Lynne Kiesling Regulatory capture is one of the defining phenomena in the political economy of regulation. What is regulatory capture, exactly? In a Tech Liberation post from 2010, Adam Thierer offers this definition: “Regulatory capture” occurs when special interests co-opt policymakers or political bodies — regulatory agencies, in particular — to further their own ends. …
Lynne Kiesling Remember the first time you bought a mobile phone (which in my case was 1995). You may have been happy with your land line phone, but this new mobile phone thing looks like it would be really handy in an emergency, so you-in-1995 said sure, I’ll get a cell phone, but not really …
Lynne Kiesling Rob Bradley has an Econlib essay on Enron, and it’s a good one. He focuses on Enron’s particular form of crony corporatism, its ability to take advantage of regulatory complexity, and the lessons that we should carry forward from the experience: Enron was essentially a political company, not a free-market one. Ken Lay’s creation …
Lynne Kiesling This year’s Economic Freedom of the World report is released today, and the US has dropped to #18, its lowest ranking ever. From the press release: The United States, long considered a champion of economic freedom among large industrial nations, dropped to its lowest position ever in to the Fraser Institute’s annual Economic …
Michael Giberson Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s recently published 2011 Wind Technologies Market Report (pdf) provides a fairly focused look at wind power industry developments. Among the insights: At the same time [as the European debt crisis began creating trouble for some lenders], new banking regulations took hold, driving considerably shorter bank loan tenors (institutional lenders, meanwhile, continued …
Financial Regulations Add Burden to Wind Power Projects Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Ted Gayer of the Brookings Institution and Kip Viscusi of Vanderbilt University have a new Mercatus working paper that is a careful and thoughtful critique of the rationale, the methodology, and the outcomes of federal energy efficiency regulations. Using standard Pigouvian externality theory, most environmental regulations are based on the “market failure” rationale …
Michael Giberson Lynne’s post on early commerce in ice reminded me that ice making has made other appearances in economic history. For example, some U.S. states once required a state license to make and sell ice. The question of the reasonableness of such licensing requirements reached the Supreme Court in 1932 in New State Ice …
Lynne Kiesling For much of the past year I’ve been thinking about experimentation and the role that experimentation plays in economic activity and value creation; my post on Jim Manzi’s book earlier this week is in keeping with my interest in this topic. When I reflect on the processes of value creation and economic change …
Economic Experimentation, Economic Growth, and Regulation Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Think consciously about a decision you contemplated recently. As you were weighing your options, how much did you really know that you could bring to bear, definitively, on your decision? Was the outcome pre-determined, or was it unknown to you? For most of the decision-making situations we confront regularly, we don’t have full …
Experimentation, Jim Manzi, and Regulation/deregulation Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Today in Forbes Art Carden has an essay arguing that we should end the War on Drugs and make marijuana legal, now. He’s right. Here’s why. As Art argues, the War on Drugs is a policy poster child for unintended consequences, because the inelastic demand for the regulated good means that stronger enforcement …
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