Michael Giberson On December 7, 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency dropped a bomb on Range Resources Corporation. From the EPA news release: (DALLAS – December 7, 2010) Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has ordered a natural gas company in Forth Worth, Texas, to take immediate action to protect homeowners living near one of its …
Michael Giberson The Houston Chronicle reports on the difficult financial position of many U.S. refineries. Crude oil prices are up for refineries relying on international markets, but U.S. consumers are moderating their gasoline consumption at higher prices and so refiners find their margins to be getting squeezed. A good article, but right at the end …
Lynne Kiesling I am happy to say that Learn Liberty has published another video that we did together. This one is a short one in which I talk about government regulation of monopolies, essentially laying out Schumpeter’s argument that when entry costs are low, monopolies do not persist because monopoly profit serves as a lure …
Learn Liberty Video: Should Government Regulate Monopolies? Read More »
Michael Giberson As the chart below shows, during the summer of 2008 gasoline prices in Anchorage, Alaska switched from following typical prices in the lower 48 to a modest but notable amount above such typical prices. Not shown, but you can check it out at Gasbuddy.com where I generated the chart, after the summer of …
Are Refiners and Wholesalers Price Gouging on Petroleum Products in Alaska? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Fear is a strong motivating factor, having evolved over millennia as we have protected ourselves against predators. Fear supports self-preservation by making us risk-averse and cautious. But such a deep, visceral, evolved emotion does not always serve our long-term objectives of thriving; it leads to maximin outcomes, and it is often mismatched to …
How Fear Affects Policy: Adam Thierer on Technopanics Read More »
Michael Giberson Like the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, I’d like to see the Production Tax Credit for wind and other renewable energy technologies expire at the end of this year as scheduled. So policy-wise, I’m with them. Still, their editorial against the wind power policy yesterday was awful and it deserves public …
The Wsj’s Awful Editorial Against the Wind Power Industry Read More »
Lynne Kiesling In one of the most incredible pieces of fortuitous timing, after I recommended Richard Epstein’s Simple Rules for a Complex World in my post on our regulatory thickets, here’s a new video of Richard discussing this exact topic! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUr-MbPUl5M] A clear 22-minute discussion, well worth your time (and the time of any Congressional …
Lynne Kiesling This week’s Economist has an article that points out what many US residents, and readers of this blog, know full well: But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a …
Lynne Kiesling I am pleased to announce my first video in the Learn Liberty series — “Regulating Monopolies: A History of Electricity Regulation“. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=430OAJuh0nk&feature=player_embedded] It’s a brief overview of the economic history of the origins of the electricity industry and its regulation, and points towards the extent to which in the 21st century we are …
Lynne Kiesling I was glad Mike mentioned Alex Tabarrok’s recent Launching the Innovation Renaissance in his recent post on the Honeywell-Next patent lawsuit, because reading Alex’s new TED book was on my to-do list for this past weekend. Alex’s focus in this book is U.S. innovation policy and ways that we could improve the institutional …
Alex Tabarrok on Innovation, Barriers to It, and the Warfare-welfare State Read More »
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