July Madness

Economists Robert Stavins (Harvard) and Richard Schmalensee (MIT) make a key distinction between the substance of climate policy and the mechanisms for implementing it in the Boston Globe. In trashing efforts to pass a climate bill, Senate Republicans and a handful of Democrats sought to demonize …

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Tech Talk

If Pres. Obama has his way, Washington will invest heavily in energy technology as part of a broader climate change initiative designed to wean us addicts from our daily (hourly? secondly?) carbon fix.  The Republicans will take the technology minus the climate regulation, thank you very much. Either way, though, …

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Cap and Trade v. Tax (or Weisbach on Weitzman)

In the beginning, economists touted emissions taxes and cap-and-trade systems as efficient, market-friendly methods for reducing pollution. The idea: put a price on pollution equal to the damage it caused or decide what level of emissions was acceptable to society as a whole, and then let businesses decide how to minimize …

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Approach-Avoidance Syndrome

Nuclear power in America lives in an odd political/economic limbo. The 104 plants operating here (all built before 1978) have become the work horses of the utility industry, generating one-fifth of the nation’s electricity at low marginal cost thanks to vast improvements in their operating reliability. And, …

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Stavins on Forest Fix

As economists are way too fond of saying, there’s no free lunch out there. But some lunches are cheaper than others. And finding less expensive ways to contain the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be central to a workable climate change policy. Robert Stavins, the …

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When Second-Best Will Do

The U.S. Congress is gung-ho on ethanol; the Germans are mad about solar panels, while the Danes have a thing for windmills. And, of course, they’re not alone: Countries around the globe are spending huge sums on subsidies for greener energy.

If you’re suspicious that most of this money is being …

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DeMuth on Regulatory Limits

Andrei Shleifer explains [Download Here] the relative success (and omnipresence) of regulation in modern economies by the relative failure of private alternatives (contract enforcement, tort adjudication). Christopher DeMuth, president emeritus of the American Enterprise Institute and a former crusader against regulation in the Reagan administration, …

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