Coronavirus => higher price for garlic

Coronavirus is disrupting the supply chain for 80% of garlic grown (WSJ, Feb. 2020).

Climate XChange wants to put a price on carbon

https://climate-xchange.org/

Could geoengineering reverse climate change?

An engineer at Harvard says we could start to reverse climate change in 15 years at a cost of about $2 billion per year. Holman Jenkins of the WSJ (Feb. 2020) says the Jeff Bezos should consider funding the project.

Questions: Can government bureaucrats anticipate all the possible innovations that may help fight climate change? If not, how can they figure out the best way to combat climate change?

Why did they clap?

"Clearly, the relative scarcity of ice after the storm is much higher.  The market price rises rapidly to reflect this increased scarcity. This makes people who would have used ice at the old price economize, and use something else. They can drink their bottled water, or their Carolina Ale, warm if they don’t want to pay $12 for a bag of ice. So ice only goes to people who really value it. And the higher price also signals yahoos, wahoos, and all sorts of regular folks that one can make boxloads of money by taking truckloads of ice to Raleigh. The price system is automatically doing its job, signaling to buyers that they should cut back, and signaling sellers (even potential sellers, those who have to enter the market from Goldboro) that they should sell more" (https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Mungergouging.html).

How firms avoid paying tariffs

Firms are using a variety of tricks to avoid paying tariffs Trump imposed on China (WSJ, Feb. 2020). Here are some questions.

1. What determines whether the US firm moves operations to the US, continues to import from China and pay the tariff, or use a trick to sidestep the tariff?
2. Is sidestepping the tariff consistent with the goal of moving operations to the US?
3. Are the tariffs increasing the general standard of living in the US?

The Demand for E-Cigarettes is Elastic

"We then calculate an e-cigarette own-price elasticity of -2.6" (Cotti, Chad D. and Courtemanche, Charles and Maclean, Catherine and Nesson, Erik and Pesko, Michael and Tefft, Nathan, The Effects of E-Cigarette Taxes on E-Cigarette Prices and Tobacco Product Sales: Evidence from Retail Panel Data (January 2020). NBER Working Paper No. w26724. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3535316).

Is the demand facing an individual seller more likely to be -10 or -0.9 if the demand for the product is -2.6?

What would happen if the minimum wage increased to $15

The CBO has estimated the effects of increasing the Federal minimum wage to $15, $12.5, and $10 by 2025 (July 2019). "In an average week in 2025, the $15 option would boost the wages of 17 million workers who would otherwise earn less than $15 per hour. Another 10 million workers otherwise earning slightly more than $15 per hour might see their wages rise as well. But 1.3 million other workers would become jobless, according to CBO’s median estimate.

Two ways to reduce the impact of humans on climate change

Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a substitute for reducing emissions at the source (WSJ, Feb. 2020). What would more often result in the efficient choices between the two options, a pollution tax or government officials deciding the "best" way to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere?

People are studying at least three ways of reducing the amount of  CO2 released during the production of concrete (WSJ, Feb. 2020). What would more often result in the efficient choices between the three options, a pollution tax or government officials deciding the "best" way to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere?

A nice discussion of the differences in rationing health care by price versus rationing by inconvenience (Nir Eyal, Paul L. Romain, & Christopher Robertson, Can Rationing through Inconvenience Be Ethical? 48 Hastings Ctr. Rep. 10 (2018)). Why is the latter viewed as being more ethical?