Regulation

A Political Economy Model for Occupy Wall Street

Lynne Kiesling What’s a political economy-oriented economist to make of Occupy Wall Street? So far I’ve found two complementary commentaries that reflect my analysis of the deeply flawed policies of the past couple of decades that have enabled the crony corporatism that seems to be at the core of the protest (just in my phrasing …

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A Coasian Look at Pesticide and Genetic Drift

Michael Giberson A few weeks back Lynne drew attention to an interesting property dispute between neighboring farmers in Minnesota, currently the subject of legal action (see news summary here, related court decision here). In brief, the issue is pesticide drift from conventionally farmed crops onto a neighboring organic farm, and whether the organic farm can …

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Propublica Gets the Establishment View on the Arizona-socal Blackout, the Establishment Says It Needs More Money and Authority

Michael Giberson At ProPublica, Ariel Wittenburg assesses the meaning of the early September blackout affecting parts of Arizona, Southern California, and Northern Mexico. The proximate cause was substation maintenance in Yuma, Arizona and an apparent fault in protective systems that should have kept surrounding lines running during maintenance. As these systems failed, the disturbance reached …

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Another Good Response to the Obama Administration’s Mistaken Antitrust Policy

Michael Giberson George Priest, professor of economics and law at Yale, clearly outlines the main errors of the Obama administration’s decision to oppose the AT&T/T-Mobile merger and cites relevant evidence backing the view: It is very difficult at an abstract level to know what the effects of a merger or acquisition will be on competition …

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Quality, Broadband, and Spectrum: What the Doj’s At&t/T-Mobile Lawsuit Misses

Lynne Kiesling Yesterday’s announcement that the US DOJ would challenge the merger of AT&T’s wireless business with T-Mobile’s was surprising, and their approach to the merger seems to be more conventional and rooted in old HHI-market share and price effect metrics. Their analysis suggests that due to the substantial overlap in the existing separate AT&T …

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Raising Mpg Standards, Part 2: Morris Well Explains the Relative Advantages of Raising the Gasoline Tax

Michael Giberson At the Freakonomics blog, transportation scholar Eric Morris favors President Obama’s recent deal to dramatically raise CAFE standards (Corporate Automobile Fuel Economy standards) by 2025. A gasoline tax would be far superior public policy, he said, but it won’t work politically. Because he thinks CAFE standards do work, technically and politically, he said we should go with …

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Raising Mpg Standards, Part 1: Morris is Not Persuasive in His Claim That Cafe Works

Michael Giberson At the Freakonomics blog, transportation scholar Eric Morris favors President Obama’s recent deal to dramatically raise CAFE standards (Corporate Automobile Fuel Economy standards) by 2025. A gasoline tax would be far superior public policy, he said, but it won’t work politically. Because he thinks CAFE standards do work, technically and politically, he said …

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Power Consumption Reaches New Peaks in Texas, Ercot Narrowly Avoids Rolling Blackouts

Michael Giberson Much in the news in Texas these past few weeks have been new peak power records and several grid emergency conditions which saw the ERCOT power system narrowly avoid rolling blackout a time or two. Tom Fowler of the Houston Chronicle‘s Fuel Fix blog has been tracking the story closely, see selected links …

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