by Eric Kramer The Case for Carbon Taxes, Part II: Political Sustainability In a prior post, I argued that carbon taxes are not vulnerable to political subversion by hostile courts and regulators, and that this is an important advantage of carbon taxes over traditional regulation based on mandates, and also an advantage over subsidies. Once […]
Via Naked Capitalism comes an explanation of what income inequality looks like in the US. It stands in contrast to the Bloomberg article pointed to by Yves in her introduction. I pulled the quotes with a non-economic person in mind. THE WOLF STREET REPORT transcript of podcast by Wolf Richter. Subprime doesn’t mean poor […]
The Current State of the U.S. Dairy Industry I had to endure a discussion of the plight of American dairy farmers where Trump’s trade policies were somehow to blame. Stephanie Mercier confirmed some of the facts: According to data reported by the National Farmers Union (NFU), the average dairy farm has shown a positive net income only […]
by Eric Kramer The Case for Carbon Taxes, Part I: Political Subversion Economists support carbon taxes on efficiency grounds. By putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions, a carbon tax creates a strong incentive for people reduce their carbon footprint. They can do this by switching to clean technologies or simply by reducing their […]
Bicycles and Wine Tariffs Jeffrey Frankel has a must read blog over at Econbrowser: The “bicycle theory” used to be a metaphor for international trade policy. Just as standing still on a bicycle is not an option — one has to keep moving forward or else the bike will fall over – so it was said […]
A few thoughts while you are digesting Thanksgiving dinner There was a bunch of data released Wednesday, while yours truly was on the road along with everybody else. So here are a couple of thoughts for you as you sit there with your loosened belt figuring out what leftovers you’re going to be eating for […]
Why Did Oil Prices Plunge This Black Friday? Nothing to do with the American super big shopping day after Thanksgiving, but several items, some of which may reverse themselves. As it is, it was a pretty big drop, nearly 5 percent for the day for both West Texas and Brent crude, with the latter now […]
by New Deal democrat The consumer is still alright, November 2019 edition I have a new post up at Seeking Alpha. A few months ago I took a look at the order in which I would expect the dominoes to fall if there were to be a consumer-led recession. One more domino has fallen, but several […]
Complicating The ARAMCO IPO The Saudi ARAMCO IPO is happening on the Saudi exchange just for Saudi citizens, where apparently there is a not-so-subtle campaign on well off and connected citizens (who wish to remain that way) to buy into the IPO. But there continues to be delays in opening it up to the rest […]
Housing rebound continues; price appreciation stabilizes Just a quick note, as I am traveling today.New home sales declined slightly in October from September, but remain at the high end of this expansion. The renewed uptrend in housing sales, due to lower mortgage rates, is clearly intact: Meanwhile house prices, as measured by the Case Shiller […]