Competitively Priced Electricity Costs More, Studies Show – New York Times

The problem with monopolies, as our AP students have learned, is that a monopolistic firm, left to its own accord, will most likely choose to produce at an output level that is much lower and provide their product at a price that is much higher than would result from a purely competitive industry. A monopolist will produce where its price is greater than its marginal cost, indicating an under-allocation of resources towards the product. By restricting output and raising its price, the monopolist is assured maximum profits, but at the cost to society of less overall consumer surplus or welfare.

Unfortunately, in some industries, because of the wide range of output over which economies of scale are experienced, it sometimes makes the most sense for only one firm to participate. Such markets are called “natural monopolies” and some examples are cable television, utilities, natural gas, and other industries that have large economies of scale. (click graph to see full-sized)

Government regulators face a dilemma in dealing with natural monopolistic industries such as the electricity industry. A electricity company with a monopoly in a particular market will base its price and output decision on the profit maximization rule that all unregulated firms will; they’ll produce at the level where their marginal revenue is equal to their marginal cost. The problem is, for a monopolist its marginal revenue is less than the price it has to charge, which means that at the profit maximizing level of output (where MR=MC), marginal cost will be less than price: evidence of allocative inefficiency (i.e. not enough electricity will be produced and the price will be too high for some consumers to afford).

Here arises the need for government regulation. A government concerned with getting the right amount of electricity to the right number of people (allocative efficiency) may choose to set a price ceiling for electricity at the level where the price equals the firm’s marginal cost. This, however, will likely be below the firm’s average total cost (remember, ATC declines over a WIDE RANGE of output), a scenario which would result in losses for the firm, and may lead it to shut down altogether. So what most governments have done in the past is set a price ceiling where the price is equal to the firm’s average total cost, meaning the firm will “break even”, earning only a “normal profit”; essentially just enough to keep the firm in business; this is known as the “fair-return price”.

Below AP Economics teacher Jacob Clifford illustrates and explains this regulatory dilemma. Watch the video and see how he shows the effect of the two price control options on the firm’s output and the price in the market.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The article above examines the differences in the price of electricity in states which regulate their electricity prices and states that have adopted “market” or unregulated pricing, in which firms are free to produce at the MR=MC level:

“The difference in prices charged to industrial companies in market states compared with those in regulated ones nearly tripled from 1999 to last July, according to the analysis of Energy Department data by Marilyn Showalter, who runs Power in the Public Interest, a group that favors traditional rate regulation.

The price spread grew from 1.09 cents per kilowatt-hour to 3.09 cents, her analysis showed. It also showed that in 2006 alone industrial customers paid $7.2 billion more for electricity in market states than if they had paid the average prices in regulated states.”

The idea of deregulation of electricity markets was that removing price ceilings would lead to greater economic profits for the firms, which would subsequently attract new firms into the market. More competitive markets should then drive prices down towards the socially-optimal price, benefiting consumers and producers by forcing them to be more productively efficient in order to compete (remember “Economic Darwinism”?). It appears, however, that higher prices have not, as hoped, led to lower prices:

“Since 1999, prices for industrial customers in deregulated states have risen from 18 percent above the national average to 37 percent above,” said Mrs. Showalter, an energy lawyer and former Washington State utility regulator.

In regulated states, prices fell from 7 percent below the national average to 12 percent below, she calculated…

In market states, electricity customers of all kinds, from homeowners to electricity-hungry aluminum plants, pay $48 billion more each year for power than they would have paid in states with the traditional system of government boards setting electric rates…”

That $48 billion represents higher costs of production for other firms that require large inputs of energy in their own production, higher electricity bills for cash-strapped households, and greater profits and shareholder dividends for the powerful firms that provide the power. On the bright side, higher prices for electricity should lead to more careful and conservative use of power, reducing Americans’ impact on global warming (since the vast majority of the country’s power is generated using fossil fuels).

Here arises another question? Should we be opposed to higher profits for powerful electricity firms if their profits result in much needed energy conservation and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions? An environmental economist might argue that if customers are to pay higher prices for their energy, it might as well be in the form of a carbon tax, which rather than increasing profits for a monopolistic firm would generate revenue for the government. In theory tax revenue could be used to subsidize or otherwise promote the development and use of “green energies”.

Whether customers paying higher prices for traditionally under-priced electricity is a good or bad thing depends on your views of conservation. But whether higher profits for a powerful electricity company are more desirable than increased tax revenue for the government are beneficial for society or not seems clear. If we’re paying higher prices, the resulting revenue is more likely to be put towards socially desirable uses if it’s in the government’s hands rather than in the pockets of shareholders of fossil fuel burning electricity monopolies.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do governments regulate the prices in industries such as natural gas and electricity?
2. Why would a state government think that de-regulation of the electricity industry might eventually result in lower prices in the long-run?

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Related posts:

1. China’s “visible hand” clamps down on rising prices
2. Question: Why would a firm voluntarily tax its own customers?
3. Deflation: why lower prices spell doom for any economy!

China rations diesel as record oil hits supplies | Markets | Reuters

In the fall of 2007 I was living in Shanghai, China. At the time, oil prices were hitting record levels world wide, leading to rising petrol prices for drivers in most places.  However, at the time,  I began witnesing an unusual site on my taxi rides into the city of Shanghai: as our taxi passed petrol station after petrol station, I observed dozens of blue trucks (the ubiquitous medium of transporting good from Shanghai’s factories to her ports) spilling out of gas station parking lots into the road, apparently queued, waiting for a spot at the pump. I had never seen such long lines at any of the petrol stations around Shanghai before, and I began to wonder as to the reasons for these crazy long lines!

Well, an article at the time helped solve the riddle of the long lines. As it turns out, there was a simple explanation rooted in the principles of supply and demand that any first semester AP or IB economics student would understand! The Chinese government had been forced to ration petrol (limiting the amount that a driver can buy at one go) due to the shortages resulting from the government’s price controls in the petrol market.

Truck drivers reported long queues at petrol stations along a national highway linking Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, with each truck getting 100 yuan ($13) worth of diesel, or around 20 litres, per visit at a state-run station and 40 litres at a private kiosk…

“What’s wrong with the oil market? Our drivers had to queue the whole night for only a small amount of fill, slowing the traffic by almost one day,” said Gao Meili, who manages a logistics company.

China is a major importer of oil. With an economy growing around 12% in 2007, much of the country’s growth depended on the availability of crude oil at reasonable prices, which China’s oil refining firms turn into diesel and petrol, needed to get Chinese manufactured products from factory to port and from port to overseas consumers.

The problem with the oil market in China, however, was that as “Chinese refiners cannot pass the souring crude costs on to consumers.” Oil is an input needed to make a finished product, diesel. As the price of oil rose in 2007 (it reached a record of $92 per barrel in October of that year), the resource costs to petrol and diesel producers also rose, shifting the supply of petrol and diesel to the left, putting upward pressure on the equilibrium price.   As a first semester AP or IB student knows, resource costs are a determinant of supply, and as oil (the main resource in the production of petrol and diesel) increased in price, the supply of these important commodities invariably decreased.

In a free market, a decrease in supply leads to an increase in price. Herein lies the answer to the riddle of the long lies at petrol stations in Shanghai: the Chinese petrol and diesel market is not a free market. The government plays an active role in controlling prices paid by consumers for the finished product refiners are producing, petrol fuel:

Beijing fears stoking already high inflation and rigidly caps pump fuel rates to shield users from a 50 percent rally in global oil so far this year.

As the costs to petrol and diesel producers rose in 2007, the government in Beijing took the side of consumers and forbade fuel producers from raising the price they charge consumers.  The Chinese government essentially imposed a price ceiling in the market for petrol. A price ceiling is a maximum price set by a government aimed at helping consumers by keeping essential commodities like fuel affordable. As we have learned this week in AP and IB Economics, price controls such as this end up hurting BOTH producers AND consumers, since they only lead to a dis-equilibrium in the market in which the quantity demanded for a product rises while the quantity supplied by firms falls. The shortage of petrol and diesel resulting from the government’s price control are the perfect explanation for the long lines of blue trucks and motor scooters at all the gas stations in Shanghai during October of 2007.

So why, exactly, does the government’s enforcement of a lower than equilibrium price result in such severe shortages that truck drivers are only allowed to pump 20 litres of petrol per visit and made to wait hours each time they need to refill? Below is a supply and demand diagram that illustrates the situation in the Chinese fuel market in 2007:

In the graph above, the supply of petrol has decreased due to the increasing cost of the main resource that goes into petrol, oil. This decrease in supply means petrol has become more scarce, and correspondingly the equilibrium price should rise. However, due to the government’s intervention in the petrol and diesel markets, the price was not allowed to rise and instead remained at the maximum price of Pc.

At the government-mandated maximum price of Pc, the quantity of fuel demanded by drivers far exceeds the quantity supplied by China’s petrol producers. The result is a shortage of petrol equal to Qd-Qs.

The government’s intention for keeping petrol prices low is clear: to make consumers happy and keep the costs of transportation among China’s manufacturers low so as to not risk a slow-down in economic growth in China. However, the net effect of the price controls is a loss of total welfare in the petrol market. Notice the colored areas in the graph above. These represent the effect on welfare (consumer and producer surplus) of the price control.

• The total areas of the green, orange and grey shapes represent the total amount of consumer and producer surplus in the petrol market assuming there were NO price controls. At a price of Pe, the quantity demanded and the quantity supplied are equal (at Qe) and the consumer surplus and producer surplus are maximized. The market is efficient at a price of Pe. Neither shortages nor surpluses of petrol exist.
• However, at a price of Pc (the maximum price set by the government), the amount of petrol actually produced and consumed in the market is only Qs. Clearly, those who are able to buy petrol are better off, because they paid a lower price than they would have to without the price ceiling. But notice that there is a huge shortage of fuel now; many people who are willing and able to buy petrol at Pc simply cannot get the quantity they demand, because firms are simply not producing enough!
• The total consumer surplus changes to the area below the demand curve and above Pc, but only out to Qs. The green area represents the consumer surplus after the price control. It is not at all obvious whether or not consumers are actually better off with the price ceiling.
• The total producer surplus clearly shrinks to the orange triangle below Pc and above the supply curve. Petrol producers are definitely worse off due to the government’s action.
• So how is the market as a whole affected? The black triangle represents the net welfare loss of the government’s price control. Notice that with a price of Pe, the black triangle would be added to consumer and producer surplus, but with a disequilibrium in the market at Pc, the black triangle is welfare lost to society.

Price controls by government’s clearly have an intended purpose of helping either consumers (in the case of a maximum price or price ceiling) or producers (in the case of a minimum price or price floor).  But the effect is always predictable from an economist’s perspective. A price set by a government above or below the equilibrium price will always lead to either a shortage or a surplus of the product in question. In addition, there will always be a loss of total welfare resulting from price controls, meaning that society as a whole is worse off than it would be without government intervention.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why has the supply of petrol decreased?
2. With a fall in supply of a commodity like petrol, does the demand change, or the quantity demanded? What is the difference?
3. Define “consumer surplus” and “producer surplus”. Why does a government’s control of prices reduce the total welfare of consumers and producers in a market like petrol?
4. How would a government subsidy to petrol producers provide a more desirable solution to the high oil prices than the maximum price described in this post? In your notes, sketch a new market diagram for petrol and show the effects on supply, demand, price and quantity of a government subsidy to petrol producers. Does a subsidy create a loss of welfare? Why or why not?

Related posts:

1. The problem with price controls in Europe’s agricultural markets
2. Beijing caves in to the indisputable power of the MARKET!
3. So, how are those Zimbabweans doing under Mugabe’s price controls?

Inside Obama’s Green Budget – Forbes.com

Some say that Global Warming may be the greatest market failure of all. This podcast was originally broadcast in January of 2007 while George Bush was still in office. The commentator claims that global warming is “nothing but one giant market failure”, arguing that the United States therefore must get serious about tackling the problem.

The allocation of resources towards carbon emitting industries has almost undoubtedly contributed to the warming of the planet over the last half century. Only recently have governments begun taking active measures to reduce the impact of industry on the environment through greater regulation of polluting industries, employing corrective taxes in some instances and market-based approaches to pollution reduction in others.

US President Barack Obama, unlike his predecessor, appears to be serious about correcting the “market failure” represented by global warming:

Obama’s budget, announced Thursday, looks to fund a host of new energy programs, from carbon sequestration to electric transmission upgrades. It would also provide the EPA with a $10.5 billion budget for 2010, a 34% increase over the likely 2009 budget. Nineteen million dollars of that would be used to upgrade greenhouse gas reporting measures.

The Interior Department would get $12 billion for 2010. The agency would use part of the money to asses the availability of alternative energy resources throughout the country.

Funding comes from elaborate carbon “cap and trade” program, which puts a price on emitting pollution and is the core of Obama’s plans. Starting in 2012, the government would sell permits giving businesses the right to emit pollution, generating $646 billion in revenue through 2019.

During those years, the number of available permits would gradually decline, forcing businesses to buy the increasingly scarce, and costly, rights to pollute on an open market. Obama hopes that the rising cost of permits will encourage businesses to invest in clean technologies as a cheaper alternative to meeting pollution mandates, helping to cut greenhouse gas production to 14% below 2005 levels by 2020.

Below is a diagram that illustrates precisely how the Obama cap and trade plan is meant to work. Notice that between 2012 and 2020 the cost to firms of emitting pollution will increase dramatically, while at the same time the total amount of carbon emissions in the US economy will fall due to regular reductions in the number of permits issued to industry.

The Obama cap and trade scheme is not the first experiment with such a market based approach to externality reduction:

Europe established such a market in 2005. But some E.U. governments allocated too many credits at the outset, causing the value of some permits to fall by half and making it relatively easy for large polluters to simply buy credits rather than cut emissions. Overall emissions grew in 2005 and 2006. In 2008, E.U. emissions dropped 3%; 40% of that drop was attributed to the carbon trading scheme.

Europe’s cap and trade program took a few years before it began having any noticeable impact on the emission of carbon by European industry. While unpopular among the firms who are forced to pay to pollute, the fall in emissions in Europe shows that a market for carbon may be effective in forcing firms “internalize” the costs of carbon emissions, which until now have been born by society and the environment in the form of the negative effects of global warming.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do you think tradeable pollution permits are more politically viable than a direct tax on firms’ carbon emissions?
2. Why did Europe’s carbon emission permit market fail to reduce emissions over its first couple of years of implementation?
3. Is making firms pay to pollute a good idea in the middle of a recession? Do you think that we should even be worrying about the environment when millions of people are losing their jobs and entire industries are struggling to survive?

Related posts:

1. Reducing negative externalities – the European market for carbon emissions
2. Robert Reich on Obama’s “cap and trade” plan for the environment
3. Market Failure and the role of government in the economy ~ an introduction to Environmental Economics

Kite Powered Ship Sets Sail for Greener Futhre – Guardian.co.uk

A German engineer has given an old technology new life to help make trans-oceanic shipping greener and least costly.

A cargo ship pulled by a giant, parachute-shaped kite will leave Germany on Tuesday on a voyage that could herald a new “green” age of commercial sailing on the high seas.

The owners of the MS Beluga, a 462ft cargo vessel, will try to prove that modern steel ships can harness wind power and reduce their reliance on diesel engines.

During the journey from Bremen to Venezuela, the crew will deploy a SkySail, a 160 square metre kite which will fly more than 600ft above the vessel, where winds are stronger and more consistent than at sea level.

Its inventor, Stephan Wrage, a 34-year-old German engineer, claims the kite will significantly reduce carbon emissions, cutting diesel consumption by up to 20 per cent and saving £800 a day in fuel costs. He believes an even bigger kite, up to 5,000 square metres, could result in fuel savings of up to 35 per cent.

Here’s a thought… reduced fuel costs to trans-oceanic shipping companies should shift the supply of such services out, as the marginal cost of shipping falls. Greater supply will mean lower prices to customers demanding such services, moving downward along the demand curve, increasing the equilibrium quantity of trans-oceanic cargo journeys.

Question: Assume all cargo ships in the world eventually incorporate the sail technology, increasing the supply and reducing the price of shipping by an average of 20% and reducing the emission of greenhouse gases of vessels by an average of 20%. What would have to be true about the price elasticity of demand for trans-oceanic shipping in order for a 20% reduction in price to result in an overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by cargo ships? Depending on the answer to this question, this “green” technology could actually result in greater emissions of greenhouse gases by cargo ships.

Explain…

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PickensPlan

The Pickens Plan is an initiative put together by the hedge fund manager of BP capital Management T Boone Pickens. The plan puts forth a model to get America off its addiction to foreign oil and on a path towards sustainable energy sources produced in the US of A. Watch the following video and read through the following information and comment on the questions.

“America is addicted to foreign oil. It’s an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security. It touches every part of our daily lives and ties our hands as a nation and a people. In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil. Today it’s nearly 70% and growing.

As imports grow and world prices rise, the amount of money we send to foreign nations every year is soaring. At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone — that’s four times the annual cost of the Iraq war. Projected over the next 10 years the cost will be $10 trillion — it will be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind.

America uses a lot of oil. Every day 85 million barrels of oil are produced around the world. And 21 million of those are used here in the United States. That’s 25% of the world’s oil demand. Used by just 4% of the world’s population. The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone.”

THE PLAN

Discussion Quesitons

1. Is Pickens correct in saying that America’s addiction to foreign oil is a problem? Be sure to use the concept of comparative advantage and specialization in your answer.
2. If we assume it to be a problem, what solution would you recommend? Do you agree with Pickens?

Related posts:

1. McCain vs. Obama on the costs and benefits of free trade
2. Free Trade Debate: to what extent has globalization based on free trade contributed to global economic growth and development?
3. US / China Trade War – Could this be the beginning?

Bush, Democrats point fingers over energy crisis – Jul. 12, 2008

…apparently just over $4.00 per gallon of gasoline; at least according to the article above:

With gasoline prices above $4 a gallon, Bush and his Republican allies think Americans are more willing to allow drilling offshore and in an Alaska wildlife refuge that environmentalists have fought successfully for decades to protect.

Nearly half the people surveyed by the Pew Research Center in late June said they now consider energy exploration and drilling more important than conservation, compared with a little over a third who felt that way only five months ago. The sharpest shift in attitude came among political liberals.

The travesty of Americans’ attitude in favor of drilling and against conservation is the shortsightedness of it. Regardless of how many millions of acres of wilderness the government opens to drilling, gas and energy prices will only continue to rise over the long-run as emerging market economies like China’s will continually drive demand for energy higher and higher as growth rates remain above 8%.

America, in the mean time, with the largest per capita levels of energy consumption in the world (and some of the lowest gas prices), turns its back on conservation just when it is needed most. The cost to the environment, society and the bounteous wildlife that inhabit the vast tracts of land and sea that Congress is considering opening to exploitation by energy companies will create a permanent scar in one of the most valuable (and simultaneously undervalued) resources, its wilderness.

As my summer vacation approaches its end and I begin to think about another year of teaching Economics in international schools, I find myself reflecting on what’s most important in the world: to me, to my home country, to my fellow Americans, to the kids I teach and the students I will teach 10, 20, 30 years from now. I spend my summers in one of the most beautiful parts of this great country, the Pacific Northwest, where despite over a century of logging, mining, hunting and trapping, beautiful wilderness still remains. Only 2% of America’s original forests remain standing today. Countless species of predator and prey have been wiped out. There are around 300 wolves running wild here in Idaho, and thousands of citizens here are campaigning for a hunting season that will threaten to wipe out that great species once again. Clearcuts dot the landscape, proposed mines threaten watersheds and the wild Bull trout, an endangered species in the lakes and streams of Northern Idaho. Bears are put to death when the stumble into our yards, yet we turn more and more of their habitat into housing tracts every year.

Conservation is on my mind, and the news from Washington saddens me today, as I read that Americans concern themselves less and less with what I consider this country’s greatest resource, its wilderness, when times get the slightest bit difficult economically. As I prepare for another year of teaching Economics, this year at a new school in a new country, one where conservation is of the utmost importance, I will think about ways to incorporate more of an environmental economics perspective into this blog and my own teaching. As I prepare to leave my home in the mountains of Northern Idaho once again, I will cherish what little wilderness remains in this beautiful country, and try to make as little impact as I can on an individual level towards the continued destruction and exploitation of nature that characterizes the path that Americans seem to be choosing in this time of economic hardship.

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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.

Related posts:

1. $8-a-gallon gas: A New Perspective
2. Price controls in the Chinese Petrol market – or why you may have to wait in line to fill your gas tank!
3. Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act: aka the “STUPID” bill

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.

Related posts:

1. Gas Price Floor Should Be Set At $4 A Gallon

FT.com / Columnists / Wolfgang Munchau – Inflation and the lessons of the 1970s

It seem that everyone’s speculating about the US economy today. Recession or no recession, that is the question. The economy has even surpassed the Iraq War as the number one issue in the US presidential race! John McCain, who has publicly admitted that economics is not his strong suit, may just find himself in trouble in a general election where the most important concern among voters is the economic situation.

So what IS that situation, anyway? Is the US in a recession? In other words, has real gross domestic, or total output in the US economy, actually declined over the last six months? Technically, the answer is no. My fellow blogger, Steve Latter, explains this clearly here. What is true, on the other hand, is that the current situation shares many similarities to the global economic slowdown that did occur in the 1970s.

In 1973 OPEC, the newly formed oil cartel consisting at the time of only Arab states, reduced its output of oil and cut off exports to the United States in response to US support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, in which the Israelis officially occupied the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza and seized the Golan Heights from the sovereign nation of Syria. To punish the US for its position on this conflict, OPEC cut off supplies of oil to the west, driving gas and energy prices upwards by 70%, triggering a supply shock characterized by a decline in total output and an increase in both unemployment and inflation, a phenomenon known as stagflation: a macroeconomic policy maker’s worst nightmare.

Recently the world has seen a similar (albeit of a different cause) rise in the price of oil and energy prices. Today the rise in energy prices is driven primarily by rising demand, rather than reduced supply (since the 1970s the OPEC cartel has grown to include many non-Arab nations, making it harder to achieve collusion to restrict output and drive up oil prices). Global demand for oil has risen steadily, driven ever higher due to rapid growth in China and other developing nations, and exacerbated by the falling value of the dollar, the currency in which oil prices are denominated.

The supply shocks of today have combined with falling aggregate demand in the US due to weak consumer spending to slow real growth rates to nearlry 0%. So technically, the US has avoided a recession, but the effect on American workers and consumers may be just as painful as the real recession of the 1970s. In order to prevent the “r” word from becoming a reality today, central banks (including the US Fed) have eased money supplies, lowering interest rates, fueling even greater increases in the price level.

…the global weighted average inflation rate will be 5.4 per cent this year, while the global money market interest rate is currently only 4.3 per cent. This means that global short-term real interest rates are negative – at a time when inflation is rapidly accelerating. As monetary policy has been excessively accommodating for more than a decade, inflationary pressures have built up in the global economy.

Central bankers like Ben Bernanke have to make tough decisions sometimes, weighing the trade-off between unemployment and inflation, and determining their monetary policies based on whatever they deem to be the “lesser of two evils”. Rising energy prices have forced firms to cut either cut back their production and raise the price of their products, both actions that result in less overall spending and output in the economy. Falling house prices have led consumers to cut back their own spending, further reducing demand for firms’ output. These factors have all pushed the unemployment rate from around 4.8% a year ago to 5.1% today, which combined with an estimated additional 3-5% of American workers having dropped out of the workforce, (referred to by the Department of Labor as “discouraged workers”) paints a pretty ugly picture of the reality for the American worker today.

The harsh reality of the weak labor market has led Mr. Bernanke and the Fed to pursue an expansionary monetary policy aimed at avoiding further increases in the unemployment rate and decreases in the GDP growth rate. Expansionary monetary policy means lower interest rates, with the goal being increased consumption and investment, both factors that could worsen the inflation problem already experienced thanks to the global supply shock. Evidence indicates that the inflation problem, even in the US where slow growth usually leads to lower price levels, is not going away:

In the US, a survey-based measure of inflationary expectations recently showed an increase to more than 5 per cent. I would estimate there are now several hundred basis points of difference between the current Fed funds rate and an interest rate that would be consistent with price stability in the medium term.

…meaning the Fed, in its attempt to avoid recession and rising unemployment, has created a condition where real interest rates are actually negative, a highly inflationary condition. All this wouldn’t be so bad if wages in the US were rising along with the price level. This however, does not appear to be happening:

The main difference between the situation in the 1970s and now is today’s absence of wage inflation, which explains why absolute inflation rates are a little more moderate. I guess this is probably because of some combination of deregulated labour markets and globalisation. But the lack of wage-push inflation is not necessarily good news. Falling real wages mean falling disposable income and tighter credit conditions mean less borrowing for consumption.

Rising prices for energy, transportation and food have put American households in a tough situation. In the past, periods of inflation have often been characterized by rising wages, meaning the full brunt of nominal price level increases was not entirely born by the American worker. Today, on the other hand, a recession has thus far been avoided, but the combination of record numbers of “discouraged workers”, rising unemployment and inflation may make the pain of our current economic situation just as real as recessions of the past.

In the words of billionaire investor and economic sage Warren Buffett just today:

“I believe that we are already in a recession… Perhaps not in the sense as defined by economists. … But people are already feeling the effects of a recession.”

“It will be deeper and longer than what many think,” he added.

Discussion Questions:

1. What is the difference between nominal and real GDP? Which must decline in order for the economy to be in a recession?
2. What impact do rising energy prices have on the behavior of individual firms?
3. Why are low interest rates likely to make the inflation problem even worse?

Related posts:

1. Unemployment and inflation: understanding the Fed’s balancing act
2. Doom and gloom in the headlines as US economy teters on edge of recession…
3. Stagflation – a blast from the past could mean trouble for US economy

Inflation gets a new focus along with recession worries – Feb. 21, 2008

As we begin our studies of the theories underlying the aggregate demand/aggregate supply model in AP Macroeconomics, it is useful to look in the news to see if we can try and understand how these theories apply to the real world. In the US, it appears as if a dangerous economic phenomena that plagued the country in the early 1970′s may be returning to wreak its havoc among households and policymakers.

Stagflation, “the unwanted combination of stagnant economic growth and destructive inflation”, has emerged in America today, in the face of weak aggregate demand and rising unemployment, combined with rising costs to firms thanks to energy costs and food prices.

Recession has been getting so much attention lately that it’s been easy to forget about the threats posed to the U.S. economy by inflation.But inflation worries are now back in focus in a major way. Oil prices hit a record of $101.32 a barrel in trading Wednesday, and was briefly above $100 again Thursday

Meanwhile, the Consumer Price Index, the government’s key inflation reading, showed a 4.3% rise in overall prices over the past 12-months. That reading has risen steadily from only 2.0% last August. Even stripping out volatile food and energy prices, the so-called core CPI posted the biggest seasonally-adjusted one-month jump in 19 months.

Typically inflation is experienced during the expansion phase of the business cycle, and is accompanied by falling rates of unemployment and increases in output, both positives for the economy as a whole. This type of inflation presents policy makers with clear solutions: reign in aggregate demand through contractionary fiscal and monetary tools, slow the rate of expansion, and stabilize prices.

The inflation that presents policy makers with a greater challenge, however, is that experienced by America today, which is cost-push in nature. Combined with weak aggregate demand, the Federal Reserve and the government’s hands are tied when it comes to intervening to restore price level stability. Traditional contractionary methods like raising taxes and interest rates will exacerbate the weak aggregate demand as households and firms reduce their spending. This will worsen the “stagnation” (low to negative growth) the economy has experienced over the last couple of quarters, and will not solve the problem of rising production costs, which are rooted in exogenous factors like energy and food prices.

Apparently, the Fed, in deciding to cut interest rates by 1.25% in the last two months, failed to consider the inflationary effect this may have:

Typically, slower growth or an actual recession cuts demand for products enough to curb prices. Based on the minutes from the Fed’s latest meetings, that seems to be what the Fed is banking on to keep inflation under control…

David Rosenberg, the chief North American economist for Merrill Lynch, wrote in a note Thursday that inflation should not be a major worry. Rosenberg is one of a growing list of economists who believe a recession has already begun.

He argued that commodity prices have only a limited impact on the cost of final goods and that wage growth is a bigger contributor to inflation. A weak job market should keep wages from rising sharply.

In other words, as the US enters a recession and unemployment increases, wages will cease to increase and may even fall. The fall in wages will lower firms costs, shift aggregate supply outward, and reduce the threat of inflation. But in today’s global economy, factors besides domestic wages, such as the weakening dollar and growing demand for America’s output from abroad, must be considered when considering inflation risks:

The weakening dollar is a concern since it raises the price of dollar-denominated commodities, such as oil and other raw materials, as well as imported goods…

Ritholtz said that overseas demand from growing markets such as China and India are likely to keep prices for many goods high, even if consumption of those products falls in the United States.

“Unless we see a significant U.S. recession that causes a slowdown overseas, inflation may be stickier this time around,” he said.

Once again we are witnessing the complex interactions of the world’s economies in play. Stagnant growth in the US combined with a weak dollar may lead to a slowdown of growth in China, which depends on US consumers as a destination for its exports. Ironically, if the US is to avoid stagflation, one of the most challenging macroeconomic problems to fix, it may just depend on a slowdown in growth of aggregate demand in China, which consumes not just an ever-growing proportion of the world’s raw materials, but a growing proportion of America’s own output as well. A slowdown in China would relieve pressure on input prices of raw materials, and reduce US export demand, dampening both the demand and supply side inflationary pressures in the US.

For a graphical portrayal of stagflation using the aggregate demand/aggregate supply model of the macroeconomy, click on the graph above.

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Related posts:

1. Doom and gloom in the headlines as US economy teters on edge of recession…
2. Deflation: why lower prices spell doom for any economy!
3. Will the Fed’s easy money policy fuel global inflation?

Beijing’s Olympic Quest: Turn Smoggy Sky Blue – New York Times

In ancient times alchemists exerted great energy trying to turn worthless metals into gold. Their endeavors proved to be in vain as science would later show that such alchemy was a fantasy.

In Beijing, similar endeavors are underway to turn the city’s gray sky to blue for the upcoming Olympic games in August of this year. In a city where 1,200 new cars and trucks appear on the road every day and where a massive construction boom has been underway for years, the sky remains thickened with particulate rich smog for over 100 days a year. The problem is, China has promised the world that during the month of August, when the world’s athletes congregate in the city for the Olympics, the skies would be clear and blue.

The solution to Beijing’s problem is obvious, yet impossible to achieve: halt new construction, ban automobiles, and shut down the factories surrounding Beijing. So how IS Beijing planning to deal with this challenge? Turns out they’re once again turning to alchemy, this time to turn gray to blue:

Now Beijing is also going to try to manipulate air quality. For months, scientists have treated the city like a laboratory, testing wind patterns and atmospheric structure, while pinpointing local and regional pollution sources. Olympics contingency plans have been approved for Beijing and surrounding provinces. Details are not public, but officials have discussed shutting down factories and restricting traffic during the Games.

“We are determined to ensure that the air conditions meet the necessary standards in August 2008,” Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games, told the International Olympic Committee’s executive board this month.

Beijing residents overwhelmingly support the Games and take for granted that officials will do what is necessary to ensure clean air. Last August, the city removed a million cars from roads during a four-day test intended to gauge pollution and traffic. But people also know that any emergency measures have a limited shelf life.

“Yes, I heard about it,” said an engineer at one factory that may temporarily be shut down. He refused to identify himself because he was criticizing government policy. “It is like you invite some guests to your home, and hide all your children underneath the bed to make the house look nicer. If all the polluting factories are shut down for the Olympics, there will be a major pollution outbreak afterward when all the factories restart, right?”

Will Beijing’s attempts at alchemy prove successful? Or will science once again prove the alchemists wrong and doom the Beijing games to smoggy sky? What are some reasonable economic measure that could be taken to clean the skies of China’s capital in the long-run? How can corrective taxes, markets for pollution rights, and government subsidies be employed to assure the city and country of China do not “choke on growth” now and in the future?

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Related posts:

1. “China Chokes”: A look at the effects of China’s massive economic growth
2. China makes, the world takes
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Carbon tax bill in the mail – Canada.com

…then we’d be spared the naive statements that appear in our media and out of the mouths of our citizens when a basic economic principle plays itself out in the market place.

In Quebec, the provincial government levied a carbon tax on energy producers:

When the provincial government imposed the country’s first carbon tax last fall, it wanted producers to pay.

But just as oil refiners have already done, Gaz Métro started passing on the cost of the carbon tax (to consumers) this month.

Big surprise, right? Only in a market in which demand is perfectly elastic would the entire burden of a tax be born by producers, since raising prices at all would mean loosing all their customers. Clearly, electricity is not such a market, and given the inelasticity of demand for a necessity such as electric power, chances are a big chunk of the “0.67 cents per cubic metre of natural gas” tax placed on utilities is being passed onto consumers.

In market economies, tax incidence is shared between producers and consumers. This of course, is the way it should be. If the price stays low and output remains high, no externality has been corrected and just as much greenhouse gas will be emitted as before the tax. In order to decrease output to a more socially optimal level, the tax should be passed on to consumers, but also born by producers in the form of lower profits. Despite this economic reality, consumers still aren’t happy about it:

“I don’t care how much it is, even if it’s just half a penny,” said Leonard, a Laval resident who called to complain about his gas bill. He spoke on condition that his last name not be used.

“They said consumers would not pay for this – and now here we are, paying for it.”

Poor old Leonard… never got to take an economics class in school! If only everyone had taken AP Econ in high school, naivety like this could be avoided! Ask ol’ Leonard if he’s stopped using electricity due to the higher price, and I bet you can guess his answer. Why? Inelastic demand.

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1. Obama’s carbon market: an introduction the market-based approaches to pollution reduction

Greg Mankiw’s Blog: The Pigou Club Manifesto

Here’s a good question to bring up around the dinner table with mom and dad tonight: “When is more taxes good?” Most individuals in society despise taxes; what is it the cynics say? “The only things guaranteed in life are death and taxes.” Clearly, the thought of giving money to the government is as miserable for some as the thought of dying!

But when might more taxes be good taxes? The answer, as you may have guessed, has to do with the concept of negative externalities and the idea that a tax may be used to correct a market failure of too many resources being allocated towards a particular product. One such product towards which too many resources have been allocated in the last several decades is gasoline; that’s right petroleum gas, the life blood of our beloved automobiles, the symbols of our very freedom and prosperity we cherish so much. How do we know too many resources have gone towards the production of gasoline? Simple, there’s too much of it and it’s too cheap. Evidence? Just look around:

• Congested roads
• Urban smog
• Auto accident fatalities
• Shortage of parking spaces in most cities
• Noise pollution
• Sprawling road systems that ugly the landscape
• Global warming

All of the above ills in some way are the result of cheap gasoline. The market failure here is simple: too much gas has been produced and it sells for too cheaply, hence, lots of people drive lots of huge, gas-guzzling SUVs, trucks, vans, sports cars, luxury sedans, Hummers, and not enough small, economical, fuel-efficient automobiles that would put way less a strain on our urban and natural environments.

So what do we do now to fix this problem? Should be dismantle all the oil refineries, shut down the gas stations, and blow up the pipelines that facilitate the production of gasoline? Well, that would be one option, although it’s not ideal. Another might be to require that all auto makers achieve a certain level of fuel-efficiency among their automobiles. That’s what the US government has done by adopting the “Corporate Average Fuel Economy” (CAFE) standards. This sort of direct control creates market distortions of its own, however. One economist has said, “the CAFE standard was a failure and said it was like trying to fight obesity by requiring tailors to make only small-sized clothes”

Better tools exist for reducing the market failure of too much gas being produced and sold at too low a price. Harvard economist Greg Mankiw has argued over the years for more gas taxes. In an October, 2006 blog post, Mankiw laid out his manifesto for higher gas taxes.

I would like to see Congress increase the gas tax by $1 per gallon, phased in gradually by 10 cents per year over the next decade. Campaign consultants aren’t fond of this kind of proposal, but policy wonks keep pushing for it. Here’s why:

The environment. The burning of gasoline emits several pollutants. These include carbon dioxide, a caus of global warming. Higher gasoline taxes, perhaps as part of a broader carbon tax, would be the most direct and least invasive policy to address environmental concerns.

Road congestion. Every time I am stuck in traffic, I wish my fellow motorists would drive less, perhaps by living closer to where they work or by taking public transport. A higher gas tax would give all of us th incentive to do just that, reducing congestion on streets and highways.

Regulatory relief. Congress has tried to reduce energy dependence with corporate average fuel economy standards. These CAFE rules are heavy-handed government regulations replete with unintended consequences: They are partly responsible for the growth of SUVs, because light trucks have laxer standards than cars. In addition, by making the car fleet more fuel-efficient, the regulations encourage people to drive more, offsetting some of the conservation benefits and exacerbating road congestion. A higher gas tax would accomplish everything CAFE standards do, but without the adverse side effects.

The budget. Everyone who has studied the numbers knows that the federal budget is on an unsustainable path. When baby-boomers retire and become eligible for Social Security and Medicare, either benefits for the elderly will have to be cut or taxes raised. The most likely political compromise will include some of each. A $1 per gallon hike in gas tax would bring in $100 billion a year in government revenue and make a dent in the looming fiscal gap.

Tax incidence. A basic principle of tax analysis — taught in most freshman economics courses — is that the burden of a tax is shared by consumer and producer. In this case, as a higher gas tax discouraged oil consumption, the price of oil would fall in world markets. As a result, the price of gas to consumers would rise by less than the increase in the tax. Some of the tax would in effect be paid by Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Economic growth. Public finance experts have long preached that consumption taxes are better than income taxes for long-run economic growth, because income taxes discourage saving and investment. Gas is a component of consumption. An increased reliance on gas taxes over income taxes would make the tax code more favorable to growth. It would also encourage firms to devote more R&D spending to the search for gasoline substitutes.

National security. Alan Greenspan called for higher gas taxes recently. “It’s a national security issue,” he said. It is hard to judge how much high oil consumption drives U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern politics. But Mr. Greenspan may well be right that the gas tax is an economic policy with positive spillovers to foreign affairs.

Mankiw, one of the most respected economists in America, just happens to be a Republican, who in most cases believe that less taxes are good taxes. But clearly, when it comes to correcting market failures and reducing the externalities associated with cheap gasoline, more taxes may in fact be good taxes.

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2. Can YOU think of a good example of a positive externality of production?

Tighter European limits set to push up price of carbon emissions – Times Online

When it comes to correcting the market failure of negative externalities, governments have several options. The most interventionist approaches may involve placing strict limits on the amount of a pollutant firms are allowed to emit and fining them for exceeding this limit, taxing firms that pollute in order to increase their costs and decrease market supply, reducing output and increasing price closer to a socially optimal level, or simply banning the production and consumption of goods whose existence places excessive spillover costs on society.

Such interventionist approaches to externality reduction tend to require a complex bureaucracy to administer, monitor, execute and enforce. The government may not be able to determine the appropriate level of a tax on a polluter if it can’t determine the exact level of the externalized costs placed on society; the government cannot always check up on every producer in the economy to determine just exactly how much pollution each factory’s producing, and then levying a fine on excessive polluters again raises the question of how high should a penalty be?

Because of the complexities involved in the interventionist approaches above, economists have recently promoted and the worlds’ governments have begun adopting a market-based approach to reducing negative externalities, involving the creation of a whole new market: one in which the right to pollute is bought and sold by firms. This may sound crazy at first, but here’s a basic summary of how these markets work:

• A government or international agency decides on the acceptable amount of pollution in a particular region and issues permits that firms can purchase giving them the right to pollute. Each permit will allow a certain amount of pollution. The total supply of permits is perfectly inelastic since it is decided by the government agency.
• The demand for pollution permits is downward sloping. At high prices, firms will either stop polluting or pollute less by acquiring pollution-abatement equipment, which is more attractive when the rights are more expensive. If the “cost of pollution” is cheap, then firms will chose to buy permits rather than acquiring expensive abatement equipment or upgrading to “greener” technology.
• In the market for pollution permits, the “price to pollute” will be determined by the downward sloping demand among firms for pollution permits and the perfectly inelastic supply of permits determined by the number issued by the government. If the price of permits is too low to make firms bear the full environmental and social costs of their production, the government can reduce the supply thus increase the price and decrease the quantity of pollution permits demanded, reducing the negative externalities of pollution as firms will shift to greener production techniques.

There are several advantages to this system over direct government controls:

• It reduces society’s costs because pollution rights can be bought and sold. Some firms will find it cheaper to buy the rights than to acquire abatement equipment; other firms can sell their rights because they may be able to reduce pollution at a lower cost. The incentive for all firms is to reduce their own pollution and sell the permits they no longer need, adding to the profits of “green firms”.
• Conservation groups and  individuals can buy permits as  well as producers. If conservation or individuals wish to make it more expensive for firms to pollute, they can buy permits and hold them. This drives up the price of remaining rights, further encouraging polluters to reduce emissions.
• The revenue from the sale of pollution rights could be used to improve the environment or subsidies more environmentally friendly methods of production.
• The rising cost of pollution rights should lead to improved pollution-control techniques.

In the article above, we see how the creation of a market for carbon pollution permits in Europe evolved from a fledgling, ineffective experiment in market-based externality reduction a few years ago to a major market where billions of dollars worth of carbon permits are exchanged each day between firms, all of which have incentives to continually reduce their level of carbon emissions so as to minimize their costs and perhaps even earn revenue through the sale of unneeded permits.

The first phase (of the carbon permit market) was launched in 2005 but was widely dismissed as a failure, primarily because too many permits were granted by member states to individual polluters, leading to a collapse in market prices to as little as €1 (74p) per tonne. The slide undermined the principle of the scheme – to make carbon emissions a meaningful cost for big polluters, thereby encouraging reductions.

The key difference in the second phase is a reduction of between 5 per cent and 10 per cent in the emissions permits granted. Mr Marcu said that he expected the tougher regime to “start delivering some substantive reductions” in carbon emissions.

City analysts believe that it will lead to a big increase in the market price of carbon. Deutsche Bank expects forward prices to rise from the present level of about €23 a tonne to €35. UBS has predicted a rise to €30 a tonne.

35 euros per ton of carbon may not sound like a lot, until you consider how many millions of tons of carbon are emitted by the big factories of Europe each year. In fact, when we realize the size of this market at $100 billion, we then begin to grasp just how significant such a market can be in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That means that firms are spending $100 billion for the right to pollute!

Just imagine, if you were a manager of a firm that was polluting heavily, the more expensive these permits get, the higher your average costs of production get, the less competitive you become with firms who have taken steps to clean up their production. Not only do you not have to buy as many permits once you start cleaning up, but you actually start earning revenue by selling the permits you no longer need!

A market for externality permits minimizes the role the government must play in managing the production and emission practices of the economies big polluters. Furthermore, if the permits are auctioned off from the beginning, billions can earned in revenue for the government, which in theory could be used to subsidize the research and development of pollution abatement technologies and “green energies” like wind and solar power.

While it still may seem weird that governments are giving firms the right to pollute, the logic of such a plan makes sense once the picture is clear. Markets work, even when they’re being used to correct a market failure.

Discussion questions:

1. What are some ways a government could invest the revenue earned from the sale of pollution permits to firms?
2. Why is a market for pollution permits easier to implement than strict government control of the pollution of individual firms?
3. What is the importance of incentives in achieving reduction of negative externalities? Does a market for pollution permits create more or less of an incentive to reduce emissions than direct government controls?

Related posts:

1. Obama’s carbon market: an introduction the market-based approaches to pollution reduction
2. An answer to Kevin Yeh’s excellent question about emissions monitoring…
3. Robert Reich on Obama’s “cap and trade” plan for the environment

Oil worker shortage could lead to supply squeeze – Nov. 2, 2007

Lately I’ve blogged about the impact of higher oil prices on the petrol market in China (here and here). As the main input in petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel, the price of oil affects the costs of fuel producers, such as China”s SinoPec and PetroChina, the two large state-owned petroleum companies, as well as the scores of smaller competitors in that provide fuel to China’s thirsty economic machine.

As the price of oil has approached $100 per barrel, fuel manufacturers have had to cut back output as their costs have soared, putting upward pressure on the market price of fuel here in China. But what determines the price of a barrel of oil? Is the increase in the price of oil due to an outward shift of demand or an inward shift of supply? Actually, it’s probably both. This article helps answer part of our question, and it does so by discussing one of the determinants of supply of oil, resource costs.

What are the resources involved in producing oil? No, oil is not one of them; oil is the output. The main resources needed to extract oil are capital (rigs and drills to extract it, ships and pipelines to transport it) and labor (engineers to design the rigs and drills, roughnecks to work the rigs, and perhaps most importantly, highly skilled scientists):

Over a quarter of the industry’s highly skilled employees – petroleum engineers, process engineers, geologists, geophysicists and the like – are eligible for retirement in two years, said Beyer.

“It’s a real issue,” said Beyer. “Success in attracting new people into the work force is limited.”

Worldwide, the industry’s “people deficit” is expected to reach up to 15 percent by 2010, according to Pritesh Patel, an associate director at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

A shortage of skilled labor has lead to rising wages and costs for oil companies. Rising costs mean slowdown in production:

“This could cause some delay in supply reaching markets,” he said.

And as anyone who’s followed oil markets over the last four years knows, supply concerns factor first and foremost in the minds of traders, who have bid prices to record highs of over $96 a barrel in recent weeks.

Competition in the labor market has driven up wages for college graduates with degrees in the needed fields.

The industry is trying to fix the problem.

For starters, salaries are fairly high. Patel said a petroleum engineer typically earns $70,000 to $90,000 a year, right out of school.

Labor markets work a lot like product markets, except in a labor market firms are the demanders, and households the suppliers. Like a product market, supply is upwards sloping, meaning that as the price of labor (wages) increases in the market for petroleum scientits, the quantity supplied should also increase, as households respond by “producing” more scientists (i.e. more people will study chemistry and so on, entering the labor market ready to go to work for oil companies).

The obvious solution to the problem of fewer and fewer qualified scientists is the continued increase in wages for such experts. The computer programming industry is experiencing a similar shortage of skilled workers, which has led not only to higher starting wages, but to firms like Microsoft attempting to make software design cooler and more attractive to college students (remember the pet robots?).

Perhaps the oil companies should think about a scheme to distribute to chemical engineering students “‘pet’-roleum molecules” (a pet molecule you can manipulate throughout college into new and exciting chemical products to make the oil industry more lucrative!) to try and make the science more fun and interesting… Then again, perhaps not. Rising wages should solve the shortage of scientists over time, as more and more college students are drawn to the prospect of making $90,000 right out of college!

So, have YOU been skipping chemistry class? Are your parents dead set on you studying business in college? If so, you may want to show them this article and watch the dollar signs glitter in their eyes! Then again, if you care about the negative externalities of the fossil fuel industry, perhaps you should put your science skills towards the development of new, clean, alternatives to oil!

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