Economic Logic

It is sometimes difficult for a shopper to understand all the consequences of purchasing choices. Take lightbulbs, for example. The variety ...

For some reason that is unclear to me, fuel for cars is in most countries the most flexible price, sometimes changing several times a day. A...

Smart meters that allow you to monitor and manage electricity consumption are all the rage now. Power companies push them to consumers as th...

Biofuels have been presented as the solution to the ills of petroleum: locally produced, renewable, and sometimes cleaner. Hence they have b...

How much do people value time? One way to look a this is to consider how much they need to be compensated to work. But this masks the disuti...

Economic growth leads to higher electricity consumption. But electrical capacity needs to be put in place before we can get any economic gro...

It seems every winter brings a new situation where Russia is holding up one of its neighbors, or one of them another one, over the delivery ...

The various cash for clunkers programs during the last recession had two objectives in mind: create aggregate demand (or shift it from good ...

While some impact from global climate change can already be felt, it is believed the significant impact will be for future generations. As t...

When we think of price elasticity of demand, there is no reason to think that it would be different depending on the reason the price has ch...

When there is some externality, the best way to deal it is with a tax (for a negative externality like pollution) or a subsidy (for a positi...

For about forty years now, individuals and organizations have warned of peak oil and predicted a particular date for this event, which is in...

There is broad agreement that energy, especially polluting energy, is too cheap, calling for higher energy taxes. The problem is that such t...

Ina relatively short time, biofuels have become remarkably popular, especially as an additive to regular petroleum based fuel. This is at l...

If you own a car, you are not too happy when gas taxes go up: it is more money out of you pocket, however you benefit from a reduction in c...

Is it worth it to buy a fuel efficient car? If you ask an economist, he will look at the fuel consumption, the cost of gasoline, and calcula...

Some countries are blessed with natural resources, although this turns too often into a curse as rent seeking can turn the economy into a co...

The past two decades have seen an impressive wave of privatizations all around the world, especially in utilities and resources. This trend ...

The Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse emissions has not been widely adopted or followed and the Copenhagen climate summit ended in a fiasc...

It seems quite obvious that the United States will have to increase energy taxes, first because energy prices need to better reflect the neg...