July 30th, 2010
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 …
[READ MORE...]
June 25th, 2010
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, …
[READ MORE...]
January 14th, 2010
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 …
[READ MORE...]
January 14th, 2010
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, …
[READ MORE...]
January 13th, 2010
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 …
[READ MORE...]
January 13th, 2010
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 …
[READ MORE...]
January 11th, 2010
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, …
[READ MORE...]
|
For an assistant professor (American University’s School of International Service) three years out of graduate school (Princeton), Jeff Colgan is making quite a splash. As a scholar working at the nexus between economics and political science, he’s specialized in analyzing the links between petroleum and international conflict. His new book, Petro-Aggression, explores the question of why some oil-fueled regimes stir the geopolitical pot (think Iran, Venezuela) while others are quite conservative (Saudi Arabia). But we’re most taken with his working paper on OPEC, in which he argues that the cartel (as opposed to individual cartel members) is toothless.
Sign Up Receive the latest news, research and insight from Regulation2point0.
SIGN UP »
|