Adam Stein 
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- Name: Adam Stein
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Economists are not conservatives
In the same way, is it really necessary to pay such close attention to economists? I know that policy makers listen to them, but maybe we should simply be arguing that they shouldn't be,
This is an excellent recipe for both (further) marginalizing environmentalists and also crafting worse environmental policy.
and for the same reason -- economists, for the most part, come from a conservative direction,
Just as a matter of sociology, this is flatly false. Like members of just about any other academic discipline, economists individually tend to be left of center. It's weird how progressives tend to lionize Paul Krugman without ever assimilating the fact that he is, through and through, an economist, not some lonely renegade throwing stones from outside the academy.
because after all that is the main moral of their story: government intervention leads to less than optimal outcomes.
I'm pretty sure Robert Stavins just posted a few thousand words at Grist directly rebutting this notion.
On One last foray into the economics discussion posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago 17 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
I is confused
I think we're talking past each other here, or maybe I'm just confused about the Making Work Pay program. I'm not saying that a payroll tax deduction is better than nothing -- I'm saying that the actual program being proposed here seems to be exactly what you're asking for.
The rebate is funding the Making Work Pay program. I got my blurb about the MWP program straight from the CBPP web site, and they seem to be big fans of its progressivity. Am I misunderstanding?
On Cap-and-trade rebates to taxpayers favor efficiency over equity posted 8 months, 4 weeks ago 10 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
Making Work Pay
The carbon revenue is presently being tagged to fund the Making Work Pay tax rebate. Saying that this "reduces the regressivity somewhat" probably significantly undersells the policy. I can't find a ton of really clear info online, but I did find this on the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' own web site (pdf):
Unlike the payroll tax holiday, the credit would provide the same benefit -- $500 -- to a worker earning $10,000 as to a worker earning $100,000. Moreover, that $500 credit would far exceed what low-income workers would receive from a payroll tax holiday.
In short, this looks like a pretty equitable solution. Orszag awaits his make-up hug.
On Cap-and-trade rebates to taxpayers favor efficiency over equity posted 9 months ago 10 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
Analytical standards
The cited articles address both of the issues you raise. Specifically, the New Carbon Finance report attempts to separate out the effects of the recession from the effects of the cap. And the authors of the innovation study are well aware of the difficulty of establishing causation, so they include a variety of different measures to try to tease root cause out of the observed trend.
I'm curious: did you actually read the reports?
(I also have to say: your explanation of the patent trend in Kyoto-signatory countries is, well, beyond lame. These countries have a "cultural bent" toward climate sustainability, so starting in 2000 they began patenting a bunch of stuff? That's some serious analytical standards you got there.)
On Two encouraging signs that global climate treaties might be having the intended effect posted 9 months ago 2 ResponsesClick here to view comment in original post
Hm
After I was set up as the pro-econ foil over at Env-Econ, I thought about writing my own thumbsucker on What I Think About Economics. Then I decided not to, because...it would be really boring. But here are some bulleted thoughts:
- It's impossible to think about environmental policy without employing economic thinking. Whenever we talk about how, say, agricultural subsidies change the incentives for farmers, thereby affecting the price of commodities, land use patterns, food consumption, etc. -- we're making an economic argument. This is part of the reason I really dislike overbroad rants against capital E economics. You're pretty much waving a giant banner that says "Ignore me!" when you haul off against an entire huge branch of social science. Targeted criticisms, on the other hand, are not just fine -- they're essential.
- I also think there's a fundamental disjunction between micro- and macro-economics. Microeconomics, while certainly lending itself to a degree of oversimplification, is still an essential framework for considering how the world works. Macro, on the other hand, is
an utterly baffling form of devilrydifficult for even informed lay people to understand and also comparatively less settled among experts. Hence the debates over models.
- It's impossible to think about environmental policy without employing economic thinking. Whenever we talk about how, say, agricultural subsidies change the incentives for farmers, thereby affecting the price of commodities, land use patterns, food consumption, etc. -- we're making an economic argument. This is part of the reason I really dislike overbroad rants against capital E economics. You're pretty much waving a giant banner that says "Ignore me!" when you haul off against an entire huge branch of social science. Targeted criticisms, on the other hand, are not just fine -- they're essential.