Clark Center Forum

 

 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel poll statement:

In general, using more congestion charges in crowded transportation networks — such as higher tolls during peak travel times in cities, and peak fees for airplane takeoff and landing slots — and using the proceeds to lower other taxes would make citizens on average better off. 

 

The Federal Reserve last week announced its new “Enhanced Prudential Standards and Early Remediation Requirements” for big banks, as required by the Dodd-Frank law. You have to pity the poor Fed because it faces an impossible task. The Fed’s proposal opens with an eloquent ode to the evils of too-big-to-fail and moral hazard. And then […] 

Europe is as full of bad ideas as it is of bad debts. Conventional wisdom says that sovereign defaults mean the end of the euro: If Greece defaults it has to leave the single currency; German taxpayers have to bail out southern governments to save the union. This is nonsense. U.S. states and local governments […] 

This week's IGM Economic Experts Panel poll statement:

A tax on the carbon content of fuels would be a less expensive way to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions than would a collection of policies such as “corporate average fuel economy” requirements for automobiles. 

 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel poll statements:

A) All else equal, making drugs illegal raises street prices for those drugs because suppliers require extra compensation for the risk of incarceration and other punishments.

B) The Netherlands restrictions on “soft drugs” combined with a moderate tax aimed at deterring their consumption would have lower social costs than continuing to prohibit use of those drugs as in the US. (Click here for a summary of the Netherlands restrictions.)