This article provided an overview of the costs and benefits of regulating mercury emissions from power plants using IQ gains as a measure of benefits. Our assessment suggests strongly that the benefits are not likely to be worth the costs. This is true both for the command-and-control regulatory...

We examine an implication of the “Coase Theorem” which has had an important impact both on environmental economics and on public policy in the environmental domain. Under certain conditions, the market equilibrium in a cap-and-trade system will be cost-effective and independent of the...

We examine an implication of the “Coase Theorem” which has had an important impact both on environmental economics and on public policy in the environmental domain. Under certain conditions, the market equilibrium in a cap-and-trade system will be cost-effective and independent of the...

Barack Obama and John McCain have staked out very different positions on serious questions involving economic regulation, everything from housing finance to alternative energy mandates, but practical considerations will dissolve many of these differences

With Wall Street still reeling from the mortgage meltdown, the Federal Reserve now seemingly committed to rescuing big investment banks "too complex to fail," and the U.S. Treasury proposing a top-to-bottom reorganization of financial regulation, pieties about the virtues of unfettered markets...

This essay briefly reviews public policies for spectrum use, distinguishing among them by whether economists agree on their value and why. Such policies could have a large impact on the development of the Internet and the pace of technological change in the wireless industry. We conclude that...

We examine an implication of the “Coase Theorem” which has had an important impact both on environmental economics and on public policy in the environmental domain. Under certain conditions, the market equilibrium in a cap-and-trade system will be cost-effective and independent of the...

We examine an implication of the "Coase Theorem" which has had an important impact both on environmental economics and on public policy in the environmental domain. Under certain conditions, the market equilibrium in a cap-and-trade system will be cost-effective and independent of the initial...

We present a model of altruistically-minded-yet rational-players contributing to a public good. A key feature is the tension between altruism and "crowding-out" effects (players' efforts are strategic substitutes). We find that more altruistic behaviour can raise or reduce welfare, depending on...

Policymakers are engaged in a continuing, thorough reexamination of how national and state governments regulate areas ranging from telecommunications to the environment. So extensive is the questioning of the familiar, and so daring some of the proposed and actual changes, that the movement...