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: Continue Reading »

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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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”

Continue Reading »

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?

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. Continue Reading »

Well, not exactly, but that’s kind of a dramatic headline, isn’t it? The other day I blogged about the demand". Occurs when the price is below the equilibrium level, for example, when a government imposes a price ceiling in a market.');" onmouseout="tooltip.hide();">shortages experienced in the petrol market in eastern provinces, evidenced by the long queues at gas stations around Shanghai last weekend.

Petrol stations resorted to rationing their product in small doses (between 20 and 40 litres) as the price of oil hit $92 and Chinese refiners scaled back production due to rising costs that they were unable to pass on to their customers. Beijing had previously imposed a price ceiling on fuel in an attempt to keep inflation low and Chinese consumers content; the actual impact of this price control was predictable: not enough fuel to go around as the quantity demanded exceeded the quantity supplied, leading to shortages and rationing at the pump.

Continue Reading »

One week ago I left Shanghai behind and my wife and I began our annual migration back to our summer stomping grounds, the Pacific Northwest. After 10 months living and working in a city of 18 million people with an industrial sector that ensures 365 days a year of a thick haze blank over the Shanghai, nothing is more refreshing than returning to the nearly empty mountains of North Idaho (“It’s a state of mind” is what they say around here).

Some of the highlights of life in Northern Idaho include the excessively blue skies, the sparkling Lake Pend O’reille, the ever green slopes of the Selkirk mountains, the bears, moose and deer with whom we share our beautiful trails, and finally the intimate sense of community that infuses the local economy of Sandpoint, our home town of 8,000 (you’d need 2,250 Sandpoints to make one Shanghai!).

In Shanghai, foreigners mostly shop at one or two boutique foreign grocery stores, packed full of processed foods imported from Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and other far corners of the earth. About the only things you’ll find that are “local” in these markets is the produce, which itself is of suspect quality given the large quantities of chemicals banned in most western countries used by Chinese farmers (not to mention the continued use of human feces as a fertilizer).

To eat like a foreigner in Shanghai is to be an active participant in the global, industrial food chain. The manufacture of the processed foods imported from the West involved industrial processes far beyond the comprehension of most consumers. The use of petro-chemicals infuses every step of this process, from the chemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides and insecticides to the chemical preservatives to the petroleum burned getting the food from field to factory to warehouse to container ship to grocery store thousands of miles away. To eat like a foreigner in Shanghai is to contribute to the degradation of our environment, the warming of our atmosphere, and the destruction of a traditional way of life for local family farmers all over the West, as factory farms proliferate across the West’s fertile lands. Despite all this, my wife and I still eat like foreigners in Shanghai, and attempt to suspend our conscience while we participate in the industrial food chain we so despise.

For my wife, Liz, and I, returning to Sandpoint, Idaho is an act not only of spiritual and physical rejuvenation, but also of economic emancipation. We are freed from the destructive global industrial food chain on which we depend as foreigners living in China. To eat in Sandpoint is to participate in a sustainable, local, environmentally friendly food chain where organic, locally grown foods are available in every grocery store.

Our first stop when returning to Sandpoint is always Winter Ridge Organics, followed by a trip to Woods Ranch Meat Processing Plant (for me, as my wife is a vegetarian). Woods Ranch presents an interesting study in local foods. All of the meat processed at this small plant nestled in between Idaho’s Selkirk Mountains and the Cabinet Mountains of Western Montana is raised in the rich grasslands of the Pack and Kootenai river valleys. In addition to grass fed beef, this plant processes and sells direct to the consumer pork, buffalo, and game meat such as elk and venison. During the hunting seasons it is not unusual to find bear and moose in their freezers, as the region’s mountains present local hunters with a plethora of wild game.

When I compare the intricate and energy intensive food chain of the foreign eater in Shanghai with the short, direct food chain of the local eater in Sandpoint (along the dirt road to Woods Ranch you pass the very cattle that are processed therein), I begin to wonder how our economy has woven such a tangled web of international trade and commerce. I am also thankful that I am in a position where I get to observe and participate in both extremes of the modern economy, both the local and the global. As a teacher of economics, this perspective may prove valuable as my students and I strive to put the complex web of today’s economy into focus.

Ultimately, I can say I wish I could have the best of both worlds. I wish I could take my wonderful job and school and classroom and students of my life in Shanghai and “import” them all to Sandpoint, Idaho. I wish we could all enjoy a more l

ocal existence; but the prospects of this way of life surviving seem weaker every year I return. A couple of summers ago the town just north of Sandpoint opened the first Wal-Mart in Northern Idaho. Reality check: globalization is everywhere! China haunts my idyllic summer paradise; I cannot escape it! At least the haze of Shanghai has not stretched its ugly reach to the Selkirk mountains, not yet, at least…

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Natural gas in Wyoming | Boom and doom | Economist.com

From the latest Economist: an article about the booming natural gas industry in rural Wyoming (as if there’s such a thing as urban Wyoming) and the impact it’s having on the economy of one small town.

You’d think a booming industry offering high wages for low-skilled workers would be a godsend for a remote Western town like Pinedale, Wyoming. Think again; this article points out some of the downsides resulting from the natural gas boom since 2000, when oil shortages led to an increase in the price of gas and lots of new drilling in Wyoming, America’s least populated state.

Pinedale is at the centre of a Rocky Mountain gas boom that began in 2000 and accelerated five years later after Hurricane Katrina knocked out Gulf supplies, forcing up prices. On a mesa south of Pinedale, Wyoming’s busiest field is laced with dirt roads and pock-marked with well-heads and drilling rigs.

The influx of gas workers has increased the population of the area by 40% since 2000. The new business has meant more tax revenues for the county, “In 2001 Sublette county raised $16m in sales and other taxes. Last year it took in $53m.” What does all this mean for residents of Pinedale and the surrounding county? Higher wages and low unemployment.

Next year Pinedale’s school district will pay newly qualified teachers a base salary of $43,000—about the same as in Chicago.Teachers nonetheless earn less than rig hands, most of whom have no more than a high-school education. They are paid at least $49,000 plus overtime, according to a survey last year. The ready availability of well-paid work, albeit hard and dangerous, means that unemployment has almost disappeared (see chart). So have seasonal fluctuations. Jobs used to disappear when the snow fell. But the gas rigs now keep going through the winter.

The wage hikes enjoyed by government employees and gas workers, while good for some, means doom for local businesses not directly linked to the gas business, for whom the tight labor market makes it increasingly difficult to operate. The housing market has also experienced a shock since the gas boom, as properties away from the gas fields have barely increased or even decreased in value.

The interesting connection I see in this article to our Economics course lies in the affect of low unemployment and high wages on the business environment. See if you can identify the connection through the questions below.

Discussion Questions:

1. What led to the increased drilling for natural gas in 2000? Which determinants of demand and supply led to the changes experienced in the oil and natural gas industries?
2. What kind of labor market is the Wyoming gas industry most like, perfectly competitive or monopsonistic? How do you know?
3. Are gas companies in Wyoming wage takers or wage makers? What’s the difference?
4. If low unemployment and high wages are assumed to be good, then why does the article indicate that they are actually bad for some in Pinedale?
5. Why has “the number of retail and entertainment outfits in Sublette county” fallen “even as disposable income soared”?

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