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Archive for February, 2010

Enforcing Property Rights: Snowmageddon Edition

Posted in Microeconomics, tagged , on February 9, 2010 | 8 Comments »

In case you hadn’t heard:  the DC area was socked with a boatload of snow over the weekend. We got 27 inches here in Bethesda, and many areas received comparable amounts (pay no attention to the official measure at National Airport which is mysteriously low at 18 inches). The Washington Post reports on some of [...]

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The Problem with Tax Expenditures

Posted in Budget, tagged , , , on February 8, 2010 | 8 Comments »

Last week, Len Burman published a provocative op-ed suggesting that President’s Obama idea of freezing non-security discretionary spending amounts to “chump change” and that if he wants to make real budget improvements the President should propose to freeze tax expenditures (i.e., all the various preferences in our famously complex tax code). By Len’s calculations, such [...]

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Sharp Drop in Underemployment

Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged , , , on February 5, 2010 | 4 Comments »

The most encouraging item in todays jobs report was the sharp drop in underemployment (which includes not only those who are unemployed but also marginally attached workers and those who are part time for economic reasons). The underemployment rate fell to 16.5%, down from its peak of 17.4% last October and from 17.3% in December: [...]

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Enforcing Property Rights: Shared Refrigerator Edition

Posted in Microeconomics, tagged on February 5, 2010 | 3 Comments »

In the past two weeks, my students and I have been discussing the importance of property rights. One message: creating property rights isn’t enough. You also need a way to enforce those rights; otherwise, they may be meaningless. Which brings us to the universal problem of shared refrigerators. At Georgetown, our refrigerator has a big [...]

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The President Caves on Climate Policy

Posted in Budget, Energy, Environment, tagged , , on February 2, 2010 | 11 Comments »

At a time of unsustainable deficits, deficit neutrality is a remarkably lame vision for climate policy. Last year, President Obama proposed to raise $500 billion over ten years through a cap-and-trade system that would limit carbon emissions. This year his climate policy raises nothing. The president still backs cap-and-trade, but he has caved into congressional [...]

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Initial Thoughts on the President’s Budget

Posted in Budget, Politics, tagged , , , on February 2, 2010 | 4 Comments »

1. Big deficits. Under the President’s specific proposals, deficits will total $10 trillion from 2010-2020. Oh, and if existing policies (as defined by the administration) run their course, those deficits would actually be $12 trillion. Those are gigantic numbers. Under either scenario, our debt would grow faster than the economy every single year. That’s simply [...]

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