How on earth did this guy get to become French Minister of Finance? Shades of Roger Douglas?
28 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
NBER this week: Regulation and Housing Supply
06 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of regulation, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land use regulation, urban economics, zoning
I actually have something nice to say about drug safety regulation!?
03 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation Tags: Drug safety, Product safety
The share market speaks: the boom in marijuana shares
03 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of crime, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, financial economics, industrial organisation Tags: marijuana decriminalisation, marijuana legalisation
Over the past two years, investors bid up penny stocks, which are stocks that trade for less than $5 a share, for marijuana from a $500,000 market to more than $7 billion.
The sale and use of marijuana is now approved for medical purposes in 22 states and the District of Columbia and is legal for recreational sales in Colorado and Washington state.
Among those will have to put their money where their mouth is, their entrepreneurial forecast is marijuana legalisation is only going to spread and the legal marijuana market is going to grow. Florida will vote on legalizing medical marijuana, and recent polls suggest the measure has the support needed to pass.
In February 2014, President Obama signed a law that allows states to experiment with industrial hemp. In response, 17 states have removed barriers to hemp production.
HT: Vox.com/marijuana-legalization-maps-charts-facts and https://twitter.com/business/status/479287579263524864
Who Is More Irrational – Consumers or Regulators?
08 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: Bjørn Lomborg, expressive voting, futile gestures, global warming, Kip Viscusi, nanny state, regulatory failure, The fatal conceit, The pretence to knowledge
A study by Ted Gayer and W. Kip Viscusi looked into this implied irrationality of consumers. They have found no empirical evidence to support the view that if consumers are so irrational that government agencies must prohibit certain energy consuming products for us to make the right choices:
Rather than accept the implications that consumers and firms are acting so starkly against their economic interest, a more plausible explanation is that there is something incorrect in the assumptions being made in the regulatory impact analyses.
Indeed, upon closer inspection it is apparent that there is no empirical evidence provided for the types of consumer failures alleged.
Even the EPA acknowledged this logical gap in its economic analysis of energy efficiency regulations:
it is a conundrum from an economic perspective that these large fuel savings have not been provided by automakers and purchased by consumers
Not surprisingly Kip Viscusi observed that
The regulatory impact analyses examined in this study contain virtually no empirical evidence to support the irrationality proposition.
• This proposition ignores the fact that consumers and firms purchase products based on a number of factors—only one of which is energy efficiency.
• Government agencies exhibit a parochial bias by ignoring all product attributes other than energy efficiency.
Managerial Econ: Make the rules or your rivals will: use anti-growth activists to erect entry barriers
08 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economics of regulation, environmental economics, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: bootleggers and baptists, rent seeking
The courts have sanctioned the right to organize community opposition that urges government officials and agencies to deny land use permits to applicants, even when the underlying motive of the opposition is protecting market share and eliminating competition.
What’s more, the courts are protecting third-party funding sources, in many cases anonymous funding sources, which support the opposition efforts in order to block potential competition.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments