March 24, 2008
February 25, 2008
Pharmaceutical marketing
It's worse than wasteful. And $70 billion is a lot of money. It wouldn't be necessary if we made physicians keep up with the literature.
February 24, 2008
Economic regulation, safety regulation, social insurance, public services, and torts
To get the benefits of high economic flexibility without the human costs, combine generous provision of public services, a strong social safety net, and tight regulation of conduct that puts health and safety at risk with loose economic regulation and tort reform.
February 22, 2008
December 13, 2007
Concerning feasibility
"Zero energy consumption" as a national goal is a physical impossibility. "Zero energy imports" as a national goal is an economic, political, and administrative impossibility. Social constraints are no less real than physical constraints. Promising the impossible is a form of lying.
December 08, 2007
Rent control v. subsidy for long-term residence
Rent control has evil results. But long-term residents of a neighborhood contribute to social capital. Why not subsidize them?
September 24, 2007
"Education for judgment"
Barbara Nelson: Policy school "is about balancing goods and bads under uncertainty."
September 14, 2007
Small price
John Boehner's right; there are things worth spending $1 trillion on. Any chance he'll notice that not all of those worthwhile expenditures involve killing people?
August 20, 2007
"Military spending is free!"
Jim Henley points to a journalistic convention with major political and policy consequences: politicians can propose huge amounts of military spending (but not domestic spending or foreign aid) without ever being asked by a reporter who's going to pay for it. And Hilzoy notes a similar convention: "hawkish" equals "serious," no matter how crazy the hawkish opinions actually are.
July 30, 2007
July 29, 2007
Why Has Relative Deprivation Always Been a Fringe Concept?
Relative deprivation isn't about envy. It's the natural result of the effect of context on evaluation.
July 13, 2007
Making old, poor smokers pay for children's health care
Elderly smokers damage their lungs. That's not a good reason to make them pay through the nose.
June 26, 2007
Do U.S. consumers support world pharmaceutical innovation?
Probably. That's not a reason not to try to squeeze down on drug prices, but it is a reason to worry about the effects of that squeeze on innovation.
June 25, 2007
Bonds instead of filters for spam control
Sounds like a good idea. But how is someone with a Yahoo email account supposed to post a bond?
May 17, 2007
Efficiency, equality, and education
Is the social return on education below the private return? There's reason to think so.
May 10, 2007
Are our moral intuitions irrelevant?
Mark argued this morning (follow-up here) that it is neither irrational nor morally wrong for Americans to place greater weight on the well-being of their fellow citizens than on that of unknown persons abroad when thinking about the desirability of expanded global trade. This observation will draw fire from consequentialist moral philosophers, who insist that the right course of action...
The scope of the moral community: an exchange
Alex Tabarrok and I discuss the tension between overcoming individual selfishness and avoiding the bad consequences of collective selfishness.
May 09, 2007
Trade and the collective-action problem
No, it's not irrational or morally wrong for Americans to care more about the well-being of other Americans than about the well-being of Belgians, any more than it's irrational or morally wrong for parents to care more for their own children than for other children. Local social capital is valuable, and ought to be tended.
March 06, 2007
The Maher-Cheney flap
Maher owes Cheney an apology. I hate to say it, because I hate to admit that there's anything too mean to say about that sumbitch, but Maher crossed the line.
February 10, 2007
(Bad) benefit-cost analysis and the HPV vaccine
One more silly argument against (quasi) mandating vaccination for the Human Papilloma Virus.
January 20, 2007
Price and cost in health care (cont'd)
Mike O'Hare is right to insist on the distinction between price and cost. But it's also necessary to distinguish average cost from marginal cost, and that's hard. Health care isn't the only way, or even the best way, to improve health, but getting a handle on health-care finance is essential to creating economic security.
January 14, 2007
Nice work, if you can get it
I love the Hacker plan for healthcare: set up a new federal insurance plan like Medicare which anyone could join, and require employers to either offer equivalent coverage or kick in to that plan. But I can't make the numbers add.
December 07, 2006
For fossil-fuel taxation
Gasoline demand is pretty inelastic in the short run, much more elastic in the longer run. And the producers wind up paying some of the tax.
November 12, 2006
Risk-spreading and the entrepreneurial spirit
Social insurance encourages entrepreneurship by making entrepreneurial failure less personally catastrophic.
November 11, 2006
Open up the VA health care system?
Apparently the VA has figured out how to deliver decent-quality service at reasonable cost. Should we let non-veterans pay for access to the VA health care system?
November 10, 2006
CAFE Pile-On
I agree with Mark and Mike that CAFE standards are a terrible tool for the goal of reducing global warming. Global warming is caused by burning carbon-based fuels. Therefore, you want to make burning those fuels more expensive. The simplest way to do so, and the way that also raises money for public programs, is a tax on carbon. Period....
The carbon-for-payroll tax trade
A carbon tax is a nice idea substantively. Pairing it with reducing the burden of payroll taxes might even make it palatable politically.
October 05, 2006
Concerning organizational recklessness
Tom Schelling explains the Enron affair, the war in Iraq, and the Foley Follies: an organization may act recklessly not because it's full of reckless people, but because it's so full of cowards that no one dares say, "We can't get away with this."
September 08, 2006
Why cost-effectiveness is sometimes the wrong decision rule
Federal transit-funding rules embody an elementary blunder in policy analysis: using cost-effectiveness in a situation where there are non-resource costs. The decision to build an elevated rail line to Dulles Airport, rather than tunneling under Tyson's Corner, is an example of how bad analysis leads to bad choices.
May 24, 2006
The rising cost of K-12 education
The schools used to get a massive implicit subsidy in the form of women and African-Americans who couldn't get good non-teaching jobs due to employment discrimination. That's gone. To maintain quality is going to cost more money.
March 28, 2006
Global warming: the case for inaction
As a teaching case, I need a short statement of the case against doing expensive things now to prevent global warming. I've written one up, and am looking for comments as to its accuracy as a statement of the case made by the opponents of taking strong action now.
The Public Fisc
Mark thinks that my public fisc problem can be solved through pay or play. That could be the case, although I have to admit to thinking that employer mandates as a tool for social policy are pretty lousy. There really is no good reason to have health care delivered through private employers in the first place. Not only that, if...
Galt, Kerry, the public fisc, and health care innovation
Jane Galt corrects me: her plan isn't John Kerry's. And Steve Teles is right: giving health care quality and innovation priority over cost control makes sense only if we can unload the health-care burden from public budgets.
Let 'er Rip on Health Care Spending? I Don't Buy It
Just below, Mark quotes Jane Galt to the effect that "health spending is great! What's the problem?" It might be that, in a pure utility maximization sense, health spending is not a problem (although on this I'm not even sure). But we're not in that pure state. First, a large amount of health care is funded by corporations (albeit subsidized...
Jane Galt asks the right question
What do we want to spend our money on that's better than health care?
January 03, 2006
Too poor to keep breathing?
In a market-based society, money conveys lots of advantages. What's wrong with letting money decide who gets kept on life suport and who has the plug pulled? Lots, as it turns out.
January 01, 2006
Paying for vaccines
If we rely on the patent system to finance the development of an AIDS vaccine, either the price of the resulting vaccine will be too high, leading to preventable deaths, or the incentive for research will be too low, leading to preventable deaths. Either the vaccine needs to be developed with public money, or we need to offer a huge prize to whoever invents a vaccine. In either case, the medicine can then be sold at is (probably low) marginal cost of production and distribution.
December 19, 2005
Hedonic pricing and lousy customer service
Jane Galt tells a sad tale about trying to deal with Dell. Doesn't this sort of thing belong in the hedonic price indices?
December 16, 2005
Spending, saving, happiness, and policy
"Jane Galt" channels Robert Frank, without entirely intending to.
December 09, 2005
"Bioethics" vs. common sense
Who could be against a system to match people who need a kidney with people willing to donate one? A bioethicist. Who else?
November 23, 2005
When are tax cuts for the rich bad even for the rich?
When what they lose in public services is more important than what they can buy with the extra cash flow.
November 08, 2005
Nix the first six update:
Nix all eight!
Negotiated discounts on prescription drugs sounds like a good idea. Bypassing the legislative process to legislate by initiative is generally a bad one.
November 07, 2005
October 26, 2005
One more reason
to move to single-payer health insurance
The current system gives employers a strong incentive to discriminate against employees with health problems. Wal-Mart has figured that out. Isn't it odd that conservatives make so much of a fuss about moral hazard (which is a real problem, despite Malcolm Gladwell's skepticism) but never seem to have heard of adverse selection?...
September 15, 2005
The devil in the details
Chester Ford, a second year MPP student at UCLA, explains why my idea about publishing missed-connection data along with on-time performance data probably wouldn't work: To get the information on how many connections are missed included in the delay database would require information on specific passengers. However, the agency charged with collecting the data is not allowed to collect or...
September 13, 2005
Perverse incentives Dep't
Scoring airlines on on-time departures and not on missed connections discourages holding connecting flights. Why hasn't that occurred to someone at the FAA?
September 01, 2005
GWB, gasoline prices, and demagogy
GWB is against "price-gouging." Does he understand that the alternative to rising gasoline prices in the face of a supply shortfall is a physical shortage and either rationing or long lines at the pump? Probably. His cynicism is truly breathtaking.
August 31, 2005
Defying Mother Nature
How should we treat private decisions to live in the path of predictable natural disasters?
August 30, 2005
Katrina and global warming
Yes, New Orleans is being flooded partly because people drive SUV's. Deal with it.
August 05, 2005
Thanks for nothing, FCC
The FCC has moved to create a virtual duopoly in high-speed internet access, by deciding that local phone companies don't have to let competing providers such as Earthlink offer service over phone lines. So your choice will be between your phone company and your cable company, which no doubt will, over time, learn to do the collusive-pricing dance without actually...
July 03, 2005
Housing prices and population growth
Low housing prices go along with rapid population growth because low housing prices attract population. No puzzle there.
June 12, 2005
The TGIF problem
Americans' reluctance to postpone retirement says something about their attitudes toward their work.
May 05, 2005
Cheap talk dep't
No, Mr. President, wishing for oil prices to come down isn't really the same as acting to reduce oil prices.
April 30, 2005
A vaccine against tooth decay?
Looks as if it's feasible. I think we should spend the money to get it done.
April 28, 2005
April 27, 2005
The battle of the bulge as a policy problem
Yes, obesity is a complex problem. But complex isn't the same as nonexistent, whatever the fast-food industry flacks pretend.
April 20, 2005
Tax inheritances as income?
Why discriminate against those who earn their money in favor of those who have it handed to them?
April 17, 2005
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