Over at the Economist’s Free Exchange blog, Grep Ip offers an excellent, balanced analysis of regulatory uncertainty and our weak economy. Here’s a short excerpt: How much of our economic malaise can be blamed on regulatory uncertainty? Conservatives argue that a wave of Obama administration regulations and the threat of more to come are the [...]
Archive for the ‘Regulation’ Category
Regulatory Uncertainty and Our Weak Economy
Posted in Economy, Regulation, tagged Economy, Regulation, Uncertainty on September 8, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Taxi Medallions in DC: Who Would Win and Lose?
Posted in Microeconomics, Regulation, tagged Microeconomics, Regulation, Taxi on April 10, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Today’s lesson in political economy: the looming battle over Washington’s cab market. Three members of DC’s City Council (Marion Barry, Harry Thomas, Jr., and Michael Brown) want to require every taxi to have a medallion. The number of medallions would be much smaller than the number of cabs on the streets today. As I noted [...]
The Rising Risk of Antibiotic Resistance
Posted in Microeconomics, Regulation, Technology, tagged Drugs, Externality, Microeconomics on April 3, 2011 | 9 Comments »
Scary theme of the week? Rising antibiotic resistance. Megan McArdle highlighted this challenge in her presentation at the Kauffman bloggers event on Friday; if you have a moment, check out her chart at the 2:00 mark, showing that resistance to new antibiotics has been developing faster and faster. You’ll hear more about resistance later in [...]
CBO Weighs in on Fannie and Freddie
Posted in Budget, Finance, Regulation, tagged CBO, Fannie Mae, Finance, Freddie Mac, GSE, Housing, Regulation on December 23, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released its long-awaited report on the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Role in the Secondary Mortgage Market (written by Deborah Lucas and David Torregrosa, with input from a cast of dozens — including, full disclosure, me as an outside reviewer) provides an [...]
The Grinch Recast as Economic Parable
Posted in Microeconomics, Regulation, tagged Coase, Humor, Pollution, Property Rights on December 9, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Over at Forbes.com, Art Carden has a brilliant retelling of Dr. Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (ht: Greg Mankiw). Carden recasts the story as a parable about externalities and property rights. He starts with the Grinch’s view that Who singing is a nuisance: He hated the shrieks of the Who girls and boys For fifty-three years he’d put [...]
DC’s New Mayor Should Say No to Taxi Medallions
Posted in Microeconomics, Regulation, tagged Microeconomics, Regulation, Taxi on November 9, 2010 | 18 Comments »
I love taxi medallions. As an example for my microeconomics students, not as policy. Just last week, I used New York City’s medallion system to show how an entry barrier — the requirement that each yellow taxi have one of a limited number of medallions — could create profits in an otherwise viciously competitive industry. [...]
Positive Feedback and the Flash Crash
Posted in Finance, Regulation, tagged Finance, Regulation, Stock Market on October 1, 2010 | 3 Comments »
The CFTC and SEC staffs are out with their analysis of the May 6 “flash crash.” Short version: A large trader (identified by the media as Waddell & Reed) initiated a large sell order to be executed based on volume, not time or price. The initial selling boosted trading volumes which prompted the algorithm to sell [...]
What To Do With Fannie and Freddie?
Posted in Finance, Regulation, tagged Fannie Mae, Finance, Freddie Mac, GSE, Housing on July 19, 2010 | 5 Comments »
The Economist asked several experts to recommend options for resolving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two failed mortgage giants. In addition to comments, the magazine’s web site allows users to recommend responses they like. It’s hardly scientific, but since the rankings (as of 9:15pm eastern time) work to my favor, let me rank them [...]
The End of Cap and Trade?
Posted in Energy, Environment, Microeconomics, Regulation, tagged Climate Change, Energy, Environment on July 12, 2010 | 2 Comments »
No, not for carbon. For sulfur dioxide. As noted by Mark Peters at the Wall Street Journal: The original U.S. cap-and-trade market, which succeeded in slashing the power-plant emissions that cause acid rain, is in disarray following the issuance of new federal pollution rules. The collapse in the pioneering market where power producers trade permits [...]
Fannie & Freddie Reform Gets a Boost from the Washington Post
Posted in Budget, Finance, Regulation, tagged Fannie Mae, Finance, Freddie Mac, GSE, Regulation on June 5, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Sunday’s Washington Post has an encouraging editorial about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform proposal that Phill Swagel and I recently put forward. An excerpt: [Their plan would] abolish the most toxic features of the old “government-sponsored enterprise” model. In particular, the plan would get Fannie and Freddie out of the business of directly [...]
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