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Martin Weitzman: Do "Fat Tails" Destroy Cost-Benefit Analysis?

Over at Master Resource I sketch what’s going on with Martin Weitzman’s critique of standard models of uncertainty in the climate change debate. Some excerpts: Weitzman argues that in this situation, standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA) breaks down. When some of the potential outcomes involve the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, not to mention […]

A Disagreement on the Efficacy of Government Regulation

Over at Env-Econ, some of the commenters were taking pot shots at the free market in the wake of the salmonella outbreak from the Georgia peanut butter plant. (Incidentally that is a factory I’m talking about, not a photosynthetic organism that secretes peanut butter.) I said: Ah yes, I think we had this same argument […]

Murphy Mention at National Review

John Hood links to my Atlanta Journal Constitution op ed (via PRI) on the fallacy being stimulating consumption.

Talking Heads on NPR

I just heard Ky Risdall interview Megan McArdle and Felix Salmon on the financial crisis. I think I lost the use of polysyllabic words. Salmon was cockily saying that nationalization was necessary, in the sort of “at least I’m the adult here who can make the hard choices” tone. For her part, McArdle said something […]

The Road to Serfdom: CA City Bans Smoking In Your Own Car

I am getting old enough so that the “slippery slope” warnings against government intrusions now have extra validity for me, because I actually lived through this stuff. I vividly remember when the government started cracking down on cigarettes in the 1990s, that “right-wingers” warned, “What’s next? Are they going to start regulating fatty foods? Once […]

Casey Mulligan: "Wow, I Was Only Wrong By 72 to 575%"

UPDATE below Folks, I understand that I am highly critical of other economists, and I probably need to work on that. But I am sorry, Casey Mulligan’s handling of today’s GDP numbers (for 4Q 2008) just sent me over the edge. Let me be clear, I think Mulligan is a really good economist; earlier I […]

Martin Feldstein Opposes This Stimulus

This article by Feldstein–who calls himself a conservative economist–is breathtaking. I am not kidding, I don’t see how someone could have written an op ed opposing the current stimulus bill, that would have annoyed me more. I truly think by the end of it, my jaw had dropped. (HT2MR) Here’s the part where he shows […]

"Pattern Is Playing Out Again"

So argue fellow PRI author Jason Clemens and I. (Incidentally, he was just the president-elect when we wrote the piece. I understand that he has been sworn in.) UPDATE: Hey kids, can you spot the mistake in the article? (And no, I don’t mean a mistake in our analysis.)