At $4, Everybody Gets Rational - Washingtonpost.com

Here is another excellent gas price article containing accurate economic principles.

Yes, the non-economist (ie, average citizen) doesn’t get it on how higher gas prices will ultimately lead a nation’s economy to conservation, energy independence and efficiency in the long run.

Hey, I’ll be honest: I don’t like higher gas prices any more than I do going to the dentist, but I am glad they are rising as I see and read about SUV purchases falling off a cliff, driving habits changing right before my very eyes, and the quantity demanded for gasoline falling fast.

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER | Posted Friday, June 06, 2008

So now we know: The price point is $4.

At $3 a gallon, Americans just grin and bear it, suck it up, and, while complaining profusely, keep driving like crazy.

At $4, it is a world transformed. Americans become rational creatures. Mass transit ridership is at a 50-year high. Driving is down 4%. (Any U.S. decline is something close to a miracle.) Hybrids and compacts are flying off the lots. SUV sales are in free fall.

The wholesale flight from gas guzzlers is stunning in its swiftness, but utterly predictable. Everything has a price point. Remember that “love affair” with SUVs? Love, it seems, has its price too.

America’s sudden change in car-buying habits makes suitable mockery of that absurd debate Congress put on last December on fuel efficiency standards. At stake was precisely what miles-per-gallon average would every car company’s fleet have to meet by precisely what date.

It was one out-of-a-hat number (35 mpg) compounded by another (by 2020). It involved, as always, dozens of regulations, loopholes and throws at a dartboard. And we already knew from past history what the fleet average number does.

When oil is cheap and everybody wants a gas guzzler, fuel efficiency standards force manufacturers to make cars that nobody wants to buy. When gas prices go through the roof, this agent of inefficiency becomes an utter redundancy.

At $4 a gallon, the fleet composition is changing spontaneously and overnight, not over the 13 years mandated by Congress. (Even Stalin had the modesty to restrict himself to five-year plans.)

Just Tuesday, GM announced that it would shutter four SUV and truck plants, add a third shift to its compact and midsize sedan plants in Ohio and Michigan, and green-light for 2010 the Chevy Volt, an electric hybrid.

Some things, like renal physiology, are difficult. Some things, like Arab-Israeli peace, are impossible. And some things are preternaturally simple. You want more fuel-efficient cars? Don’t regulate. Don’t mandate. Don’t scold. Don’t appeal to the better angels of our nature. Do one thing:

Hike the cost of gas until you find the price point.

Unfortunately, instead of hiking the price ourselves by means of a gasoline tax that could be instantly refunded to the American people in the form of lower payroll taxes, we let the Saudis, Venezuelans, Russians and Iranians do the taxing for us — and pocket the money that the tax would have recycled back to the American worker.

This is insanity. For 25 years and with utter futility (starting with “The Oil-Bust Panic,” the New Republic, February 1983), I have been advocating the cure: a U.S. energy tax as a way to curtail consumption and keep the money at home.

In May 2004 (and again in November 2005), I called for “the government — through a tax — to establish a new floor for gasoline,” by fully taxing any drop in price below a certain benchmark.

The point was to suppress demand and to keep the savings (from any subsequent world price drop) at home in the U.S. Treasury rather than going abroad. At the time, oil was $41 a barrel. It is now $123.

But instead of doing the obvious — tax the damn thing — we go through spasms of destructive alternatives, such as efficiency standards, ethanol mandates and now a crazy carbon cap-and-trade system the Senate debated last week. These are infinitely complex mandates for inefficiency and invitations to corruption. But they have a singular virtue: They hide the cost to the American consumer.

Want to wean us off oil? Be open and honest. The British are paying $8 a gallon for petrol. Goldman Sachs is predicting we will be paying $6 by next year. Why have the extra $2 (above the current $4) go abroad? Have it go to the U.S. Treasury as a gasoline tax and be recycled back into lower payroll taxes.

Announce a schedule of gas tax hikes of 50 cents every six months for the next two years. And put a tax floor under $4 gasoline, so that as high gas prices transform the U.S. auto fleet, change driving habits and thus hugely reduce U.S. demand — and bring down world crude oil prices — the American consumer and the American economy reap all of the benefit.

Herewith concludes my annual exercise in futility. By the time I advocate the tax floor again next year, you’ll be paying for gas in bullion.

Eight reasons you’ll rejoice when we hit $8-a-gallon gasoline - MarketWatch - by Chris Plummer

I selected this article because I really believe in it. It wasn’t until I became a fan of studying economics that I began to believe that rising gas prices are in the LONG TERM ECONOMIC INTEREST of the US economy as these higher prices will incent consumers and businesses to move towards alternate forms of fuels.

I am also no longer in support of US offshore drilling, not because I am an environmentalist, but an economist that understands that it will be necessary to take higher, painful increases in petroleum to incent businesses and consumers to pursue alternative energy and more efficient transportation solutions. Voluntary conservation or asking oil companies to pursue alternative fuel development is nice in concept, but poor in results.

I now root for “steadily climbing oils prices” to provide greater incentive to move faster to more efficient forms of transportation and spawn alternative energy solutions. It’s a little like going to the dentist: it’s not fun, but it is necessary and will leave us in better condition when its over.

For one of the nastiest substances on earth, crude oil has an amazing grip on the globe. We all know the stuff’s poison, yet we’re as dependent on it as our air and water supplies — which, of course, is what oil is poisoning.

Shouldn’t we be technologically advanced enough here in the 21st Century to quit siphoning off the pus of the Earth? Regardless whether you believe global warming is threatening the planet’s future, you must admit crude is passé.

Americans should be celebrating rather than shuddering over the arrival of $4-a-gallon gasoline. We lived on cheap gas too long, failed to innovate and now face the consequences of competing for a finite resource amid fast-expanding global demand.

A further price rise as in Europe to $8 a gallon — or $200 and more to fill a large SUV’s tank — would be a catalyst for economic, political and social change of profound national and global impact. We could face an economic squeeze, but it would be the pain before the gain.

The U.S. economy absorbed a tripling in gas prices in the last six years without falling into recession, at least through March. Ravenous demand from China and India could see prices further double in the next few years — and jumpstart the overdue process of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels.
Consider the world of good that would come of pricing crude oil and gasoline at levels that would strain our finances as much as they’re straining international relations and the planet’s long-term health:

1. RIP for the internal-combustion engine

They may contain computer chips, but the power source for today’s cars is little different than that which drove the first Model T 100 years ago. That we’re still harnessed to this antiquated technology is testament to Big Oil’s influence in Washington and success in squelching advances in fuel efficiency and alternative energy.

Given our achievement in getting a giant mainframe’s computing power into a handheld device in just a few decades, we should be able to do likewise with these dirty, little rolling power plants that served us well but are overdue for the scrap heap of history.

2. Economic stimulus

Necessity being the mother of invention, $8 gas would trigger all manner of investment sure to lead to groundbreaking advances. Job creation wouldn’t be limited to research labs; it would rapidly spill over into lucrative manufacturing jobs that could help restore America’s industrial base and make us a world leader in a critical realm.

The most groundbreaking discoveries might still be 25 or more years off, but we won’t see massive public and corporate funding of research initiatives until escalating oil costs threaten our national security and global stability — a time that’s fast approaching.

3. Wither the Middle East’s clout

This region that’s contributed little to modern civilization exercises inordinate sway over the world because of its one significant contribution — crude extraction. Aside from ensuring Israel’s security, the U.S. would have virtually no strategic or business interest in this volatile, desolate region were it not for oil — and its radical element wouldn’t be able to demonize us as the exploiters of its people.

In the near term, breaking our dependence on Middle Eastern oil may well require the acceptance of drilling in the Alaskan wilderness — with the understanding that costly environmental protections could easily be built into the price of $8 gas.

4. Deflating oil potentates

On a similar note, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently gained a platform on the world stage because of their nations’ sudden oil wealth. Without it, they would face the difficult task of building fair and just economies and societies on some other basis.
How far would their message resonate — and how long would they even stay in power — if they were unable to buy off the temporary allegiance of their people with vast oil revenues?

5. Mass-transit development

Anyone accustomed to taking mass transit to work knows the joy of a car-free commute. Yet there have been few major additions or improvements to our mass-transit systems in the last 30 years because cheap gas kept us in our cars.

Confronted with $8 gas, millions of Americans would board buses, trains, ferries and bicycles and minimize the pollution, congestion and anxiety spawned by rush-hour traffic jams. More convenient routes and scheduling would accomplish that.

6. An antidote to sprawl

The recent housing boom sparked further development of antiseptic, strip-mall communities in distant outlying areas. Making 100-mile-plus roundtrip commutes costlier will spur construction of more space-efficient housing closer to city centers, including cluster developments to accommodate the millions of baby boomers who will no longer need their big empty-nest suburban homes.

Sure, there’s plenty of land left to develop across our fruited plains, but building more housing around city and town centers will enhance the sense of community lacking in cookie-cutter developments slapped up in the hinterlands.

7. Restoration of financial discipline

Far too many Americans live beyond their means and nowhere is that more apparent than with our car payments. Enabled by eager lenders, many middle-income families carry two monthly payments of $400 or more on $20,000-plus vehicles that consume upwards of $15,000 of their annual take-home pay factoring in insurance, maintenance and gas.

The sting of forking over $100 per fill-up would force all of us to look hard at how much of our precious income we blow on a transport vehicle that sits idle most of the time, and spur demand for the less-costly and more fuel-efficient small sedans and hatchbacks that Europeans have been driving for decades.

8. Easing global tensions

Unfortunately, we human beings aren’t so far evolved that we won’t resort to annihilating each other over energy resources. The existence of weapons of mass destruction aside, the present Iraq War could be the first of many sparked by competition for oil supplies.

Steep prices will not only chill demand in the U.S., they will more importantly slow China and India’s headlong rush to make the same mistakes we did in rapidly industrializing — like selling $2,500 Tata cars to countless millions of Indians with little concern for the environmental consequences. If we succeed in developing viable energy alternatives, they could be a key export in helping us improve our balance of trade with consumer-goods producers.

Additional considerations

Weaning ourselves off crude will hopefully be the crowning achievement that marks the progress of humankind in the 21st Century. With it may come development of oil-free products to replace the chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics, fertilizers and pesticides that now consume 16% of the world’s crude-oil output and are likely culprits in fast-rising cancer rates.

By its very definition, oil is crude. It’s time we develop more refined energy sources and that will not happen without a cost-driven shift in demand.

US Trio Wins Nobel prize By Vinnee Tong, NEW YORK (AP)

It is very exciting that three Economics professors from the US have received recognition from the Nobel Foundation and have been awarded the Nobel Economics prize. All three professors, including, 90 year old Emeritus Professor Leonid Hurwicz, have been working the since 1960’s investigating “how people’s knowledge and self-interest affect their behavior in the market or in social situations such as voting and labor negotiations.”

While some of these ideas will sound familiar to you now as an “experienced” AP Economics students, their “mechanism design theory” will be new to you. This theory builds on another theory that we will discuss later on this year, Game Theory. What I appreciate about the these three professors is that they have been dedicated to developing economic theories in order to understand real life situations. One professor has even applied his formula in such a way that he has written about how it can be used to rebuild the government in Iraq. Essentially, the three men studied how game theory can help determine the best, most efficient method for decision-making.

Essentially, the three men studied how game theory can help determine the best, most efficient method for decision-making. Continue Reading »

Freakonomics - Laid-Back Labor - New York Times

If you’ve spent much time on this blog, you know that I’m a fan of the boys at Freakonomics, the book that so aptly applies economic theory to the seemingly benign happenings of everyday life. In the article above the Freakonomists examine the difference between labor and leisure. I thought this article did a good job of introducing some of the basic concepts behind how economists think about the world.

As this year’s AP students begin to delve into the world of economics, one of the early topics they study will be the concept of humans as rational beings engaged in the constant pursuit of happiness. According to our text, “Economics assumes that human behavior reflects ‘rational self-interest.’ Individuals look for and pursue opportunities to increase their utility.”

If, as economists say, the purpose of life it the pursuit of utility, then presumably work is only a tedious but necessary means to an end, which we assume to be leisure. So why, as pointed out in the article above, do so many people willingly choose to spend so much time and money doing things like cooking, knitting, gardening, working in the yard, and other tasks that appear to be work, when they could easily pay others to do these menial chores for them, thus giving them more time for leisure? As the authors say, “Isn’t it puzzling that so many middle-aged Americans are spending so much of their time and money performing menial labors when they don’t have to?”

Where exists the line between work and leisure? As summer comes to an end and we in education head back to work, this seems like an apt question to explore from an economic perspective. Here’s the author’s view:

“Economists have been trying for decades to measure how much leisure time people have and how they spend it, but there has been precious little consensus. This is in part because it’s hard to say what constitutes leisure and in part because measurements of leisure over the years have not been very consistent.

Economists typically separate our daily activities into three categories: market work (which produces income), home production (unpaid chores) and pure leisure. How, then, are we to categorize knitting, gardening and cooking? While preparing meals at home can certainly be much cheaper than dining out and therefore viewed as home production, what about the ‘cooking for fun’ factor?”

Why a professional (let’s say a lawyer) who spends 50 hours a week in his office, earning somewhere in the range of $100 an hour for his labor, would choose to spend two hours mowing his lawn on a Saturday, rather than hiring the neighbor boy to do it for him, truly poses an economic paradox. Let me illustrate: If this man’s labor is worth $100 and hour, then we can calculate the opportunity cost of mowing his own lawn as $200 plus the value to this man of the leisure he could have enjoyed by not mowing his lawn. The man probably could have hired the neighbor boy to mow his lawn for $20, which would have then freed him up to pursue his own leisure activities (reading, working out, watching a movie, etc.) during those two hours, and compared to the $200 value of his own labor the $20 seems like a bargain. So is a lawyer who mows his own lawn acting irrationally?

It would seem the line separating leisure from work has blurred in modern times. A hundred years ago an activity such as sewing or caring for a lawn would certainly have been viewed as work, but today the behavior of millions of Americans would indicate otherwise. As a science rooted in the belief that humans are rational pursuers of their own happiness and leisure, the paradox of the lawn mowing lawyer poses several interesting questions for students of economics.

Discussion Questions:

According to chapter one of our text (McConnell and Brue’s Economics, 17th Edition), “Purposeful (rational) behavior does not assume that people and institutions are immune from faulty logic and therefore are perfect decision makers. They sometimes make mistakes.”

1. Is the lawyer who mows his own lawn defying a fundamental rule of economics, that people act rationally?
2. Is he making a mistake by not hiring the neighbor boy to do it for him?
3. What is the economic definition of utility? What is an example of something that provides you with utility (I’m not looking for “an SUV”)?
4. What is meant by opportunity cost? Give an example of a decision you have made recently that involved an opportunity cost.
5. How is the lawyer’s decision whether or not to mow his lawn rooted in marginal analysis? Describe a choice you’ve made recently that involved marginal analysis.
6. Does the article above represent a macroeconomic or a microeconomic scenario? How do you know?
7. How does the lawyer’s decision about whether to mow his own lawn illustrate the individual’s economizing problem as described in chapter one of the text?

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Freakonomics: Monkey Business: Keith Chen’s Monkey Research

No I’m not talking about the latest freshman class at an Ivy League school… rather a group of monkeys at Yale that have been taught how to use money:

The essential idea was to give a monkey a dollar and see what it did with it. The currency Chen settled on was a silver disc, one inch in diameter, with a hole in the middle — ”kind of like Chinese money,” he says. It took several months of rudimentary repetition to teach the monkeys that these tokens were valuable as a means of exchange for a treat and would be similarly valuable the next day. Having gained that understanding, a capuchin would then be presented with 12 tokens on a tray and have to decide how many to surrender for, say, Jell-O cubes versus grapes. This first step allowed each capuchin to reveal its preferences and to grasp the concept of budgeting.

Turns out the law of Demand is not only true for humans but for monkeys too. When Chen “lowered the price of grapes”, monkeys would buy more grapes and less Jell-O, following the basic rule of utility maximization. Interestingly, the introduction of money led to more than just the simple exchanges of currency for candy and cucumber; the monkeys were also taught to gamble. Through their observations of several gambling scenarios, the researchers found monkeys tended to display “loss averse” behavior in games of chance, leading to an amusing conclusion:

The data generated by the capuchin monkeys, Chen says, ”make them statistically indistinguishable from most stock-market investors.”

Sadly, gambling was not the only vice that accompanied the introduction of money in to monkey society:

Then there is the stealing. Santos has observed that the monkeys never deliberately save any money, but they do sometimes purloin a token or two during an experiment.

But the debauchery does not stop with gambling and theft:

Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)

As if we needed any proof beyond the widespread immorality and loss of values that distinguish many rich human societies, the steep decline of monkey morality observed at Yale can only be attributed to the introduction of currency! The implications of the Yale study on economics are clear: humans are not necessarily unique in our understanding of currency as a means of exchange. As long as money has imbued human societies, the wont to enrich ourselves through immoral means such as gambling, theft and prostitution has stained civilizations from ancient Mesopotamia to modern America.

When taught to use money, a group of capuchin monkeys responded quite rationally to simple incentives; responded irrationally to risky gambles; failed to save; stole when they could; used money for food and, on occasion, sex. In other words, they behaved a good bit like the creature that most of Chen’s more traditional colleagues study: Homo sapiens.

To make a more poignant observation, one thing is clear and disturbing, among the human societies today, Americans are most like monkeys when it comes to saving.

Discussion Questions:

1. Of the various functions of money, which role does money play for monkeys?
2. What gives the money used by the monkeys its value?
3. Discuss the evidence from this article suggesting that monkeys follow the law of demand.
4. What is the utility maximization rule and what evidence from this article supports the suggestion that monkeys follow this rule?
5. How are monkeys more similar to American consumers than to, say, Japanese or Chinese consumers?

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