Michael Giberson Tomorrow is the annual “Lowrider/Dream bike” parade on the Texas Tech University campus. The event is part of program in which TTU art students and science and engineering students mentor middle schoolers who assemble and customize a bicycle. There are a lot of very sound pedagogical reasons to think that such hands-on activities …
Michael Giberson In economic theory, in lab experiments, in practice – pretty much generally speaking – it is well established in economics that a uniform clearing price auction works better than a pay-as-bid auction in cases such as the spot markets for power operated by the NYISO and ISO-New England (and every similar market in …
Lynne Kiesling Perhaps the only thing surprising about the research described in this Washington Post article is how demonstrable and quantifiable the effects are: In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies $220 for every dollar they …
Michael Giberson The Houston Chronicle has an article on a proposal to set up a federally-chartered bank to lend billions of dollars to renewable energy projects. Renewable energy ‘green bank’ idea takes root By TOM FOWLER Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle A coalition of energy companies hopes to reinvigorate the market for funding renewable energy projects …
Michael Giberson From Environmental Capital, reports that selling all greenhouse gas emission permits under a cap-and-trade scheme may not be politically attractive: Europe already saw what happened when it gave away emissions permits—utilities gobbled up more than 100 billion euros in windfall profits. The pain for the consumer—i.e., the voter–will be the same whether the …
Michael Giberson Wind power has been subsidized by state and federal governments in the United States because it is seen as clean and renewable, and perhaps even because wind power is seen as glamorous. Consumers pay higher electric rates and taxpayers pay higher taxes to support these subsidies, and it is a quite reasonable public …
Environmental Benefits and the Production Tax Credit for Wind Power Read More »
Michael Giberson William Tucker, author of “Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Long Energy Odyssey,” has an essay in today’s WSJ pinning the U.S. nuclear waste problem on decisions by Presidents Ford and Carter to abandon reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. The reasons for abandoning reprocessing – mostly …
Also in the Wsj: “There is No Such Thing As Nuclear Waste” Read More »
Michael Giberson At the Arizona Economics blog, Scott Gustafson runs some numbers on the limits on tax deductions for charitable giving contained in the Obama budget outline for 2010. Drawing on numbers from the budget outline (as summarized in this Washington Post article), Gustafson concludes that the administration thinks the change will result in $45 …
Who Needs Charitable Giving when You Can Have Big Government? Read More »
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 …
The Continuing Relevance of the Bootlegger-And-Baptist Model Read More »
Lynne Kiesling For the past couple of years the British government has been extremely aggressive in installing surveillance cameras — CCTV on high streets, speeding cameras on highways, and so on. If you are a typical British citizen, your actions are captured on camera hundreds of times a day, and you can be watched with …
British Government Desire for Surveillance Expropriates Private Property Read More »
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