greenhouse gasses

Green Energy Paradox: Hotelling’s Exhaustible Resource and Consequences of Improving the Alternatives

Michael Giberson The “green power paradox” grabs Hotelling by the ankles, turns him upside down, and shakes the change out of his pockets. Harold Hotelling’s classic article, “The Economics of Exhaustible Resources,” observes that the owner of an exhaustible resource stock always is making choices in the shadow of the future. If the owner produces …

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Highly Recommended Read on Waxman-markey: The Cap-and-trade Bait and Switch

Michael Giberson David Schoenbrod and Richard B. Stewart explain why the Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” bill isn’t, fundamentally, a market-based approach to regulating greenhouse gasses: As a candidate for president in April 2008, Barack Obama told Fox News that “a cap-and-trade system is a smarter way of controlling pollution” than “top-down” regulation. He was right. With cap …

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Cash for Clunkers, Economics of

Michael Giberson Christopher Knittel, at UC-Davis, has run some numbers on the “Cash for Clunkers” program and concludes that it is an expensive way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions: The Cash for Clunker program aims to stimulate the economy, provide relief for automobile manufacturers and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this research note, I present …

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A Problem with Market-Based Approaches to Emission Reductions

Michael Giberson Market-based approaches to regulating emissions are the new conventional wisdom, according to Robert Stavins, and it would be hard to disagree. Among proponents of regulating greenhouse gasses in the United States, the big debate is over which of two market-based approaches to regulating emissions should be pursued: emission tax or cap-and-trade. Is anyone …

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