November 13, 2008
| Dr. Gabriel Calzada
Presentation by Dr. Gabriel Calzada, Associate Professor of Economics at King Juan Carlos University.
June 29, 2008
| Iain Murray
The ongoing debate over global warming is as much about economics as about climate science. Climate change mitigation strategies invariably carry costs that must be considered before any policy is implemented. The climate change mitigation policies being proposed by former Vice President Al Gore and some U.S. Senators fail to take those costs into account.Unfortunately, such obliviousness to real costs dominates the climate change debate. Part of the blame for this must be placed on a series of myths that permeate the debate. The following debunks the central global warming policy myths, and proposes an alternative way forward.
April 17, 2008
| Iain Murray
Today, calls for America to become “energy independent” come from across the political spectrum. Among the most important energy-security advocates are conservatives concerned about national security. To make America less “dependent” on energy purchases from unstable regimes, they have proposed a variety of measures aimed at reducing the use of oil. However, rather than make the nation more secure, the proposed measures have the potential to inflict significant economic damage on America, weakening it at a time when national security demands strong economic resilience.
December 5, 2007
| J Scott Armstrong and Kesten Green
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group One, apanel of experts established by the World Meteorological Organization and theUnited Nations Environment Programme, issued its Fourth Assessment Report.The Report included predictions of dramatic increases in average worldtemperatures over the next 92 years and serious harm resulting from the predictedtemperature increases. Using forecasting principles as our guide we asked: Arethese forecasts a good basis for developing public policy? Our answer is “no”.
September 25, 2007
| Kenneth Green
The fallacious idea that one can make jobs by destroying others is a variation of Bastiat's Broken Window fallacy. As Bastiat explained, imagine some shopkeepers get their windows broken by a rock-throwing child. At first, people sympathize with the shopkeepers, until someone suggests that the broken windows really aren't that bad. After all, they "create work" for the glazier, who might buy food, benefiting the grocer, or clothes, benefiting the tailor. If enough windows are broken, the glazier might even hire an assistant, creating a new job. Did the child then do a public service by breaking the windows? Would it be good public policy to simply break windows at random? No, because what's not seen in this scenario is what the shopkeepers would have done with the money that they've had to use to fix their windows. If they hadn't needed to fix the windows, the shopkeepers would have put the money to work in their shops, buying more stock from their suppliers, or perhaps adding a coffee-bar, or hiring new stock-people. Before the child's action, the shopkeepers had the economic value of their windows and the money to hire a new assistant or buy more goods. After the child's action, the shopkeepers have their new windows but no new assistant or new goods, and society, as a whole, has lost the value of the old set of windows.
July 27, 2007
| William Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics, Yale University
Nordhaus finds that Al Gore’s package of climate policies reduces the costs of global warming to $10 trillion, but at a cost of $34 trillion. Thus the world is left $44 trillion worse off at the end of the 21st century, which is double the cost of doing nothing. The Stern figures are similar: Sir Nicholas’s package would reduce global-warming damage to $9 trillion, at a cost of $27 trillion, for a total cost to the world of $36 trillion — 50-percent more expensive than doing nothing about global warming.
December 31, 1996
| Jonathan H Adler
The Costs of Kyoto: Climate Change Policy and Its Implications, explores the economic and social costs of an international climate treaty, the scientific basis for a treaty, and the broader implications the global warming issue has for environmental policy in the United States and abroad. Taken as a whole, these essays demonstrate that the risks of global warming may be less than the risks imposed by global warming policy.
