Why Economists support Free Trade

Recent Articles

• Should the government subsidize Green Jobs?

  March 15, 2010 in Economics - General

  The Economist has a debate between Van Jones and Andrew P. Morriss on the value of subsidizing green jobs.  Mr. Jones is the author of the book, “The Green-Collar Economy”and Mr. Morriss is a professor of law at the University of Illinois.  Some highlights: Mr. Jones: The markets for new energy sources are being strangled by government support for old energy sources…Governments spend billions of dollars subsidising Big Oil companies and other polluters. And power grids were designed to service huge, centralised power plants, not to link multiple points of distributed, intermittent renewable sources of energy.  We need deft government action to address these challenges and create the conditions for a multibillion-dollar clean-tech energy boom. Mr. Morriss Public choice theory identified a key insight about government in the 1960s and subsequent work has repeatedly demonstrated its truth. Concentrated, organised interest groups (oil companies, solar power companies, etc get benefits from governments at the expense of diverse, dispersed groups (the general public)… We can spur innovation and investment without the problems Mr Jones’s special-interest approach creates. Professor Jonathan Adler argues in Eyes on a Climate Prize (working paper) that if Congress provided prizes modelled on the Ansari X Prize for spaceflight, it would avoid many problems of political manipulation because prizes impose costs only when they produce results…Prizes “allow the government to establish a goal without being prescriptive as to how that goal should be met or who is in the best position to meet it.”

• Does spending improve outcomes?

  March 12, 2010 in P4P, Public Policy, Quality

  From a paper by Weinstein and Skinner (NEJM 2010): “Moreover, there is considerable variation in health care expenditures and a weak or even negative association between spending and outcomes, such as mortality at the regional …

• Comparative Effectiveness vs. Cost Effectiveness Research

  March 11, 2010 in Public Policy, Quality

  Comparative Effectiveness has been a hot topic in health services research. According to a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, “the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 authorizes the expenditure …

• 100th Edition of the CoR plus other links

  March 10, 2010 in Carnivals, Current Events

  Russell Hutchinson presents the 100th edition of the Cavalcade of Risk. Here are some other links of interest German Ministry of Health considers a 20-30% cut in hospital beds….

• “The country’s dismal rates of vaginal birth after Caesarean”

  March 9, 2010 in Nonphysician Clinicians, Physician Compensation

  From the N.Y. Times: The national Caesarean rate, 31.8 percent, has been rising steadily for the last 11 years and is fed by repeat patients. Critics say that doctors are performing too many Caesareans, needlessly …