By my count, my wife Ramona and I represent nine generations in American agriculture. With her competence and cheer, we ran 500 ewes and wintered horses on our home place in Montana’s Gallatin Valley. After a time we sold the sheep, and for several years I taught in the University of Washington’s business school where […]
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Whether we’re trying to save species or specie, decisions are based on information and incentives. Regulations that generate poor incentives simply won’t work. Good intentions are not enough. Congress tried to protect endangered species via the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. Prior to 1973, landowners could freely use their land, even if endangered species […]
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Here is my gift to you for this Christmas season and the ones to follow. If you have friends and relatives for whom it’s hard to buy holiday gifts, you’ll find economic thinking helpful indeed. But you may wonder how economists, followers of the “dismal science,” can contribute to the holiday season? Surely not by […]
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The first lesson of international relations is that democracies don’t go to war with on another. In his 1994 State of the Union addresss, President Clinton said that no two democracies have ever warred with each other. The conventional wisdom is that world peace can be achieved through universal democracy. Unfortunately, this is not quite […]
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The Gallatin Institute links writers of the West with environmental economists. Last weekend poets, novelists, historians and essayists spent three days exploring ideas and ideals with policy analysts at the Gallatin Gateway Inn, a beautifully restored railroad hotel between Bozeman and West Yellowstone, Montana. Such communication is something new because the participants come from disparate […]
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“Don’t Gore us with new taxes”, picketters in Miami shouted last week. They opposed Vice President Gore’s plan to “tax” the sugar industry in Florida. A sugar “tax” would be used by the federal government to purchase Everglades land for ecosystem restoration. In addition to the penny-per-pound “tax”, Gore announced a $1.5 billion environmental cleanup […]
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Public policy failures can take their toll on economic efficiency, ecological integrity, and even human lives. These failures are endemic to fisheries commons the world over. Recent issues of Field and Stream, Scientific American, and National Geographic all featured stories about the dire straits of our fisheries. Now the Bering Sea brings tragic news of […]
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Ocean fisheries exemplify “common-pool resources”. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to fence in or brand marine fish. Their freedom is bound by the forces of nature. These fish are fugitive resources. Their migration ignores political, social, and legal boundaries. This often leads to great tragedy. Fisheries demonstrate the classic “tragedy of the commons”. They are […]
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Markets economize on love, that most precious of values. They encourage cooperation and civility among disparate people. This was one of the great lessons of Kenneth Boulding, a Quaker economist who was founding editor of The Journal of Conflict Resolution. Boulding developed the concept of “Spaceship Earth” with the understanding that we’re all in this […]
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IN THE 25 years since Earth Day, increased environmental concern has helped us avoid some mistakes by focusing attention on many environmental problems. But concern alone is insufficient. No amount of concern will be enough to avoid environmental harm if information is of poor quality and incentives are perverse. How can we best channel our […]
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