how the country can avoid falling victim to the “resource curse,” the surprisingly low levels of economic development and weakening of political and social institutions sometimes associated with discovery and exploitation of valuable natural resources. In …
Ghana and Its Newfound Oil: Can It Use the Alaska Model to Avoid the Resource Curse? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling A couple of nights ago I was reading Matt Welch’s introduction to the November issue of Reason, in which Matt wonders why we have heard so little discussion of the defeat of communism on its 20th anniversary. This fall is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall on November 9, …
Michael Giberson The New Republic has an excellent article by Bradford Plumer about the current state of the electric power industry and the prospects of the industry achieving what diverse interests expect of it. (Yes, in TNR, who’d a thunk it?) The article highlights the political economy of regulated electric utilities and their immense lobbying …
Private Wires and the Electric Power Industry You Want Read More »
Michael Giberson Yesterday I commented on Michael Sandel’s book, Justice, and on his discussion of price gouging. I hoped that Sandel would go deeper into his ideas about justice and price gouging, but the book’s index suggests that the introductory chapter is all he has to offer specifically on price gouging. In re-reading parts of …
More on Michael Sandel, Justice and Price Gouging Read More »
Michael Giberson From WSJ Environmental Capital: When it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees Americans as unruly teenagers and the Administration as the parent that will have to teach them a few lessons. Speaking on the sidelines of a smart grid conference in Washington, Dr. Chu said he didn’t think average folks …
Energy Secretary Steven Chu: Not Exactly Making Friends and Influencing People Read More »
Michael Giberson Michael Sandel appeared on the Today show last week promoting his new book, Justice: what is the right thing to do? The book and a related public television series this fall are based on Sandel’s course on justice taught at Harvard. (The television series episodes are online at the link just cited.) The …
Michael Giberson The WSJ‘s Real Time Economics blog surveyed a few economist reactions to the President’s imposition of dramatically higher tariffs on imported tires. My favorite, and perhaps most appropriate to our times: In 1930, the Republican controlled House of Rep, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?… the Great Depression, …
Recessions: An Especially Bad Time to Impose Bad Public Policies Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Today the Fraser Institute has released its 2009 Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report. Written by James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, with assistance from other authors as well, this report is one of the most valuable quantitative comparative economic analyses of the form and extent of economic freedom around the world. As …
Michael Giberson Krugman’s long essay in the New York Times Magazine last week continues to stir responses. (All of which are much more substantive and engaging than my supercilious remarks on Jane Smiley’s goofy Marxism in the Huffington Post. ADDED: For a more measured response to Smiley, see Steve Horwitz and Art Carden’s short explanation …
Reactions to Krugman on the State of Macroeconomics Read More »
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