On January 1, Washington DC introduced a 5-cent tax on disposable shopping bags at grocery, drug, convenience, and liquor stores. The fee had two goals: to reduce the number of bags, in particular plastic ones, that end up blighting the landscape and to raise funds for cleaning up the Anacostia River. The fee appears to be succeeding on [...]
Archive for September, 2010
Nickels Matter: Pigou and the Plastic Bag
Posted in Behavioral Economics, Environment, Microeconomics, tagged Behavioral Economics, Environment, Taxes on September 20, 2010 | 10 Comments »
The Feud over the 2009 Burlington Mayoral Election
Posted in Politics, tagged Politics, Voting on September 19, 2010 | 17 Comments »
In March 2009, Burlington Vermont used a non-traditional system of voting—Instant Runoff Voting—to select its mayor. The voters returned the incumbent, Progressive Bob Kiss, to the mayor’s office and, in so doing, set off a surprisingly fierce debate among advocates for voting reform. Some tout the Burlington results as a success for Instant Runoff Voting, [...]
The Economics of Damien Hirst
Posted in Life, Microeconomics, tagged Art on September 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Future generations will remember September 15, 2008 as the day that Lehman died. But the art world has another memory of that fateful day: the opening of a London auction of works by artist Damien Hirst. Over a period of two days, Sotheby’s rapped the gavel on almost $200 million of his new works, marking [...]
We Are Not Going To Die
Posted in Life, Nature, tagged Nature, Whale on September 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
It’s quiet weekend, so please forgive one more item from my recent sojourn in southeast Alaska. If you are a regular watcher of nature documentaries, you know that Alaska’s humpbacks employ a unique feeding technique called bubble-netting. A group of whales will corral herring in a wall of bubbles, push them to the surface, and [...]
TPC’s New Tax Calculator
Posted in Budget, tagged Taxes on September 9, 2010 | 6 Comments »
Over at the Tax Policy Center, we just unveiled a nifty new tool for understanding how the ongoing tax debate might affect real households. The Tax Calculator allows taxpayers, analysts, and the media to analyze how much an individual or family would pay in taxes under three scenarios: 2010 law, in which the 2001-2003 tax [...]
The New Normal in Oil and Natural Gas Prices
Posted in Energy, Environment, tagged Energy, Natural Gas, Oil on September 7, 2010 | 16 Comments »
In previous posts (most recent here), I noted that oil and natural gas prices have disconnected from their usual historical relationship. For many years, oil prices (as measured in $ per barrel) tended to be 6 to 12 times natural gas prices (as measured in $ per MMBtu). That ratio blew out to more than 20 [...]
August Rail Traffic, An Upbeat Economic Indicator
Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Data, Economy, Macroeconomics on September 6, 2010 | 1 Comment »
August was a busy month for America’s railroads, according to the Association for American Railroads. Traffic spiked up, as often happens during the month. More importantly, August traffic was 11% higher than a year ago (the same gain as reported in July): Carloads (think bulk materials like coal, grains, minerals, and chemicals plus autos) are [...]
Underemployment Moves Up in August
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged jobs, Macroeconomics, unemployment on September 3, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Friday’s job report was decidedly mixed. Private employers added 67,000 jobs–more than expected, but still tepid. Meanwhile the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.6%, and the U-6 measure of underemployment moved up to 16.7%: (As you may recall, the U-6 measure includes the officially unemployed, marginally attached workers, and those who are working part-time but [...]
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