One of the most prominent economists of the 20th century was the late Milton Friedman, an ardent free market supporter who remained skeptical of government’s ability to correct market failures through interventionist policies.

I found the talk below interesting. Friedman offers several examples of market failures that have been pointed to as a justification for government intervention, and argues that in fact, government often does not truly know what the right outcome is in most cases. He believes that government failure should be just as much a concern as market failure; and that therefore societal welfare would be best met by finding market-based solutions to the misallocation of resources that sometimes arises under conditions in which externalities exist.

As you watch the video, consider Friedman’s claims regarding the role of government, then post your response to one of the discussion questions below.

Discussion Questions:

1. Is government better able to know the “optimal” quantity of output of different goods and services than private individuals are?
2. Under what conditions would the free market be best able to achieve solutions to market failures such as those described by Friedman?
3. What do you think should be of greater to concern to society, market failure or government failure?

Each of the following videos or audio clips illustrate an example of a market failure. Watch or listen to each and answer the questions that follow:

Story #1: ”Cowboy City”

Story #2: E-Waste [ 7:36 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7177)

Story #3: Trash Island [ 2:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (69)

Story #4: Nauru is Dead [ 6:57 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (80)

Story #5: Lighthouses and Autopsies [ 19:27 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Story #6: Sweatshops and Story #7: Toxic chemicals (watch up to 11 minutes)

Discussion Questions:

1. Which of the stories above is about public goods, or goods which would not be provided at all if left entirely to the free market? Explain.
2. Which of the stories above is about demerit goods, or ones which would be over-provided by the free market due to their negative effects on the environment or human health? Explain.
3. Which of the stories above is about merit goods, or ones which are provided by the free market, but at a quantity below which is socially optimal due to the fact that they create spillover benefits for society as a whole.
4. Which of the stories describes a good or goods which the government currently regulates the production of? Which goods does government currently NOT regulate the production of?
5. What makes each of the stories above examples of market failure?

The tools of economics can be applied to almost any social institution, even the decision of individuals in society whether or not to have children. All over the rich world today, potential parents have decided against having babies, the result being lower fertility rates across much of Europe and the richer countries in Asia, including Japan, South Korea and Singapore. Lower fertility rates have some advantages, such as less pressure on the country’s natural resources, but the disadvantages generally outweigh the benefits.

The story below, from NPR, explains in detail some of the consequences of declining fertility rates in the rich world, and identifies some of the ways governments have begun to try to increase the fertility rates.

The problem of declining fertility rates can be analyzed using simple supply and demand analysis. In the graph below, we see that the marginal private cost of having children in rich countries is very high. The costs of having children include not only the monetary costs of raising the child, but the opportunity costs of forgone income of the parent who has to quit his or her job to raise the child or the explicit costs of child care, which in some countries can cost thousands of dollars per month. Marginal private cost corresponds with the supply of babies, since private individuals will only choose to have children if the perceived benefit of having a baby exceeds the explicit and implicit costs of child-rearing.

The marginal private benefit of having babies is downward sloping. This reflects the fact that if parents have just one or two children, the benefit of these children is relatively high, due to the emotional and economic contributions a first and second child will  bring to parents’ lives. But the more babies a couple has, the less additional benefit each successive child provides the parents. This helps explain why in an era of increased gender equality, families with three or more children are incredibly rare. The diminishing marginal benefit experienced by individual couples applies to society as a whole as well, therefore the market above could represent either the costs and benefits of individual parents or of society at large.

Notice, however, that that the marginal social benefit of having babies is greater than the marginal private benefit. In economics terminology, there are positive externalities of having babies; in other words, additional children provide benefits to society beyond those emotional and economic benefits enjoyed by the parents. The podcast explained some of these external, social benefits of having children: a larger workforce for firms to employ in the future, more people paying taxes, allowing the government to provide more public goods, more workers supporting the non-working retirees of a nation, and more competitive wages in the global market for goods and services. Higher fertility rates, in short, result in more economic growth and higher incomes for a nation.

When individuals decide how many children to have, they make this decision based solely on their private costs and benefits, since the external benefits of having more babies are enjoyed by society, but not necessarily by the parents themselves. Therefore, left entirely alone, the “free market” will produce fewer babies (Qe) than is socially optimal (Qso).

So what are Western governments doing about low fertility rates? The podcast identifies several strategies being employed to narrow the gap between Qe and Qso. In Australia households receive a $1000 subsidy for each baby born. In Germany mothers receive a year of paid leave from work. Here in Switzerland mothers get three months of government paid leave and $200 a month subsidy to help pay for child care after that. Each of these government policies represents a “baby subsidy”. In the graph above, we can see the intended effect of these policies. By making it more affordable to have children, governments are hoping to reduce the marginal private cost to parents, encouraging them to have more children, which on a societal level should increase the number of babies born so that it is closer to the socially optimal level (Qso).

Unfortunately, as the podcast explains, it appears that parents are relatively unresponsive to the monetary incentives governments are providing. This can be explained by the fact that the private demand (MPB) for babies is highly inelastic. Even if the “cost” of having a baby falls due to government subsidies, parents across the Western world are reluctant to increase the number of babies they have.

As we can see in the graph above, a subsidy for babies reduces the marginal private cost of child-rearing to parents. But the MPB curve, representing the private demand for babies, is highly inelastic, meaning the large subsidy has minimal effect on the quantity of babies produced. Without the subsidy, Qe babies would be born, while with the subsidy only Qs are born, which is closer to the socially optimal number of births at Qso, but still short of the number of births society truly needs.

The “market for babies” in rich countries is failing. Because of the positive externalities of having children, parents are currently under-producing this “merit good”. One of two things must happen to resolve this market failure. Either the marginal private costs of having babies must fall by much more than the government subsidies for babies have allowed, or the marginal private benefit must increase. Either larger subsidies are needed, or some moral revival aimed at encouraging potential parents to consider both the private and social benefits of having children when making their decisions.

Don’t you love economics? We make everything seem so logical! And like they say, it all comes down to supply and demand!

Discussion Questions:

1. What makes low fertility rates among parents in the rich world an example of a “market failure”?
2. What are the primary reasons fertility rates are lower in the rich world than they are in the developing world?
3.  What are the economic consequences of lower birth rates? What are the environmental consequences of lower birth rates? Should government be trying to increase the number of babies born?
4. Why have government incentives for parents to have more babies failed to achieve the fertility rates that government wish they would achieve?
5. Do you believe that government can create strong enough incentives for parents to have more babies? If not, what will become of the populations of Western Europe and the rich countries of Asia given today’s low fertility rates? Should we be worried?

The Global Coal Trade’s Complex Calculation : NPR

Sometimes when I read the news, I wonder what it would be like to NOT understand basic economics, and then I realize how much of what goes on around us can be explained by two simple concepts: demand and supply. The NPR story below talks about how the construction of two proposed coal exporting facilities on America’s west coast could, indirectly, lead to a greener future for America. Listen to the story then read on for more analysis:

China, already the world’s largest coal consumer, continues to build new coal burning electricity plants at an alarming rate. Its appetite for the “black gold” has driven the world price up to $100 per ton, as it has demanded increasing quantities from its own coal producers, but also those in other coal rich areas like Australia and the United States.

However, because of America’s lack of coal transporting and shipping infrastructure, US coal producers have been unable to sell their abundant coal to the Chinese, who are willing to pay 500% the equilibrium price in the US. The US market has remained isolated from the world market, not due to any explicit, government-imposed barriers to trade, rather due to fact that they simply can’t get their coal to the Chinese energy producers who demand it most.

Graphically, this situation can be illustrated as follows:

If the export facilities on the West coast of the US are not constructed, it will remain difficult for US coal producers to sell their output to China at the high price of $100, and the domestic quantity (Q2) will continue to be produced and sold for $20 per ton. But with the new port facilities, US energy producers will now have to compete with Chinese energy producers for American coal, and the US price will be driven up to the world price, since demand now includes thousands of Chinese coal-fired power plants. As the price rises from $20 to $100, the domestic quantity demanded in the US will fall to Q1, as domestic energy producers seek alternative sources of energy, switching instead gas, solar, or wind power.

The irony is that through increasing the ease with which American coal producers can sell their product to China, the US may reduce its own consumption of coal and its emissions of greenhouse gasses. Overall coal production in the US will rise with increased trade, but overall consumption within the US will fall.

Now, this may sound great if you’re the kind of person who thinks only locally. Air pollution will be reduced in the US, health will be improved, our electricity production will be greener and more sustainable. But globally, by making its coal available to China, the US market will contribute to the continued dependence on carbon-intensive energy production, and delay any progress among Chinese energy producers towards a transisttion to greener fuel sources.

The podcast also points out the fact that if the US did undertake the construction of the new coal-exporting facilities, it could be that the current high price of coal will have led to the entrence of several other large coal prodcuing countries into the world market, reducing China’s demand for US coal, reducing the price at which American producers can sell to China and thereby off-setting any domestic environmental benefit that may have resulted from the large decrease in quantity demanded among US producers at the current price of $100 per ton.

The whole conversation about the coal industry is somewhat depressing when the environmental costs of the industry are considered. Another NPR show, Planet Money, ran a story this week about the “gross external damages” caused by the production of coal-powered electricity. They cited a study which found that the damages caused by coal to human health and the environment outweight the benefits enjoyed by society from the generation of cheap electricity by around $10 billion in the United States alone. This means that if the US shut down every coal-powered energy plant in the country immediately, total welfare in the US would increase by $10 billion. There’s no doubt that energy prices would rise, but the gains in human and environmental health would outweight the added costs of electricity generation by $10 billion. If a similar analysis were undertakein in China, I would guess the potential welfare gain of transitioning to alternative energies would be far greater for the Chinese people.

Here’s the chart from Planet Money’s blog showing the net welfare loss of coal-generated electricity and other economic activities in the United States.

*GED = Gross external damages from pollution

Discussion questions:

1. How would the construction of two coal-exporting facilities on America’s West coast ultimately lead to a cleaner environment in the United States? Do you think this prediction is realistic?
2. Who stands to gain the most if the coal-exporting facilities are constructed? Who would suffer? In your opinion, should the facilities be constructed? Why or why not?
3. Interpret the colorful diagram above. What do the green bars represent? What do the yellow and red bars represent? According to the graphic, which type of activity is most harmful to American society? How do you know?
4. True, false, or uncertain. Explain your reasoning. “The burning of coal to make electricity should be completely banned in China, since China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter.”

The following post was written by an AP Economics student at Zurich International School

We all know about market failure on the product side: A good or service is under or over produced in the free market because of externalities that cause the marginal social benefit (MSB) to no longer equal the marginal social cost (MSC). Instead, the good or service is at another equilibrium where the MSB is equal to the marginal private cost (MPC). In such a case, the government may intervene by either taxing or subsidizing the good or service, or even by taking control of production in order to bring the values to the social equilibrium point (MSB=MSC).

Now let’s take a look at how this plays out in the human resources market.

In the human resource market firms tend to pay close to the same salary to people of the same rank or position. This can lead to market failure. An employer might have positive or negative externalities. Their location may be near public transport and in a beautiful location. Or it might be situated right next to a sewage treatment plant. When firms offer the same salary for the same position, their externalities may lead to labor surpluses or 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, i.e. to market failure.

A firm with negative externalities will have a shortage of workers since the qualified workers can work elsewhere for the same amount. A firm with positive externalities will have a surplus of applicants. The number of people will want to work at such firm will exceed the positions available. The firm could profit from this situation by becoming more selective, accepting only those candidates of superior quality. However, there can also be additional costs to the company if its externalities attract a surplus of applicants. There would be additional costs for processing and reviewing the many applications received. In a world of perfect competition where employee qualifications would be the same, the firm with positive externalities would reduce the wages it offers. This would reduce labor costs and decrease the number of applicants, reducing thus administration costs too. A firm with the negative externalities would have to do the inverse: raise wages in order to increase the number of workers. In reality of course, employee qualifications differ and the firm with positive externalities may get a flood of applications from candidates even those with insufficient qualifications.

There are many examples of positive and negative externalities, not only location. These can range from a positive (or negative) brand to a positive (or negative) reputation in how the company treats employees, such as by having flexible hours or supplying recreational or sporting facilities. When a person is looking for a job, externalities can play a decisive role.

Case Study: John the Consultant

Let us look at John the Consultant as an example. Like most applicants, John is looking for a good salary but he also wants to enjoy his work environment.

John gets three job offers: One from a fairly standard consulting firm, one from a tobacco company, and another from a sports TV network (with great offices with fabulous views).

When he was originally applying, John thought he would jump at opportunity to work at the sports network. The network had been his favorite since he was a child. He loved the thought of working in sports and television.

But then he took a closer look at the actual offers. The sports network offered him a salary that did not even come close to his expectations. The consulting firm’s offer was like its offices: just the standard fare. On the other hand, the tobacco company’s financial offer was mind-blowing.

Why is this so?

The tobacco company’s labor market might look like this:

Here, due to ethical concerns with the product, too few people would be interested in working at the tobacco company if it paid the average wage. Its cost to hire an additional worker (let’s call it the Private Marginal Resource Cost (PMRC)), is higher than the market average (AMRC). This is why it is necessary for the firm to increase wages in order to increase the quantity of labor to the optimal level. To be noticed is that their new quantity of labor is still below the market average. If the firm wanted to raise labor up to the market average, it would have to further increase wages, which would be extremely inefficient since there will be a point at which the cost of the additional workers will outweigh the value they represent.

A sports network company might look like this:

The sports network company, if it offered average wages, would have a surplus of workers. Here the AMRC is higher than the PMRC. In such case, the economically wise action is to decrease wages, thereby decreasing the quantity of labor to the optimal amount. To be noticed again is that its optimal amount is still higher than the market average. If it further decreased wages to reach Q_A there would be a dead weight loss. (Pragmatically speaking, the firm would not hire a surplus of workers; it would stick to Q₂, but even then normal wages would be inefficient, since it could get the exact same quantity of labor at lower wages.)

Now John has the choice of taking less money along with the positive externalities, or more money when there are negative externalities. The externalities turn into opportunity costs. And this creates a dilemma.

Firms have long known the gist of this concept. Most large corporate firms have made serious efforts to increase employee satisfaction in the hope that it will become a positive externality. Yet since the vast majority of employers have done similarly, various types of extra benefits have become standard for the market. However there are still companies that stand out from the rest. For example Google has placed a high priority on creatively generating employee satisfaction and creating a work environment conducive to cooperation and innovation. It has excelled in these domains by so much that their employees are glad to take a lower paycheck than the market average for the privilege of working there.*

Now all this is a prime example of how externalities are corrected through the profit incentive. In contrast to the product market (where a company may not bear the full cost of a negative externality it causes, such as pollution, and government intervention can become necessary), no government interference is usually necessary in the human resource market. There it is the firm that notices and corrects the difference in employee wages in relation to externalities. Most companies have learned to put a price on externalities, and equilibrium is restored.

*As an example, according to the Financial Times Feb 7, 2011, Google now receives an astonishing 75,000 applications a week.

This post is an introduction to the Academy Award winning documentary, ‘Inside Job’ for introductory Economics students

What do Wall Street investment bankers and used car salesmen have in common? Sometimes, the less their customers know about the products they’re selling, the more profits they both stand to earn. Imperfect information in markets can lead to market failure, and at its core, the failures of global financial markets during 2008 – 2009 was a result of imperfect information.

Last night, the film ‘Inside Job’ won the Academy Award for Best Documentary of 2010. The film focuses on the changes in the financial industry in between 2000 and 2007 that led to an overall increase in the level of risk undertaken by home mortgage lenders, investment banks, and ultimately the broader investment community the banking system serves.

The mis-aligned incentives motivating Wall Street banks and the asymmetry of information between the buyers and sellers of financial products, as well as the creation of new, complex derivative markets that allowed investment banks to bet against the very assets they were assembling and selling off to investors, contributed to the collapse of credit markets in 2007 and 2008 and ultimately a contraction of the level of economic activity worldwide during the “Great Recession” of 2008 and 2009.

The article below is an attempt to introduce the seemingly incomprehensible nature of global financial markets and understand what occurred in them between 2000 and 2007 in the context of an introductory Economics unit on Market Failure.

Imperfect Information as a Market Failure:

Imagine this. You’re in the market for a used car. You go to the used car dealership, speak with a salesman, and he takes you through rows of automobiles, telling you the features of each one and assuring you that each of his cars has been inspected by a third party garage for reliability. You find this re-assuring; after all you wouldn’t want to buy a car that hasn’t passed a basic inspection, since you don’t want it to break down once you’ve driven it off the lot.

After an hour or so of poking around the lot, you pick out the perfect car. A silver 2006 Audi, a great year for Audis, says the dealer. You have his word that it has been closely inspected and is in top notch shape. So you hand over $20,000 for the Audi and drive it off the lot, satisfied with your purchase.

What would you say, however, if you knew that soon after driving off the lot, the very salesman who convinced you to buy that Audi purchased an insurance policy that would pay the salesman $20,000  in the case that it broke down. Would that knowledge have made you question your purchase?

What would you say if you found out that the “third party garage” the salesman used to inspect the car actually followed orders from the dealer himself, and was 100% dependent on that dealer’s business. Therefore, the mechanic was under significant pressure to give each of the cars sent to him a high mark in its inspection. By doing so, the garage mechanic assures that the dealer is able to easily sell cars to the buyers who trust that the mechanic has given an honest appraisal of the car’s mechanical reliability. Since the dealer can sell cars given high inspection marks  for higher prices, the dealer is then able take out insurance policies that pay a greater amount when the car ultimately breaks down.

Would all of this knowledge have made you questions your purchase and the price you paid for your Audi? Chances are, if there had been perfect information in the market for used cars, you, and countless other people, would not have been willing to pay the price you paid for your Audi. Fewer used cars would have been sold, and they would have sold for lower prices. The existence of asymmetric information results in an over allocation of resources towards the market for mechanically unsound used cars.

So what does the story above have to do with the global financial crisis? Believe it or not, the fundamental cause of the near collapse of the global financial system in recent years is almost identical to our story about the used-car salesman, the corrupt garage mechanic, the dubious insurance policies and the sucker buyer, who was stuck driving a crappy car that broke down within days of driving it off the lot.

Financial Market Failure:

Between 2000 and 2007, financial innovation led to unprecedented increases in the availability of low interest loans to millions of low income American households for whom home mortgages traditionally would have been unobtainable. Banks which issued these “sub-prime” loans to households with very poor credit were able to sell them to Wall Street investment banks, which were re-packaging individual home mortgages with  thousands of similar loans from all over the United States into asset-backed securities, a form of bond that could then be sold to an investor to whom the interest payments made by the homeowners would accrue over the lifespans of the mortgages included in the bond.

Investment banks turned to the big credit rating agencies (Standard and Poors, Moody’s), who inspected the make-up of these asset backed securities, declared them investment grade and gave them AAA ratings, essentially giving a thumbs up to the institutional investors who ultimately bought these bonds from the investment banks. An AAA rating assured investors who bought the bonds that they were very safe investments, in essence that they were in “good mechanical order”, just like the Audi you drove off the lot after being told it was in good mechanical order.

The investors who ultimately bought these bonds were not small time investors like you and me, rather they were institutions, such as state pension funds, hedge funds, money market funds, sovereign wealth funds, and so on, who often times used taxpayers money to buy bonds from big investment banks on Wall Street (such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns). These investors were assured by the banks that the bonds were of the highest quality and would therefore earn the investors interest payments for years, even decades. In addition, because of the high ratings given to these bonds by the rating agencies, the investors believed they would always be able to sell the bond if they needed the money back they had originally used to buy it.

The information given to investors was not always correct, however, it turned out that many of Wall Street banks assembling and selling these bonds were also betting against them in a parallel market for derivatives known as credit default swaps.

Here’s the catch… the Wall Street banks that bought millions of low-income Americans’ mortgages (the “sub-prime” type) were just like that used car salesman. They knew the bonds of their creation were of poor quality, but just had to get the investors to believe they were in good mechanical order to “get them off the lot” into the hands of an investor.

And just like the sleazy car salesman, as soon as the banks started selling these bonds to investors, they began taking out insurance policies against them in the case that they should lose their value. An insurance policy that pays out when the value of a bond collapses is called a “credit default swap” (CDS), and the market for these  became a multi-billion dollar industry in which big Wall Street banks bought insurance on the very bonds they created and sold to institutional investors, essentially betting that their own bonds would collapse in value. Of course, none of the investors knew the banks were betting against their own bonds, because this knowledge would have surely wiped out demand for them and led to collapse in business for the Wall Street banks.

The rating agencies inspecting the asset backed securities assembled from bad mortgages were just like the corrupt garage mechanic giving all the 2006 Audis a “thumbs up” to make them easier for the car dealership to sell. By giving sub-prime mortgage backed securities “investment grade” AAA ratings, the rating agencies made it easier for investment banks to sell them to sucker investors for high prices, which in turn enabled investment banks to take out insurance policies (CDSs) against them. And since the rating agencies knew the banks wanted AAA ratings for bonds that should have been given “junk bond” status, the agencies continued to give them the highest rating, since they were dependent on the Wall Street banks for their business.

In the end, just like the 2006 Audi you drove off the lot was of poor mechanical integrity and broke down just days after you dropped $20,000 on it, most of the bonds assembled and sold on to investors by Wall Street banks were themselves of very poor quality. The underlying assets, the sub-prime mortgages themselves, were made to American households who could not possibly pay them back, Americans whose incomes were so low that the monthly payment for the home loan often exceeded the income of the borrower himself.

Ultimately, when sub-prime mortgage borrowers began defaulting on their loans, the Wall Street investment banks that had assembled them into asset backed securities and the institutional investors who bought these bonds found themselves holding trillions of dollars worth of loans that were no longer being repaid. For the banks, however, things weren’t all that bad, because just like the corrupt car salesman, they had taken out hundreds of billions of dollars in insurance on the bonds, which assured that when they finally went bad, the banks, which had passed on most of the bonds to investors, could simply collect the insurance payouts from the issuers of credit default swaps.

Who were the insurance companies stupid enough to insure crappy bonds, you ask? You may have heard of AIG (American Insurance Group). This was the insurance company insuring most of the sub-prime mortgage backed bonds. When all the bonds started to go bad AIG quickly ran out of money as it paid the investment banks out the insurance they owed. When AIG ran out of cash, the US government stepped in and gave AIG $85 billion of taxpayer money in September 0f 2008, assuring that the Wall Street banks with insurance through AIG collected 100% of their insurance money.

Show Me the Market Failure:

So what makes this a “market failure” in the economic sense of the term? Well, the existence of imperfect information in the automobile market led to an over allocation of resources towards the market for used cars. Because the buyers were being duped by the sellers and the corrupt garage mechanics, demand for used cars was too high and the price they were being sold for was too high. With more perfect information, consumers would have demanded fewer cars and they would have been sold for a lower price.

With more perfect information in the financial markets, far fewer investors would have been willing to pay the prices they did for the bonds the Wall Street banks assembled from sub-prime mortgages. Far less credit would have been made available to low income American home buyers. Far fewer sub-prime mortgage loans would have been made, and fewer Americans would have purchased homes that they could not afford in the first place.

In addition, if the institutional investors who were ultimately stuck holding these bonds had known that the investment banks selling them were simultaneously buying insurance policies against them, the investors would have been much more wary about investing in them. Also, if the investors had known that the rating agencies giving the bonds AAA, investment grade ratings were essentially following orders from the investment banks, giving the bonds the high ratings the Wall Street bosses wanted them to get, then the investors would have  been less willing to buy the bonds and less credit would have ended up in the hands of low-income American home buyers.

The market for financial services failed because too many resources were allocated towards the provision of loans to low-income American households. With more perfect information about the value of the under-lying assets included in the bonds being sold by Wall Street banks (the sub-prime mortgages), and with the knowledge that the banks themselves were betting against the bonds they assembled and sold, far fewer investors would have been willing to buy the bonds and far less credit would have been made available to American home buyers.

A market failure exists anytime the free market produces at a level of output greater or less than that which is deemed socially optimal. Given the huge surplus of unsold homes in the United States right now, and the collapse of many institutional investors’ portfolios on whose financial strength hundreds of millions of real people around the world depend for their very livelihoods, it can be safely argued that the imperfect information in the market for mortgage-backed securities (bonds) led to an over allocation of resources towards homes for low income Americans.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why is perfect information needed for a market to be perfectly efficient? How does imperfect information lead to a mis-allocation of resources in a market?
2. In the case of financial markets, what information, if known by those who invested in sub-prime mortgage-backed securities, would have helped correct the market failure and prevented the global financial crisis?
3. Another type of market failure we study in Microeconomics is negative externalities. Did the over-allocation of resources towards home loans for low income households create any negative externalities when the assets backed by the loans ultimately lost their value? What are some of the social costs of too many loans being made to low income borrowers in the early 2000′s?
4. Some argue that the financial crisis was not a market failure, but a regulatory failure, meaning the government failed to notice the actions of Wall Street banks and stop them before they caused a financial crisis? To what extent should the government intervene in the functioning of free markets to assure that information asymmetry does not lead to similar crises in the future?
5. Suggest one regulation the government could have enacted to prevent the over-allocation of capital towards the sub-prime mortgage market?

This post is about how Switzerland has successfully employed an innovative system of incentives to encourage its citizens to reduce the amount of garbage they create. Just three weeks in this amazing country and I can already see why it earned the highest score in last year’s Environmental Performance Index.

In the AP and IB Economics units on market failure, we study the concept of negative externalities, which exist when the behavior of one individual or firm creates spillover costs to be faced by other individuals or society as a whole. A simple example is a factory that dumps waste in a river. Clearly, disposing of its waste in such a manner poses little or no cost on the factory owners, but significant costs on downstream users of the river’s water. A community that wishes to use the river for drinking water must now install expensive filtration and purifying systems just to make the water usable. The factory has kept its own costs down by externalizing the cost of filtration by passing it on to downstream users.

Spillover costs exist on micro levels as well. While it is easy to see how a large factory creates negative externalities, it is often harder to imagine how we as individuals create spillover costs for our neighbors and society in our everyday actions. The stark truth, however, is that an individual’s behavior, multiplied by millions upon millions of individuals making up a citizenry, can have as great if not greater negative impacts on the environment and society as the negligent behavior of one firm.

Here in Switzerland, the behavior of each individual citizen is subject to unusually strict scrutiny. No, Big Brother is not watching, as you may be thinking, (however, I have heard stories of snoopy neighbors alerting the police upon witnessing the most minor of infractions by a fellow citizen), rather, one finds it in his best economic interest to strictly monitor his own behavior down to the finest detail. Allow me to explain what I mean.

Let’s take garbage for example. The definition of garbage in Switzerland is very different from that in the United States. Where I’m from, garbage is anything that you can’t use anymore. You throw it “away”, put it on the curb and it disappears.

A garbage bag in the US is usually a 40 gallon (160 litre) plastic bag that could fit an entire family inside, and the typical American family probably produces two to three bags worth of “garbage” each week, which conveniently disappears in the wee hours of the morning to be taken “somewhere”, which most Americans don’t know or care to know where that is. How much does it cost an American household to dispose of this voluminous quantity of garbage? Well, the bags cost around 18 cents each, and monthly removal services vary depending on the community, but are typically a flat rate for almost any amount of garbage.

In the United States, it is very easy for individuals to pass the true cost of their garbage disposal onto society as a whole. It doesn’t matter all that much whether you put one tiny plastic bag on the curb or a half dozen 40 gallon bags on the curb, you are going to generally pay the same amount for collection regardless. The result of such a system is that the typical household has no incentive to reduce the amount of garbage that it produces. Logically, Americans are inclined to over-consume and produce copious amounts of garbage in the absence of any significant system of incentives in place to encourage waste reduction.

So, what’s different about Switzerland? It’s all about incentives. Let me explain. Here, you don’t pay a flat rate for garbage removal. In fact, you don’t HAVE to pay anything for garbage removal! Oh wow, you say, it’s FREE? In fact, quite the opposite is true. You don’t have to pay anything for garbage removal as long as you don’t create any garbage. In other words, you only pay for what you throw away.

Unlike in the US, here a typical garbage bag here is a 35 litre plastic sack, only slightly larger than a plastic grocery bag. Each village requires its citizens to buy official garbage bags for that community, and each individual bag costs anywhere from $1.50 – $2.50. A role of ten 35 litre bags can cost around $25.

When we consider that anything a household wishes to throw away must be put in an official village garbage bag which itself must be purchased for $2.25, and we know that a typical 40 gallon (160 litre) garbage bag in the US costs just $0.18, we can easily calculate and compare the costs of garbage disposal to both US and Swiss households.

• In Switzerland: 100 litres of garbage costs $6.40 to dispose of
• In the US: 100 litres of garbage costs a little over $0.11 to dispose of
• In other words, garbage removal costs Swiss households around 57 times as much per litre as it does Americans, when we consider the price of garbage bags alone.

Clearly, Swiss households are given a significant incentive NOT to create garbage. So what DO the Swiss do with lots of their waste? Recycle it, of course! See, here in Switzerland all recycling is free. The villages even offer free curb side pick-ups for all recyclable materials.

A simple system of incentives (and dis-incentives) is the secret to Switzerland’s environmental success. Other systems are in place to encourage citizens to use public transport, tread lightly while hiking in the outdoors, conserve energy and water at home, and behave in other environmentally friendly ways, but I’ll save my discussion of those items for another time, once I figure out how to reduce, re-use and recycle all my own “garbage” here in Zurich!

Discussion Questions:

1. How does Zurich’s system of garbage collection “internalize” the “externality” associated with household consumption?
2. Incentives matter. This is a basic economic concept that can be used to fix many of the environmental, social, economic and health problems faced in society. Identify one way your parents have used incentives to try to get you to do something or NOT do something they think you should or shouldn’t do.
3. Discourage what society want less of, encourage what society wants more of.  Identify and discuss one example of a market in which a government (local or national) uses incentives to discourage certain behaviors, and one example of a market in which incentives are used to encourage certain behaviors.

Should hunters switch to ‘green’ bullets? – CNN.com

Chis Rock once said,

“We don’t need gun control, we need bullet control. I think a bullet should cost $5,000, cause if a bullet cost $5,000 there would be no more innocent bystanders.”

Chris Rock may not have had market failure in mind when he wrote this joke, but he unknowingly demonstrated a perfect example of a case in which the over-consumption of a particular good results in spillover costs on third parties not involved in the original transaction (the “innocent bystanders”). In economics, this is known as a negative externality of consumption, and is considered a market failure because without some kind of government intervention, too much of the harmful good will be produced and consumed: in this case, too many bullets are consumed causing harm to society.

I always thought Chris Rock’s idea of taxing bullets was a good idea, but never thought I’d find a real example of such a solution to market failure, until now. Although the bullets in the article below are those used by hunters, whereas Chris Rock’s bullets are probably those used by gangsters, the economic concepts underlying the market failures are similar.

Three years ago, Phillip Loughlin made a choice he knew would brand him as an outsider with many of his fellow hunters:

He decided to shoot “green” bullets.

“It made sense,” Loughlin said of his switch to more environmentally friendly ammo, which doesn’t contain lead. “I believe that we need to do a little bit to take care of the rest of the habitat and the environment — not just what we want to shoot out of it.”

Lead, a toxic metal that can lower the IQs of children, is the essential element in most ammunition on the market today.

But greener alternatives are gaining visibility — and stirring controversy — as some hunters, scientists, environmentalists and public health officials worry about lead ammunition’s threat to the environment and public health.

Hunting groups oppose limits on lead ammunition, saying there’s no risk and alternatives are too expensive…

Lead bullets cause harm to the environment and possibly to human health. The private consumption of these bullets exceeds what is socially optimal, while “green” bullets, on the other hand, are under-consumed by private individuals. There are two market failures occurring here, and they can be illustrated as follows:
When markets fail, government action is sometimes necessary to achieve a more socially optimal allocation of resources. The bullet market represents a market failure because too many harmful lead bullets are being consumed while not enough environmentally friendly “green” bullets are being consumed.

The graphs above show the impact of corrective taxes and subsidies in resolving these market failures. Whether or not governments will pursue such corrective policies has yet to be seen. A couple of states, however, appear to already understand that market failures require government intervention.

Last year, California banned lead bullets in the chunk of the state that makes up the endangered California condor’s habitat. The large birds are known to feed on scraps of meat left behind by hunters. Those scraps sometimes contain pieces of lead bullets, and lead poisoning is thought to be a contributor to condor deaths.

Arizona, another condor state, gives out coupons so hunters can buy green ammunition. Utah may soon follow suit.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why don’t all states simply ban the use of lead bullets by hunters? Is this solution socially optimal?
2. Besides corrective taxes and subsidies, how could government reduce the demand for lead bullets and increase demand for “green” bullets?
3. How will Arizona’s use of coupons demonstrate a market-based approach to externality reduction?
4. And this one is from the authors of the Environmental Economics blog: “Do you think the deer care which kind of bullets the hunters use?”

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.

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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Every year around this time economics students and teachers alike begin looking forward to the long Christmas holiday right around the corner. Two or three weeks of yuletide cheer, mistletoe, snow men, caroling, food, family and… dead weight loss. That’s right, what’d you think this post would be about, the efficiency of Christmas? Come on… it’s the DISMAL science! Not the jolly science!

The tradition of giving Christmas presents has long fallen under the scope of economic researchers who seek to understand more about the rational, or as it turns out, irrational behavior of individuals in society. From an economic standpoint, many of the things that Christmas traditionalists believe are bad, are actually good, while the traditions many believe are good are in fact quite bad from an economist’s viewpoint. Basically, economists are grinches. So prepare to be grinchified…

Are you the kind of person who thinks doing all your Christmas shopping online is cold, impersonal, and against the holiday spirit? Well, Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, argues that shopping online is far more efficient than spending days roaming the malls and shopping centers searching for the right gift for your loved ones. Says Dubner about “clicking and gifting” (i.e. shopping online):

See here’s the thing: I like the sound of clicking and gifting, that sounds efficient to me. That’s what we need to bring to the holidays, is more efficiency, less emotion. Let’s get rid of that.

Economists’ disdain for Christmas shopping is not limited to criticizing the inefficiency of spending hours shopping for gifts, in fact the tradition of giving gifts itself is considered economically irrational and inefficient. Sure, you say, it’s the thought that counts. Well, that’s just stupid. A gift giver can think all he wants about what a friend or a loved one may want for Christmas, and end up buying the thing they think the other person wants. But when it comes down to it, each of us only really knows what one person in this world wants, and that is ourselves, that’s right, the royal ME.

So basically, any gift you can buy for someone else will bring them less benefit than a purchase they themselves make; so WHY BOTHER? What it comes down to is self-interest in the end. When we buy a gift for another person, it is ultimately for our own benefit, which as we will see soon, most often exceeds the benefit of the receiver of the gift.

This is what’s known as the dead weight loss of Christmas. From an economic standpoint, Christmas is not “the most wonderful time of the year”, rather it’s “the most inefficient time of the year” (not so catchy as a song lyric, I’m afraid). Dead weight loss is like when,

…my wife’s great-grandma buys me a sweater at $85 and to me it’s worth like $1.50. Because I don’t like it… so that’s $83.50 deadweight loss… And the holidays are jam-packed with that kind of waste.

We’ve all been there, as both the gift giver and the unfortunate receiver of a gift we don’t like or even want. In fact, this phenomenon can be graphed using a basic diagram learned by all high school economic students: the marginal benefit, marginal cost diagram. Look at the graph below and see if you can figure out what it shows, then scroll down and read the explanation.

Basically, what the graph above shows is that the act of giving gifts brings benefits to the gift giver that are not enjoyed by the gift’s receiver. From the ultimate consumer’s standpoint (i.e. from the perspective of the gift receivers), many of the gifts received for Christmas will be valued far less than the amount of money, time and energy that went into choosing and buying them by the gift giver.

In other words, the marginal cost of shopping for and buying Christmas presents exceeds the marginal benefit of those who receive them, hence, the market for Christmas gifts fails since the behavior of private individuals results in a level of Christmas shopping that exceeds the socially optimal efficient level, at which the marginal benefit of the give receivers intersects the marginal cost of gift production. Resources are over-allocated towards Christmas present shopping because it is simply impossible for gift givers to know the precise preferences of those for whom they shop.

That $85 sweater, for instance, may have only been “worth” $1.50 to the poor fellow who received it. The dead weight loss, therefore, is the resources that went towards producing and purchasing a sweater for someone who doesn’t even like it, and all the other possible ways those resources and that money could have been allocated.

Have I ruined your Christmas yet? Well, fear not, there is an economically efficient way to approach the Christmas season and to maintain the beloved tradition of gift giving! That’s right, even the Grinch economists have a solution to this wasteful problem! And it is so simple… it is… CASH! Cash is the ultimate gift, perfect in every way. No time whatsoever is wasted in the process of deciding what to give someone. Simply put your debit card in the ATM machine and your entire season of shopping is done!

Cash is the perfect gift to receive too. There is no chance you will be unsatisfied with what you ultimately “get” for Christmas.  Cash can be spent on the goods from which the receiver himself enjoys the greatest marginal utility per dollar he spends. The dead weight loss above is completely eliminated when cash is given instead of other presents. The marginal benefit of the giver and the marginal benefit of the receiver are the same since the giver can rest assured that the receiver will spend it on something that provides him with the greatest possible benefit.

So there is a happy ending to this story after all! Maybe someday when economic education has truly succeeded we can once and for all do away with the wastefulness and inefficiency of Christmases past and form new traditions rooted in the efficiency of cash gifts. So, students of economics, if you want to make your loved ones happy this Christmas, you now know what to do. In the process, you’ll help make the world just a little bit more efficient!

For more on the dead weight loss of Christmas, listen to and discuss with your class the two podcasts below, from two of my favorite shows, American Public Media’s Marketplace (from which the quotes above are taken) and NPR’s Planet Money.

Freakonomics: Tis the season to get what you don't want Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (11)

Planet Money: Scroogonomics Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (9)

Discussion Questions:

1. A market failure in economics exists whenever resources are allocated inefficiently towards the production or the consumption of a certain good. What makes holiday gift giving a market failure?
2. Why is the marginal benefit of a gift giver often times greater than the marginal benefit of a give receiver? How does this discrepancy result in “negative social benefits” as indicated on the graph?
3. What is dead weight loss and how does holiday gift giving result in it?
4. Why are cash gifts more “efficient” than buying presents for others? How would an economist analyze the efficiency of gift cards or gift certificates compared to presents? To cash?
5. Should we scrap Christmas and replace it with Economistmas? For Economistmas, everyone would get exactly what they want, which is to say, everyone would get money to BUY exactly what everyone wants. Surely you agree this would be far superior to our antiquated traditions rooted in inefficiency and dead weight loss, right?

Author’s note: For the record, I have bought my wife and family the perfect gifts this year! They’re simply going to love what I got them! And no, it is not cash! ;o) Merry Christmas!!