economics bak

<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">economics619</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no links</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bad econ trinity trump kudlow, navarro, moore</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">//</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/magazine/trump-government-heritage-foundation-think-tank.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">
</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/magazine/trump-government-heritage-foundation-think-tank.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/magazine/trump-government-heritage-foundation-think-tank.html</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">nyt</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">heritage, demint dunlop:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Today it is clear that for all the chaos and churn of the current administration, Heritage has achieved a huge strategic victory. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Those who worked on the project estimate that hundreds of the people the think tank put forward landed jobs, in just about every government agency.</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Heritage’s recommendations included some of the most prominent members of Trump’s cabinet:</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> Scott Pruitt, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Betsy DeVos (</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">whose in-laws endowed Heritage’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society), </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mick Mulvaney</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rick Perry, Jeff Sessions </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">and many more. Dozens of Heritage employees and alumni also joined the Trump administration — at last count 66 of them, according to Heritage, with two more still awaiting Senate confirmation. It is a kind of critical mass that Heritage had been working toward for nearly a half-century.</span></font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></b></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Feulner’s first law is people are policy,” </b>Ed Feulner, Heritage’s founder and former president, told me recently. Feulner was the head of domestic policy for the Trump transition, charting the direction of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture and several other agencies. We met late on a Friday afternoon, in a sitting room at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, a private social club founded by a group of Treasury Department officials during the Civil War. At his feet as we spoke sat a small box of table cards for a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">dinner he was hosting at the club that evening for the newly appointed director of Trump’s National Economic Council, the television personality<b> Larry Kudlow </b>— another name on Heritage’s Project to Restore America list</span>. Now 76, ruddy, white-haired and content, almost jovial, Feulner founded Heritage decades ago as an ambitious young legislative aide with a radical dream built on a simple concept. As he put it, sinking deeper into his club chair: “First, you have to have the right people.”</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">While Feulner and his senior staff had reserved the right to review policy papers, they generally avoided intervening in the research and publication process. DeMint and his leadership team were much more aggressive. Papers were heavily edited or even withheld from release altogether. </span><b times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Several scholars quit. DeMint replaced them, bringing in as Heritage’s chief economist Stephen Moore, a Wall Street Journal editorial writer and a founder of the Club for Growth, a lobbying group that advocates cutting taxes.</b></font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></b></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><b times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></b><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: 400;"><b times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The turnover rates have also been historic. In March, The New York Times reported that nine of the top 21 White House and cabinet positions have been emptied and refilled at least once; neither Obama nor Bush had lost a single cabinet member by that point in their administrations.</b> Since taking office, Trump has replaced more than half of his 65 most influential advisers, according to a tracker created by the Brookings Institution. Christie recently laid the blame for the turnover on what he described as a “brutally unprofessional” transition, saying that proper vetting would have caught a lot of Trump’s most problematic appointees. A number of other senior advisers seem to be on shaky ground with the president, and an exodus is anticipated after the November midterm elections.</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: 400;">
</div><div style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Churn is a central feature of this administration, even for its unofficial staffing agency. Paul Winfree, a Heritage economist who helped draft Trump’s first budget, is back at the think tank. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">So are Stephen Moore, who worked on the Trump tax cuts;</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">David Kreutzer, who played a key role in dissolving a White House working group that was studying the monetary costs associated with climate-warming carbon dioxide</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">; and Hans von Spakovsky, who helped run the now-defunct voter-fraud commission, which was created to find evidence to support Trump’s baseless claim that millions of people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: 400;">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: 400;">In a sense, the transition is still going, and as long as Trump remains in office it may never end. “I get calls from people every day who still want to go in,” Dunlop told me. “Or I’ll hear from the White House, or I’ll run into someone at a reception or over coffee, and I’ll say, ‘I’ve got a name for you. I’ll send it along.’ ”</div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/to-us-oligarchs-majority-views-on-taxing-the-rich-count-for-little/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/to-us-oligarchs-majority-views-on-taxing-the-rich-count-for-little/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> noah b</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With one political party entirely committed to expanding inequality, and the other divided on the issue, overwhelming public support and commonsense ethical commitments don’t carry much weight.
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s how oligarchies consolidate. The wealthy horde power and wealth, then that power and wealth gives them the ability to shape institutions to further increase their power and wealth.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Yellen has had some successes in restraining wealthy and corporate power. She negotiated an international agreement with 136 countries to implement a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/what-is-global-minimum-tax-deal-what-will-it-mean-2021-10-08/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">global corporate minimum tax</a> of 15 percent.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At some point, corruption stops being a bug in democracy and starts becoming a feature of oligarchy.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Has the US passed that threshold?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Based on the sweeping and effective resistance to commonsense solutions to reign in wealthy tax scofflaws, the answer is not encouraging.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since the 1970s, the United States has become steadily and inexorably more economically unequal. According to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/02/07/6-facts-about-economic-inequality-in-the-u-s/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Pew</a>, upper income families have brought in a larger and larger share of total income.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>US income inequality is the highest of all G7 nations. Its Gini coefficient is .434, well above second highest UK at .392.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">In 1968, the top 20 percent of households earned 43 percent of national income. By 2018, the top 20 percent of households earned 52 percent.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">In 1989, the richest 5 percent of families had 114 times as much wealth as families in the second poorest income tier. In 2016, they had <em>248 </em>times as much wealth.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">In <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-08/top-50-richest-people-in-the-us-are-worth-as-much-as-poorest-165-million" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">2020</a>, the 50 richest Americans had almost as much wealth as the poorest half of the US population.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This massive concentration of wealth is also a massive concentration of power.</b> The wealthiest people have access to the best lawyers, the best tax attorneys and the most powerful politicians.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That means that it is very difficult for the government to restrain them, or to create a more equitable economy and society against their wishes.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>That’s how oligarchies consolidate. The wealthy horde power and wealth, then that power and wealth gives them the ability to shape institutions to further increase their power and wealth. [amp fdbk]</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">An example of oligarchical power is billionaire tax evasion. A <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/26/wealthy-tax-evasion/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">recent IRS study</a> found that wealthy Americans conceal more than 20 percent of their earnings. They are able to do this because of complex accounting scams involving offshore tax shelters.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The lost tax costs the government at least $175 billion a year in revenue. The top 1 percent of earners are responsible for a third of unpaid federal taxes.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to these straightforwardly illegal accounting tricks, the very wealthy also benefit from at least nominally legal loopholes.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For instance, wealthy people have many assets that increase in value over time, but they do not pay taxes on those assets until they sell them.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>They can borrow against those assets without paying taxes, since again the assets aren’t considered income</b>. Then, if they die before selling the assets, they can pass them on to their heirs using trusts and other accounting shenanigans to avoid the estate tax.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">ProPublica called this strategy <a href="https://www.propublica.org/video/buy-borrow-die-how-americas-ultrawealthy-stay-that-way" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Buy, Borrow, Die</a>. It’s a key method for hoarding generational wealth, and entrenching oligarchy.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Biden administration, led by Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, have proposed strong measures to rein in billionaire corruption. In part, they want to restrain inequality. In part, they hope to fund other priorities like climate mitigation and anti-poverty measures in the administration’s Build Back Better infrastructure plan.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">To address billionaire tax evasion, BBB included <a href="https://federalnewsnetwork.com/budget/2021/10/bidens-irs-spending-plan-makes-it-through-build-back-better-act-framework/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">$80 billion</a> to boost capacity and staff at the IRS. That would help make up for the steady budget-cuts under Republican administrations. Those have led to a 60 percent decrease in audits of taxpayers who earn more than $1 million. Biden said the investment would allow the IRS to collect $400 billion in taxes.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Biden, Yellen and Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden have also been pushing for a <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2021/10/26/the-billionaire-tax-loophole-hunt-is-on-494854" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">billionaire tax</a> to force the very wealthy to pay taxes on the increased value of their assets.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This would strike at the heart of the oligarchic “Buy, Borrow, Die” lifestyle. It would force the ultra-wealthy to pay their fair share, like everyone else, every year, year after year.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Policies that prevent the rich from escaping a tax burden everyone has to pay should be easy to pass in a democracy. You’d think preventing billionaires from cheating on their taxes would be a popular policy.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>And you’d be correct.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">A 2019 poll, for example, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/04/democrats-taxes-economy-policy-2020-1144874" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">showed</a> that 76 percent of Americans agreed that the wealthiest should pay more in taxes. Proposals to tax income over $10 million at 70 percent — a huge increase over current rates — obtained more than 50 percent support.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">In an oligarchy, though, public support doesn’t necessarily count for all that much.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A notorious 2015 study <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">found</a> that politicians were much more likely to listen to and follow the political preferences of economic elites than those of the less affluent.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can see that playing out in the politics of billionaire taxation.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Build Back Better, which included the beefed-up IRS funding, was scuttled by millionaire West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, in large part, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-manchin-build-back-better-child-tax-credit-drugs_n_61bf8f6be4b061afe394006d" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">reportedly</a>, because he was worried that poor parents would spend money on drugs.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A wealthy politician refused to enforce the law against billionaires because he was worried that poor people are natural criminals.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That is what you call class consciousness.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Wyden’s proposal to end “Buy, Borrow, Die” also failed after opposition from <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/10/27/billionaire-tax-dead-on-arrival-after-manchin-blasts-proposal-mere-hours-after-its-release/?sh=34f6a763bc36" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Manchin</a>. </b>It was of course opposed by Senate Republicans, whose main goal is to shovel as much money as possible to the rich in as short a time as possible.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yellen has had some successes in restraining wealthy and corporate power. She negotiated an international agreement with 136 countries to implement a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/what-is-global-minimum-tax-deal-what-will-it-mean-2021-10-08/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">global corporate minimum tax</a> of 15 percent. This would make it harder for businesses to escape tax burdens by moving their corporate offices. Congress still has to pass the treaty, but Yellen said she was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/10/us-treasury-secretary-yellen-global-minimum-corporate-tax-debt-ceiling" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">confident</a> they would do so.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The corporate minimum tax is a substantial achievement. But it’s also a small dam erected against the tsunami of inequality in the US.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With one political party entirely committed to expanding inequality, and the other divided on the issue, overwhelming public support and commonsense ethical commitments don’t carry much weight.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The wealthy have been expanding their power and influence for decades in the US. The result is that the US regularly chooses to make the rich richer rather than <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/01/21/1074413273/end-expanded-child-tax-credit-families-effects" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">helping the poorest feed their children</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The outlook for change is likely to be even bleaker if Republicans recapture one or both legislative chambers in November.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yellen and Biden are to be commended for fighting an ongoing rearguard action against corruption. But if government inability to restrain corruption is a feature of oligarchy, then the US is already well down a path that it is very difficult to retrace.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/heres-how-economists-are-blocking-progress-on-climate-change/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no links</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Here’s how economists are blocking progress on climate change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Jeanne Menjoulet</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">written by Lynn Parramore June 24, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dutch economist Servaas Storm, co- author of a widely-read 2018 study on climate change, “Why Green Growth is an Illusion,” talks to the Institute for New Economic Thinking about where we are today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lynn Parramore: In 2018, you and your colleague Enno Schröder warned that economists promoting “green growth” are fostering illusions. Why can’t we have economic growth and development without destroying the planet?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Servaas Storm: In our work, Enno Schröder and I look at the historical record on economic growth around the world, along with human energy use and the resulting CO2 emissions. Then we construct a growth path for the global economy during the period 2015-2050. Our model path is based on optimistic, but still feasible, assumptions concerning future energy efficiency improvements and reductions in carbon emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To understand what’s driving carbon emissions, it’s helpful keep a couple of things in mind. First, emissions will tend to grow at the same rate that the economy is growing. Economists call it the “scale” effect. But the more efficient we become at using energy and the better we get at reducing pollution through technology and changing human behavior, the more we can reduce carbon emission growth relative to real GDP growth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So while the scale effect always raises CO2 emissions, what we call the ‘technological-change” effect lowers carbon emissions. That’s why economists talk about the goal of “decoupling” economic growth and CO2 emissions. You want a “technological-change” effect that’s bigger than the scale effect.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Disappointingly, we find no evidence so far of decoupling. Despite the 2017 Paris pledgesand good intentions, CO2 emissions are still rising, not just in China and India, but also in OECD countries (a coalition of wealthy countries that work together on common eco-social problems).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The energy efficiency improvements and rates of decarbonization aren’t yet enough to offset the carbon emission increases originating from the growth of the global economy. So the scale effect still dominates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LP: What are economists missing when they talk as if decoupling is happening?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SS: There are deep uncertainties concerning the climate system and its interactions with the ecosystem of the Earth and the global economy, and self-reinforcing runaway warming is a real, though highly uncertain, possibility. Unfortunately, economists can’t handle any of this. It’s their first reflex to assume that it’s possible to use something called “optimal control.” That’s a technique of finding policy instruments that will control outcomes in a system, in this case working out the economically optimal pathways to solving or mitigating climate change in terms of the timing and the extent of CO2 emission reduction.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It all reminds me of a story told in Nathan Hill’s novel The Nix. In Norwegian folklore, the Nix is a ghost that takes on different shapes which it uses to mislead people, exploiting their vices and bad habits. The Nix appears as a beautiful horse which invites a young man to take a ride. Initially in awe and nervous, the young man steps on the horse’s back, and he rides – at first very slowly and cautiously, but then faster. The horse accelerates, and in his enthusiasm, the rider loses his awe and begins to feel all-powerful an in control. Surely he is the most talented horseman in the world. At exactly this point, the horse jumps off a cliff at full speed– and the young man gets killed on the rocky beach.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Economists suffer from similar self-deception when they believe their optimal control analyses of the costs and benefits of climate mitigation policies can inform climate policymaking in any meaningful manner. They can only become part of the solution once they realize that they are not engineers. The point is not to endlessly debate, for example, the optimal social cost of carbon, acting like the medieval scholars arguing about how many angels can sit on the head of a pin. Efficiency is not the issue. What matters is how effective the climate change policy is going to be.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The future has to be radically different from the past. Small tweaks and tinkering won’t cut it. We need structurally lower energy use and radically lower carbon emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LP: What are some of the concerns with existing and well-known economic models?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SS: Climate economists, like economists in general, tend to forget that the policy conclusions drawn from their models are only as good, robust and realistic as the assumptions underlying the models they use – and this is precisely the problem: these assumptions are often flimsy, debatable and/or unrealistic. Let me mention three.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, most well-known models fail to adequately capture small-probability but high-impact (catastrophic) outcomes associated with runaway global warming. Most models ignore that global warming may become an unstoppable self-reinforcing process once certain temperature thresholds are crossed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Second, models estimate the societal net benefits of money spent on climate action and then compare these benefits to the returns which humanity could have made by investing the money not on some other, low-risk financial instrument, like government bonds. Such exercises imply that climate economists believe that government bonds will continue to yield rates of return of 3 – 3.5% each year even under deterioriating climate conditions. That’s a bit of a stretch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finally, most models assume that to finance the needed investments so as to have higher welfare in future, we must restrain our consumption today and raise savings. This logic is powerful. It appeals to the Calvinist notion of delayed gratification, which, according to Max Weber, was crucial to the Protestant Ethic and the rise of entrepreneurial capitalism. But it is wrong. Our economies are “monetary economies” in which commercial banks can create new money to finance investment and we don’t need to raise savings first. This means there is no trade-off between consumption now versus consumption in the future, as erroneously assumed in climate economics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LP: What if we could acheive a radical break with the past? Could we then grow the global economy while reducing global CO2 emissions?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SS: Many scientists agree that the planet warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels will be catastrophic. So it’s useful to think of trying to stay within a range of 1.5 degrees warmer or less.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Let’s say we have some amazing technological breakthroughs and we reduce emmissions by 85% by 2050, which some optimistic scientists think would allow us to avoid that limit. Alas, we find that even in that perhaps overly-optimistic scenario, the global per capita income growth still has to be very low. Pretty close to zero. Is that even possible?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Green growth” is a very tough goal. I think it’s the wrong thing to emphasize. It may be better to focus on radically decarbonizing our economies. If we do this, and it turns out that our economies can still grow, then that’s great. But if getting the carbon emmissions down means that we can’t also have global economic growth, then we’ve got to accept that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LP: But does that mean we can’t have economic progress? No hope for people’s economic lives to improve?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Advertisement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SS: Not at all. Economic growth and economic progress are not the same thing. If we were to say that rich OECD countries should aim to avoid increasing the amount of stuff they produce, they could still have goals of economic progress. They could aim instead for more and better jobs, greater access to education, health, public transportation, lower pollution burdens, and clean energy sources. Things that would be great for the majority of the population.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The issue is one of better distributing our economic resources, possibly as part of some Green New Deal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LP: You’ve noted in the past that President Obama was not realistic in arguing that the U.S. economy could keep growing without increasing CO2 emissions thanks to the rollout of renewable energy technologies. How do you assess the situation now under Trump? What about Europe and China? Is anyone being more realistic today?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SS: The outlook is not good. The Trump administration is not the only government announcing its withdrawal from the voluntarist Paris agreement. (I call it voluntarist, because the agreement concerns official pledges by countries to reduce CO2 emissions, but lacks enforcement mechanisms). The Bolsanaro government in Brazil, the new government in Australia, part of the Italian government, and more are threatening to do the same.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">China has made huge advances in energy efficiency and has also started to decarbonize, but the scale factor of China’s economic growth is still more than offsetting the drastic improvements in energy and carbon technologies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The European Union (EU) is not delivering and policies are often counterproductive. Look at the ‘Yellow Vests’ protests in France. French President Macron proposed a consumer carbon tax on (car) fuels, which will hit the incomes of people who aren’t wealthy and who already have to cope with all kinds of economic insecurities and downward mobility. The outcome is not just a populist revolt, but a major discrediting of climate change mitigation policies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the Netherlands, the center-right government proposed a carbon tax on consumers but not on major polluting corporations. In March 2019, voters revolted. The government parties lost the provincial elections to a new rightwing populist party, which says that climate change is just a Marxist plot!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The EU has to come up with climate policies which protect the lower- and middle-income groups as much as is possible from the costs of adjustments, while taxing carbon emissions at their source. That means taxing the 100 global corporations which together are responsible for around 70% of cumulative CO2 emissions. It means taxing the rich to bring about a more fair and politically acceptable burden of adjustment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LP: Is there any new political momentum on climate change that could help? What about the Green New Deal embraced by many Democrats in the U.S.?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SS: The recent electoral successes of the Green Parties in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and France do appear to suggest that there is a growing political momentum on climate change in the EU. But there is more than meets the eye.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The growing support for the Greens within the EU has come from voters abandoning the established center-left parties, like the social democrats. At the same time, there’s more support for populist center- or far-right parties, which deny or trivialize climate change and rally around a false dichotomy of “jobs” versus “the environment.” These politicians claim that they prioritize jobs, supposedly in contrast to the Greens.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Overall, the political landscape is becoming fragmented and polarized exactly at a time when we need collective, coordinated climate action. Attempts by President Macron and other governments to raise taxes on carbon-intensive consumption have seriously weakened popular support for climate mitigation. That gives the populist right a golden opportunity to beat the drum of climate change denialism. Scary stories about an impending end to life on Earth drive working-class people, many of whom have been facing existential economic insecurities for decades, into denial, and from there into the arms of the populist far-right.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Greens have not yet convinced potential voters that there is no conflict between saving the environment and having good jobs, decent income, and high standards of living.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is where the Green New Deal is crucial, if by it we mean a comprehensive program to green our economy and to replace private with public investment and consumption in order to adapt social and economic life to a changed environment. A Green New Deal of this kind should create good jobs and benefits rather than burden the lower- and middle-income classes. And it has to involve progressive, redistributive taxation to fund high-quality, zero-carbon, and accessible public transportation rather than expensive individual Tesla cars, accessible high-quality education and so on.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LP: You’ve observed that even good solutions won’t work within a socioeconomic system founded on ideas like letting markets “decide” who gets what and allowing big corporations to operate with little regulation. How do we have to shift our basic thinking in order to avoid climate catastrophe?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SS: As a society, we’ve given deregulated financial markets the task of maintaining the stability of the social and political order. Corporations are supposed to behave themselves in the proper way through pressure from shareholders and the stock market. Individuals are disciplined by engaging in labor markets and through debts. Governments, arguably, are being disciplined by bond markets. Market forces are supposed to keep everything and everyone working together the best way.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Economists call this “social efficiency.” They’ve swallowed the idea so completely that it’s hard for them to think about any alternative social order. Within this system, the only way you get behavioral change, like reducing CO2 emissios, is to use price incentives. You put a price on carbon, and eventually costs and prices will motivate self-interested firms and consumers to change their decisions and cut carbon emissions. The same price incentives are supposed to focus the minds of innovators and engineers on developing new zero-carbon (energy) technologies and products.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a fantasy. Slowing global warming requires deep transformational change, a process which in turn needs long-term steady directional thrust (in investment and technology development), which short-termist financial markets have never been able to provide in history and can’t provide by their very nature. Why? Because vested interests in the fossil-fuel economy will try to block or delay needed structural change. Plus, self-interested market behavior by individual producers and consumers does not automatically or necessarily add up to a better outcomes for society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Progress on climate change demands collective action, both between nations and within nations. Questions of who is paying the cost and who is getting the benefits are critical.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We need coordination, direct steering and guidance of investment, research and develpment, along with innovation and mechanisms for burden sharing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The effort can only work if it is inclusive, democratic and fair: the strongest shoulders must carry the largest burden. Bottom line: we have to think about alternative ways to ensure social and political order. I know that all this seems far-fetched and well beyond what is politically possible today. But I am old enough to agree with Jan Tinbergen, the first Nobel laureate in economics (jointly with Ragnar Frisch), that the “idealists of today often turn out to be the realists of tomorrow.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LP: What do you say to people who dismiss you as an alarmist?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SS: That they are wrong. Ignoring the cumulative evidence on global warming is behaving like an ostrich. I try to be a realist, staying away from the often naive “can-do” engineering attitudes of techno-optimists (which ignore or underestimate major practical social and political obstacles standing in their way) and steering clear from the fatalist pessimism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Slowing down climate change is technically and economically possible, but we need immediate and radical actions, most of which go against the vested interests of fossil-fuel corporations as well as against the established ideas and interests of most economists working on climate, who wrongly think that the problem can be solved in an economic-engineering fashion. Establishment economics should become part of the solution intead of the problem.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is also ample scope to raise corporate taxes on Big Oil corporations and carbon-intensive (chemical) companies, many of which succesfully engage in massive tax evasion and shifting. We also have to fix the problem of political money by finding ways to inoculate our politics from corporate billionaire power. And if central banks are able to use unconventional monetary policy instruments to fight a global financial crisis and rescue banks, then they clearly should be able to do the same when fighting a looming climate disaster. There are grounds for optimism. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN 119</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hist policy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/time-for-a-real-industrial-policy/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx chart</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The world is in desperate need for a revolution in economics education</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-world-is-in-desperate-need-for-a-revolution-in-economics-education/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">written by The Conversation April 17, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Economic thinking governs much of our world. But the discipline’s teaching is stuck in the past. Centred around antiquated 19th-century models built on Newtonian physics, economics treats humans as atomic particles, rather than as social beings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While academic research often manages to transcend this simplicity, undergraduate education does not – and the influence of these simplified ideas is carried by graduates as they go on to work in politics, media, business and the civil service.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Economists such as myself tend to speak in tightly coded jargon and mathematical models. We speak of “economic laws”, tacitly positioning these as analogous to the laws of physics. We wrap a thick layer of technical jargon around our study material and ban all moral or ethical discussions from the classroom. We attempt to take cover under the protective white lab coat of “real science”, a phenomenon described by Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek as scientism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In short, economics has become a rather quaint and highly guarded discipline. We urgently need to update economics education to change this – because economics, as taught in universities, does not reflect or speak to many of the issues of the real world, be they political, environmental or social.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The political economy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Take the tricky entanglement between politics and economics, which economists tend to try to avoid. Such an attempt is futile. Sidelining politics, history and broader ideas while teaching economics, as most professors do, is like studying the “natural” flows of water in the Netherlands without taking into account that there are people living there who are steering it, building dikes, reclaiming land and channelling the water – and ignoring that they have been doing this for thousands of years already. You can’t study the system while ignoring the people who make it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Politics and economics are inextricably intertwined, as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx knew all too well. Somehow this has been forgotten. This does not mean economists need to get political or choose sides. But it does mean that we ignore politics at our own peril – by blindsiding ourselves or dismissing it as “external stuff”, we hamper our understanding of the very system we study.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Economists speak in numbers only, clinging to statistical data and quantitative models. We do so in the hope of looking objective. But this is counter-productive – “data” cannot tell us everything. Other social sciences such as sociology and anthropology use a broader range of methods, and consequently have a broader perspective on society. If we take our societal role of adviser on economic matters seriously, we will need to open up and adopt the insights that these other disciplines bring us about how the economy works.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is true that academic economists are aware of the shortcomings of their discipline. But unfortunately, this awareness of the complexity of the economic system does not necessarily extend to those who leave university after their degree. And this is what the vast majority of economics graduates do. These are the people who go on to work in big business, governments and central banks, who shape policy and create our “economic common sense”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Educational blinders</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So what sort of ideas do these undergraduate economics students take out of university and into some of the most important careers in our societies?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Concerned student groups everywhere have started to systematically map this out. Student members of the University of Manchester Post-Crash Economics Association wrote a book surveying 174 economics modules at seven leading UK universities. They found that fewer than 10% covered anything other than mainstream economics. In the Netherlands, students found that real-world problems, from climate change to inequality, were seriously treated in only 6% of all modules and that only 2% of methods courses were not focused on statistical work.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A series of subsequent curriculum review projects, including one covering 13 countries from Argentina to Israel, found similar conditions in economics programs everywhere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Undergraduate economists all over the world learn theories from textbooks that have barely changed since the 1950s. Those theories are based on individual agents, competing in markets to maximise narrowly defined “economic utility” (for people) or profit (for firms). The principles are taught with the same certainty as Newtonian physics, and are as devoid of value judgements.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is absurd. Clearly, there are values; mainstream economics values efficiency, markets and growth – and puts individuals over collectives. Yet undergraduates are not taught to recognise, let alone question, these values – and the consequences are serious.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shut down business schools? Two professors debate]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The models taught in our education ignore inequality, while our societies are being torn apart by it. In our classes, relentless economic growth is an unquestioned dogma, yet this same economic growth is rapidly ripping apart the ecological foundations of our world. And while we all may individually donate to charities, separate our trash and feel guilty about flying too much, we are collectively handicapped in reforming the very system that drives these problems.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hope for change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is hope for change, however. In the UK, a number of economics programmes are gradually becoming more pluralist in terms of theory and methods in response to the movement. Goldsmiths College in London, for instance, has renewed its PPE programme to include the same, and add other disciplines. And the Schumacher College in Devon now offers an Economics for Transition MSc which explicitly ties together economic and ecological systems. Meanwhile, an international accreditation system for pluralist Masters programmes is being set up.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But we need renewal on a much broader front: a new approach to economics education, one which does not hide behind the self-imposed limits of 19th century physics-style modelling, but instead considers the societal role of economists seriously. We need an economics which focuses on the entire economic system and which acknowledges all relevant sources of knowledge, rather than apprehensively clinging to statistical data. And one which addresses the issues that are most pressing for society, not those that comfortably fit within its mainstream method.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Let’s hope that we don’t have to wait for the present generation of economists to retire before this can happen. By that time, it might be too late.The Conversation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joris Tieleman, PhD Candidate, Erasmus University Rotterdam</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because science is transparent, it is also self-correcting. Researchers can interrogate, criticize and improve upon each others' work. In 2013, Thomas Herndon, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts made headlines when he found a number errors in an influential study authored by two Harvard economists. The paper showed that economic growth slows down in countries with high national debt, and it was used to justify austerity measures following the Great Recession. Herndon, 28, published a paper which called attention to the errors and refuted its conclusions about national debt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is how research works. Researchers evaluate and attempt to replicate the findings of their peers. They have every incentive to prove each other wrong. Herndon's work earned him the acclaim of serious economists, weeks of fawning press coverage and a star turn on The Colbert Report. Any person who could do the same for climate research would be similarly celebrated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Koch uses Piereson's exact model today, financing neutral-sounded operations on dozens of campuses receiving six, seven and eight-figure donations from Koch and its donors partners. Recent examples include:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arizona State University's $5 million Center for the Study of Economic Liberty, co-financed with the W.P. Carey Foundation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">University of Arizona's $2.5 million Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, co-financed by Ken and Randy Kendricks and Karl Eller.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">University of Kentucky's $12 million Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise, co-financed with Papa Johns CEO John Schnatter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">University of Louisville's $6 million Center for Free Enterprise, co-financed with Papa Johns CEO John Schnatter in Kentucky.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">University of Maryland at College Park's $6 million Center for Enterprise and Markets, co-financed with Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Creighton University's $4.5 million Institute for Economic Inquiry, co-financed with Gail Werner-Robertson in Nebraska.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">West Virginia University's $5 million Center for Free Enterprise, co-financed by Ken Kendricks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11 myths that wreck economy http://www.alternet.org/print/11-big-myths-about-economy-are-destroying-america</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sexism a problem: cf summers et al beat up only woman who predicted the crash</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Feminists like Susan Feiner have talked about neoclassical economics as a project that shores up a male-dominated society (and one that is also dominated by a particular class and race). The math/prediction fetish is very handy for this project because it allows economists to construct models in a way that tends to rationalize inequalities. Another way economists tend to justify inequalities is to rely on what are called “hierarchical dualisms.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Throughout Western history, people have tended to present men as rational beings and women as irrational. It’s the old mind/matter division, in which man is associated with the mind and woman is linked to matter (which comes from the Latin word mater, meaning “mother”), or nature. You can see this gender bias playing out in all kinds of oppositional parings: the immortal soul (male) v. the body (female). Order (male) v. chaos (female). These dualisms are written into our language, our art, even our sciences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/print/economy/economics-and-gender</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reinhart And Rogoff's Pro-Austerity Research Now Even More Thoroughly Debunked By Studies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Posted: 05/30/2013 4:17 pm EDT  |  Updated: 05/31/2013 11:05 am EDT </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The debunking of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff continues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Harvard economists have argued that mistakes and omissions in their influential research on debt and economic growth don't change their ultimate austerity-justifying conclusion: That too much debt hurts growth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But even this claim has now been disproved by two new studies, which suggest the opposite might in fact be true: Slow growth leads to higher debt, not the other way around.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a post at Quartz, University of Michigan economics professor Miles Kimball and University of Michigan undergraduate student Yichuan Wang write that they have crunched Reinhart and Rogoff's data and found "not even a shred of evidence" that high debt levels lead to slower economic growth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And a new paper by University of Massachusetts professor Arindrajit Dube finds evidence that Reinhart and Rogoff had the relationship between growth and debt backwards: Slow growth appears to cause higher debt, if anything.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As you can see from the chart from Dube's paper below, growth tends to be slower in the five years before countries have high debt levels. In the five years after they have high debt levels, there is no noticeable difference in growth at all, certainly not at the 90 percent debt-to-GDP level that Reinhart and Rogoff's 2010 paper made infamous. Kimball and Wang present similar findings in their Quartz piece. (Story continues below chart.)...http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/30/reinhart-rogoff-debunked_n_3361299.html?view=print&comm_ref=false</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pete Peterson Linked Economists Caught in Austerity Error</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Mary Bottari [1] — April 18, 2013 - 11:59am</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Topics: Economy [2]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Projects: Real Economy Project [3]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A team of economists at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at UMass Amherst broke a huge story this week that was promptly picked up by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and newspapers around the globe. The economists proved that the essential underpinning "of the intellectual edifice of austerity economics," as Paul Krugman put it, is based on sloppy methodology and spreadsheet coding errors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reinhart-Rogoff Study Debunked</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Three years ago, Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff released a study [5] that presented empirical evidence from 44 nations over a 200 year time span to demonstrate that countries with a public debt over 90 percent of GDP (the United States is at about 100 percent, Japan at 200 percent) have average growth rates one percent lower than other nations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Forty-four countries, 200 years, Harvard -- pretty convincing, huh?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Except it was wrong.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the PERI team finally got a hold of the data used by Reinhart and Rogoff, they uncovered gaping problems [6]. They found that "coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics lead to serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth." Adjusting for these errors, the Amherst team contends that "the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0.1 percent."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It would all be a Massachusetts "Ivory Tower" kerfluffle if the Reinhart-Rogoff study were not cited by practically everyone in Washington, including Paul Ryan, Simpson-Bowles, and the entire "Fix the Debt" crowd, to justify harmful cuts and a stalemate on stimulus currently condemning millions to mass unemployment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it should come as no surprise that the economists have ties to Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Study Used to Justify Harmful Cuts and High Unemployment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is hard to understate the importance of the study. It has been cited [7] around the globe by academics, politicians, and the mainstream media. In the U.S., it is one of Paul Ryan's favorite justifications for his draconian Path to Prosperity [8] budget, for GOP rejection of further stimulus, and the Fix the Debt crowd's frenzied calls for urgent action. President Obama is now on the austerity bandwagon, enacting numerous cuts and proposing new cuts to programs like Social Security in order to achieve a "Grand Bargain" on deficits. As a consequence, mass unemployment is a new normal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Europe, "R&R's work and its derivatives have been used to justify austerity policies that have pushed the unemployment rate over 10 percent for the euro zone as a whole and above 20 percent in Greece and Spain. In other words, this is a mistake that has had enormous consequences" for real people, says economist Dean Baker in a piece called "How Much Unemployment Did Reinhart and Rogoff's Arithmetic Mistake Cause?" [9]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Time and time again, economists tried to replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results, but to no avail. Now, Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin show us why [6]. One mistake, admitted by the authors and gaining the most attention, is an Excel spreadsheet error. Check out the screen shot [10] of the year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the authors put it: "A coding error in the RR working spreadsheet entirely excludes five countries, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark, from the analysis. [Reinhart-Rogoff] averaged cells in lines 30 to 44 instead of lines 30 to 49... This spreadsheet error... is responsible for a -0.3 percentage-point error in RR's published average real GDP growth in the highest public debt/GDP category." Belgium, in particular, has 26 years with debt-to-GDP above 90 percent, with an average growth rate of 2.6 percent (though this is only counted as one total point due to the weighting above).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mother Jones dubbed it "the Excel Error Heard Round the World."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pete Peterson's Fingerprints</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It will come as no surprise that Reinhart and Rogoff have ties to Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson, [11] a big fan of their work. Peterson has been advocating cuts to Social Security and Medicare for decades in order to prevent a debt crisis he warns will spike interest rates and collapse the economy. (Peterson failed to warn of the actual crisis building on Wall Street during his time at the Blackstone Group.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Washington Post writer Suzy Khimm pointed out to Peterson [12] that the U.S. built significant deficits during the financial crisis but maintained very low interest rates, Peterson responded that America still needed to be on high alert: "you know [Kenneth] Rogoff and [Carmen] Reinhart -- I've talked to them, and they say [debt crises] are sudden, they're sharp, they're very substantial. The risk is simply too big. At some point, if we lurch from crisis to crisis, then confidence will decline on our economy in general."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Center for Media and Democracy detailed in the online report, "The Peterson Pyramid," [13] the Blackstone billionaire turned philanthropist has spent half a billion dollars to promote this chorus of calamity. Through the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Peterson has funded practically every think tank and non-profit that works on deficit- and debt-related issues, including his latest astroturf supergroup, "Fix the Debt," which has set a July 4, 2013 deadline for securing an austerity budget [14].</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reinhart, described glowingly by the New York Times as "the most influential female economist in the world," was a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics [15] founded, chaired, and funded [16] by Peterson. Reinhart is listed as participating in many Peterson Institute events, such as their 2012 fiscal summit [17] along with Paul Ryan, Alan Simpson, and Tim Geithner, and numerous other Peterson lectures and events available on YouTube [18]. She is married to economist and author Vincent Reinhart, who does similar work for the American Enterprise Institute, also funded by the Peterson Foundation [19].</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kenneth Rogoff is listed on the Advisory Board [20] of the Peterson Institute. The Peterson Institute bankrolled and published [21] a 2011 Rogoff-Reinhart book-length collaboration, "A Decade of Debt," where the authors apparently used the same flawed data to reach many of the same conclusions and warn ominously of a "debt burden" stretching into 2017 that "will weigh heavily on the public policy agenda of numerous advanced economies and global financial markets for some time to come." (Note that not everyone associated with the Institute touts the Peterson party line.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bankrupt Analysis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The authors have issued two rebuttals to the Amherst study. In their latest [22], they object that anyone would think they were "misconstruing analysis to support austerity" or a political agenda. Perhaps it had to do with pieces like this one entitled "Too Much Debt and the Economy Can't Grow" [23] that warns against further stimulus at a time when mass unemployment is wreaking devastation on the lives and livelihoods of workers young and old.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Economists like Herndon, Ash, Pollin, Baker, and Krugman have never bought the argument that economies can cut their way out of a crisis, and now data from the Reinhart-Rogoff study, from numerous European countries, from the IMF [24], and even from CMD's home state of Wisconsin (now ranked an astonishing 44th in job creation) [25], support their contentions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If only they had half a billion to spread the word.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Center for Media and Democracy • 520 University Avenue, Suite 260 • Madison, Wisconsin 53703</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Phone: 608-260-9713 • Fax: 608-260-9714</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">david roberts in grist 22feb 11 argues that rw economists argue our descendents will be richer, so it makes sense for them to pay for mitigation eg Manzi, Wm Nordhaus (yale) and Lomborg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As one example, corporations that don’t like climate change warnings will donate money and control research at universities, which then publish refutations of global warning proofs. Or, universities labs will be corporate-controlled in cases of FDA-approval research. This is especially dangerous when pharmaceutical companies take control of university labs to test efficacy or safety and then push approval through the governmental agencies. Another example is in economics departments — and movies like The Inside Job have done a great job of showing how Wall Street has bought off high-profile economists from Harvard, or Yale, or Stanford, or MIT, to talk about the state of the stock market and the country’s financial stability. Papers were being presented and published that were blatantly false, by well-respected economists who were on the payroll of Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">alternet</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">*</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hired by ERCC to diss EPA particulate/mercury limits 12/22/11</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NERA Economic Consulting is a firm consisting principally of microeconomists. It was founded as the National Economic Research Associates and forms part of the Oliver Wyman Group which in turn belongs to Marsh & McLennan Companies. Company research website Vault.com ranked NERA as the No. 1 economic consulting firm in its 2009 guide to the Top 50 Consulting Firms, ahead of competitors such as Cornerstone Research, CRA International, Analysis Group, LECG, Europe Economics, Oxera, Compass Lexecon, and McKinsey’s economic consulting practice.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NERA specializes in solving economic issues in areas such as securities, finance, telecommunications, energy, transport, and other self regulated industries, and providing expert witness testimony for antitrust copyright and intellectual property cases.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NERA was founded in 1961, and its founding president was Irwin Stelzer, a City College of New York Economics professor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Offices</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US: White Plains (headquarters), Boston, Chicago, Denver, Ithaca, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington DC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Canada: Toronto</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Europe: Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Geneva</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asia Pacific: Auckland, Beijing, Melbourne, Sydney, Shanghai, Tokyo, Wellington[1]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">References</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1. ^ “NERA Economic Consulting”. NERA. http://www.nera.com/Offices.asp. Retrieved on 2008-04-25.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERA_Economic_Consulting</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert D. Tollison and James M. Savarese were the leading member (probably the founders) of the Tobacco Institute's clandestine Economists' Network -- a group of academics who helped the tobacco industry fight proposed tax increase on cigarettes, and the declining acceptability of public and workplace smoking by:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">generating favorable research for publication,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">presenting favorable papers at academic conferences and symposia, and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">being ready to challenge the 'social costs' economic arguments employed by anti-smoking activist at public and legislative forums.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">writing letters-to-the-editor and lecturing to journalists, on behalf of the industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They were employed by the tobacco industry to counter the claims by anti-smoking activists and public-health advocates that the cost that both active- and passive-smoking imposed on the community was excessive, and therefore required regulation on purely economic grounds ... let alone the medical and nuisance factors. This became known in the tobacco industry as the 'Social Costs' argument, and the industry had numerous internal working groups trying to find solution to this political/economic problem, and they employed large numbers of economists and others to counter the attack.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contents</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[hide]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1 Social Cost</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2 Identified Members of the network</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3 Network activities</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4 Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 Membership list of the Economists' network</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6 References</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social Cost</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The term "social costs" refers to a number of related claims:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- that smokers cost employers more than nonsmoking employees due to increased absenteeism, higher health care costs, and for the additional cleaning expenses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- that smokers impose a community cost because of the increased fire danger they cause.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- smokers created public litter and odours, and made sections of the public space unavailable to non-smokers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- that smokers cost the state and federal governments more because of hospital, medical and welfare subsidies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- the early death of smokers left spouses and children dependent on welfare.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The economists countered these claims by:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- challenging the statistical studies and the validity of the data being used.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- pointing to the high rates of federal and state duties and tax imposed on cigarettes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- pointing out that, since smokers die at a younger age, they actually costs less than non-smokers (using very dubious figures) because they were not dependent on welfare in their old age.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[1]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Identified Members of the network</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert D. Tollison appears to have been the principle organisers of the network. He worked out of George Mason University, and ran a subsidiary foundation for this kind of commercial lobbying known as the Center for Study of Public Choice. Tollison is a founding member of the Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James M. Savarese President of James Savarese and Associates an economic consulting firm which has been headquartered in Washington DC. It was founded in 1981 and claims to have associates at major universities in more than 40 states' who can be called upon for extra-curricular work.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harold M. Hochman, from the City University of New York. He also figured in the Tobacco Institute's Public Relations Divisions' Resources Catalog. [1] Hochman is a founding member of the Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas E. Borcherding, Professor of Economics, Claremont Graduate School in California. He was also on the 1995 Advisory Board of far-right-wing Independent Institute. [2] and the Public Relations Resources Commitee of the Tobacco Institute lists him as a potential witness. Borcherding is a founding member of the Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fred McChesney, Emory University Law School, Georgia. McChesney is a founding member of the Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dolores T. Martin, of the Uni of Nebraska. Martin is a founding member of the Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Richard Vedder, Ohio University Department of Economics, Athens, Ohio [2]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Network activities</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James Savarese worked extensively for the tobacco industry for many years on the recruitment of economists to support the industry, and for part of this time he worked with his old associate, Bob Tollison. [3]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1995 they jointly made a proposal to the tobacco industry for a 'Social Cost Program' [4], which was fundamentally the preparation of an economics paper intended to exploit George Mason University's credentials as a trust-worthy academic institute. The initial paper was to take one month to write and cost $27,500, and they were also intending to involve other members of their Economists' Network in milking the tobacco cash-cow and extending the propaganda value. Their proposal read:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This paper will be readable. but technically designed for publication in JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] or other major economic journals. An initial version will be prepared as a George Mason University Department of Economics working paper for circulation to interested parties.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The white paper will include an Executive Summary, which can be used as a briefing fact shee{ for distribution among appropriate decision makers. This paper can be adapted as a sophisticated op-ed with attempted placements in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or the Washington Times."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to this initial paper they wanted another $35,000 for one attacking a Rand Report which had not favoured the tobacco industry:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the preparation of this paper. no original research is contemplated and assumptions will be carefully written to demonstrate that assumptions made by Rand and others are not necessarily accepted by authors but are used for the purpose of argument. This paper can be adapted as a sophisticated op-ed with attempted placements in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or the Washington Times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They then proposed to swing their Economists network into action by paying the members to write letters to the editor (LTE's) in support of the tobacco-funded position. This was being done primarily to influencing politicians, and it was estimated that the letters would need to be commissioned at $3,000 per market. Tollison and Savarese would organize this operation through their network:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A more comprehensive op-ed program which will involve a network of 20 economists attempting to place op-eds in major newspapers in targeted Congressional districts. Development of these op-eds will be supervised by Dr. Tollision and will be based on the findings of the white papers. Placements will be matched with key Republicans in Congress, both out of the ranks of the leadership and the new Republican members. In some cases. key Democrats have been targeted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth, was "an informal committee of economists from 42 states who have collectively and individually participated in activities on behalf of the tobacco industry in the areas of excise taxation and public smoking" according to an Tobacco Institute memo. [3] This committee was supported by the Tobacco Institute (TI) through advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather's public relations division (O&M) and James Savarese and Associates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is not entirely clear how much overlap there is between the Economist's network which appears to be jointly run by Tollison and Savarese, and the Committee, which involves Ogilvy & Mather. They may just have been different phases of the same development.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Membership list of the Economists' network</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clearly this is only a partial list of the associates of Robert Tollison and James Savarese. These economists were not just available to the tobacco industry, but to corporations in general if they ever needed an economist to counter an economic argument. Curriculum vitae of each of these economists was available on request. Some may also be available to prepare op-ed pieces for the local newspapers on request: [5]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Those economists who have testified or prepared op-ed pieces on the economic effects of public smoking are marked accordingly. The others may be briefed on the potential cost to government of implementing smoking restrictions. "</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Abrams, Burton, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alston, Lee, (Prof.) Department of Economics, Williams College, Williamstown, MA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amacher, Ryan, (Dean) College of Commerce and Industry, Clemson University, Clemson, SC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anderson, William, (Prof.) Ph.D, Office of Economic, and Community Development, City of Chatanooga, Chatanooga, TN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anderson, Terry, (Prof.) Department of Economics, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Armentano, Dominick, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bohanon, Cecil, (Prof.) Department of Economics, Ball State University, Muncie, IN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Borcherding, Thomas, (Prof.) Economics Department, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, CA Borcherding was a founding member of the Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth set up specifically by the tobacco industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Butler, Henry, (Prof.) Department of Management, School of Business, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Coats, Morris, (Prof.) Department of Economics, Marshall University, Huntington, WV</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crew, Michael, (Prof.) School of Administrative Sciences, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dalton, Allan, (Prof.) Economics Department, Boise State university, Boise, ID</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Denzau, Arthur, (Prof.) Department of Economics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO ,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dobitz, Cliff, (Prof.) Department of Economics, North Dakota State, Fargo, ND</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eberts, Randall, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ekelund, Robert B., Jr., (Prof) Lowder Professor of Economics, Auburn University, Auburn, AL</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Faith, Roger L., (Prof.) , Department of Economics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gaspari, Celeste, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Vermont, Burlington,VT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gay, David, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greene, Kenneth V., (Prof.) Department of Economics, State University of New York, Binghampton, NY</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hanna, Sherman, (Prof.) Economics Department, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harper-Fender, Anne, (Prof.) Head, Department of Economics, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hein, Dennis, (Prof.) Department of Economics, Augustana College , Sioux Falls, SD</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heins, James, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hochman, Harold M., (Prof.) Public Policy Program-School of Business, City University of New York, New York, NY. Hochman is a founding member of the Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth set up specifically by the tobacco industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hoffer, George Emil, (Prof.) Chairman, Department of Economics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hunter, William, (Prof.) Department of Economics, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jadlow, Joseph, (Prof.) Department of Economics, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kormendi, Roger, (Prof) Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kurth, Michael, (Prof.) Department of Economics, McNeese State University, Lake Charles, LA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Laband, David, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Catonsville, MD</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lee, Dwight, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">:Lee testified against proposed public smoking legislation in Harrisburg-and Philadelphia, PA, in mid-1985. He was a long-term tobacco lobbyist who worked for the industry on numerous projects.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lindsay, Cotton Mather, (Prof.) J. Wilson Professor of Managerial Economics, Department of Economics, Clemson University, Clemson, SC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Logue, Dennis, (Prof.) Tuck School Of Business, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Martin, Delores, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NB</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McChesney, Fred, (Prof.) Emory University, School of Law, Atlanta, GA McChesney was a founding member of the Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth set up specifically by the tobacco industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McMahon, Robert C., (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">:McMahon delivered testimony on the negative impacts of public smoking restrictions in early 1985 in Maine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mead, Arthur, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Menchik, Paul, (Prof.) Economics Department, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Militello, John F., Economic researcher, Wharton Center for Applied Research, Philadelphia, PA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parkman, Allen, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NX</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Peterson, William, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Tennessee-Chatanooga, Chatanooga, TN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pogue, Thomas, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Poulson, Barry, (Prof.) Head, Department of Economics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">:Poulson wrote an op-ed on negative effects of proposed public smoking legislation in Colorado Springs. Article appeared on Aug. 4, 1985 in Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Raab, Raymond, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Minnesota-Duluth, Duluth, MN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rucker, Randy, (Prof.) Department of Economics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sandler, Todd, (Prof.) Department of Economics, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shugart, William, (Prof.) Center for the Study of Public Choice, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">: Shugart has contributed to the preparation of several , pieces of testimony on public smoking restrictions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sweetser, Wendell E., (Prof.) Department of Economics, Marshall University, Huntington, WV</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tollison, Robert, Director, Center for the Study of Public Choice, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">: Tollison testified against the workplace smoking bill, proposed by the DC City Council in July 1905, and the Federal workplace smoking bill (S.1440), in October 1985. He also has prepared other testimony on the issue. Tollison was the founder of the Committee on Taxation and Economic Growth set up specifically by the tobacco industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vedder, Richard, (Prof.) Department of Economics, Ohio University, Athens, OH</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wagner, Richard, (Prof.) Department of Economics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">: Wagner testified against public smoking legislation in Tallahassee, Florida, early in 1985. He was a close associate of Tollison and co-writer of much of the material.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watson, Keith, (Prof.) , Economics Department, Auburn University, Auburn, AL</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">References</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? "Social Costs" Activities. Chilcote SD Jr. Letter. March 16, 1988. R.J. Reynolds Bates No. 506644070/4073</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? James Savarese Memorandum to Fred Panzer, Jeff Ross and Susan Stuntz, Tobacco Institute documents collection, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, January 6, 1987, Bates No. TI18230621 at page -0626</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? "Current Relations: Academics", undated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> =</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AlterNet [1] / By Lynn Stuart Parramore [2]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">comments_image</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meet the 28-year-old Student Who Exposed Two Harvard Professors Whose Shoddy Research Drove Global Austerity</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">April 18, 2013  |  </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The world of economics has just changed, and somebody has some 'splaining to do! Please savor the following twisted tale of bad math, academic folly and pundit hubris.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 2010, the names of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have become famous in political and economic circles. These two Harvard economists wrote a paper, “Growth in the Time of Debt” that has been used by everyone from Paul Ryan to Olli Rehn of the European Commission to justify harmful austerity policies. The authors purported to show that once a country's gross debt to GDP ratio crosses the threshold of 90 percent, economic growth slows dramatically. Debt, in other words, seemed very scary and bad.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their historical data appeared impressive, as did their credentials. Policy-makers and journalists cited the paper to convince the public that instead of focusing on the jobs crisis that was hampering recovery, we should instead focus on deficits. The deficit hawks jumped up and down with excitement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But something didn’t smell right.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Progressive economists I knew were shocked at what appeared to be the shoddiness of the research and the absurdity of the conclusions. In their paper “A World Upside Down? Deficit Fantasies in the Great Recession [3],” Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson observed that R&R had truncated their sample of British data in a way that skewed their conclusions, eliminating more than a century of data in which British debt loads exploded but economic growth raced ahead (see pages 11-13). The always savvy Marshall Auerback called them out in a blog [4] for New Deal 2.0, which I edited at the time, criticizing the relevance of the cases they had used to justify their conclusions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But plenty of pundits took their suspect arguments as gospel. The editorial board of the Washington Post declared that "debt-to-GDP could keep rising — and stick dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth." The economists cited were Reinhart and Rogoff, whom the WP passed off as speaking for the entire field. A new Washington consensus was born, and the public was hammered with the idea that cutting jobs, stripping away vital public services and letting infrastructure crumble was a good way to get the economy going.  Most any ordinary person on the street would probably intuit that this made no sense, but there was this Academic Research By Esteemed Persons, so the argument was over.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Enter Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin of University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the heroes of this story. Herndon, a 28-year-old graduate student, tried to replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results as part of a class excercise and couldn’t do it.  He asked R&R to send their data spreadsheet, which had never been made public. This allowed him to see how the data was put together, and Herndon could not believe what he found. Looking at the data with his professors, Ash and Pollin, he found a whole host of problems, including selective exclusion of years of high debt and average growth, a problematic method of weighing countries, and this jaw-dropper: a coding error in the Excel spreadsheet that excludes high-debt and average-growth countries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Herndon, Ash, and Pollin write: "A coding error in the RR working spreadsheet entirely excludes five countries, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark, from the analysis. [Reinhart-Rogoff] averaged cells in lines 30 to 44 instead of lines 30 to 49...This spreadsheet error...is responsible for a -0.3 percentage-point error in RR's published average real GDP growth in the highest public debt/GDP category."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A coding error! Reinhart and Rogoff had been so sloppy in their work that they had not bothered to check their own spreadsheet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When you fix R&R's problematic methodology and coding errors, you get a very different result that – guess what? – does not support austerity and shows that countries can most certainly cross the phony debt-to-GDP “threshold” and grow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In their newly released paper, "Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff [5]” Herndon, Ash and Pollin show that "when properly calculated, the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public-debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0:1 percent as published in Reinhart and Rogoff. That is, contrary to RR, average GDP growth at public debt/GDP ratios over 90 percent is not dramatically different than when debt/GDP ratios are lower."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Herndon, Ash, and Pollin have set off a firestorm, with those who long suspected that R&R's work was crap shouting hallelujah and defenders scrambling to figure out a way to support deficit hysteria [6] despite the body blow to their theory.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bottom line: The foundation of the entire global push for austerity and debt reduction in the last several years has been based on a screwup in an Excel spreadsheet and poorly constructed data.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reinhart and Rogoff are on the defensive. As Mathew O'Brien at The Atlantic put it, "this is the academic's version of the dream where you're naked in public." They have screwed up royally. They have also done a great deal of damage to the world. As Paul Krugman has observed, their replies to their critics have thus far only compounded the confusion. They need to come clean, stop talking like their mistakes are minor, and own up to the enormity of their errors. And a big round of applause goes to the folks at U Mass Amherst for getting to the bottom of this insanity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">extracted from some petition?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social Scientists:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The assessment of regional environmental and social impacts is a multidisciplinary task that involves natural and social scientists working in tandem with policy makers." - American Meteorological Society</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alan Carlin, B.S. Physics, Ph.D. Economics, Senior Economist, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alan Moran, Ph.D. Economics, Director of the IPA's Deregulation Unit, Australia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alex MacMillan, Ph.D. Professor of Economics and Finance (Retired), Queen's University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alex Robson, Ph.D. Economics, Irvine, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alister McFarquhar, Ph.D. Economics, UK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrei Illarionov, Ph.D. Economics, Russia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrew N. Kleit, Ph.D. Professor of Energy and Environmental Economics, Pennsylvania State University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrew P. Morriss, Ph.D. Economics, MIT, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Aynsley Kellow, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental Policy, University of Tasmania, Australia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Art Carden, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Rhodes College, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ben Stein, B.S. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Benny Peiser, Ph.D. Professor of Social Anthropology, Liverpool John Moores University, UK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bjørn Lomborg, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental Economics, Former Director of the Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brent L. Sohngen, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental Economics, The Ohio State University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bruce D. McCullough, Ph.D. Professor of Decision Sciences, Drexel University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bruce Yandle, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Economics, Clemson University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carl P. Close, M.A. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cass R. Sunstein, Professor of Environmental Law, Harvard Law School, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Craig S. Marxsen, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, University of Nebraska Kearney, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Daniel J. Mitchell, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Daniel K. Benjamin, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Daniel R. Simmons, B.A. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Daniella Markheim, M.A. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David A. Ridenour, B.A. Political Science, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Almasi, B.A. Political Science, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David R. Henderson, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Naval Postgraduate School, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Kreutzer, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dennis T. Avery, M.S. Agricultural Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Don Aitkin, Ph.D. Political Science, Australia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald I. Hertzmark, M.S. Ph.D. Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald J. Boudreaux, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump, B.S. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Douglas Southgate, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental Economics, The Ohio State University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Edwin J. Feulner, M.B.A. Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eugene M. Trisko, B.A. Economics, J.D. Law, Member, EPA Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Frank Milne, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Queen's University, Canada</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">G. Cornelis van Kooten, Ph.D. Professor of Agricultural & Resource Economics, Univeristy of Victoria, Canada</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gabriel Calzada, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Rey Juan Carlos University, Spain</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gary M. Galles, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Pepperdine University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George F. Will, Ph.D. Political Science, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George Reisman, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Economics, Pepperdine University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hans H.j. Labohm, Economist, Expert Reviewer, IPCC (2007), The Netherlands</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ingemar Nordin, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy, Linköping University, Sweden</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">J. Huston McCulloch, Ph.D. Professor of Economics and Finance, The Ohio State University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James Johnson, M.A. Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James Inhofe, B.A. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jean-Luc Migue, PhD Economics, Canada</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jeff Kueter, B.A. Political Science and Economics, M.A. Political Science, M.A. Security Policy Studies and Science & Technology Studies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D. Political Science, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jerry Taylor, B.A. Political Science, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Brätland, Ph.D. Senior Economist, U.S. Department of the Interior</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John D. Graham, Ph.D. Dean of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John J. Ray, Ph.D. Psychology, Mensa Member, Australia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John R. Lott, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Stossel, B.A. Psychology, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Julian Morris, M.A. Economics, M.Sc. Environment and Resource Economics, M.Phil. Land Economics, UK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Junsoo Lee, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, University of Alabama, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kendra Okonski, B.A. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kenneth W. Chilton, Ph.D. Director of the Institute for Study of Economics and the Environment, Lindenwood University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Karen Campbell, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kesten C. Green, Ph.D. Management Science, New Zealand</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Margo Thorning, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marlo Lewis, B.A. Political Science, Ph.D., USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mark C. Strazicich, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Appalachian State University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Beenstock, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael S. Rozeff, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Finance And Managerial Economics, University of Buffalo, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Molly Espey, Ph.D. Professor of Applied Economics & Statistics, Clemson University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Myron Ebell, M.Sc. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nicolas Loris, M.A. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, PPE Oxford, UK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul E. Godek, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Peter V. Bias, Ph.D. Professor of Business and Economics, Florida Southern College, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Randall G. Holcombe, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Florida State University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Randy T. Simmons, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Utah State University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Richard W. Rahn, Ph.D. Business Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rob Blackstock, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, The College of Business, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert L. Bradley Jr., M.A. Economics, Ph.D. Political Economy, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert Higgs, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert J. Michaels, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, California State University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert P. Murphy, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roland Granqvist, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Dalarna University, Sweden</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ronad Rychlak, Professor of Environmental Law, University of Mississippi School of Law, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ross McKitrick, Ph.D. Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Guelph, Expert Reviewer, IPCC, Canada</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roy E. Cordato, M.A. Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stephan Wilksch, Dr-Ing Professor of Economic Science, University of Technolgy and Economics Berlin, Germany</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Terry L. Anderson, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas A. Birkland, Ph.D. Political Science, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas Gale Moore, M.A., Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Loyola University Maryland, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas Sowell, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Economics, UCLA, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Timothy D. Terrell, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Wofford College, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vaclav Klaus, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, President of the Czech Republic</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Walter Block, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Loyola University New Orleans, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Walter E. Williams, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, George Mason University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William Evans, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Notre Dame, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William Junga, Ph.D. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William L. Anderson, Ph.D. Professor of Economics, Frostburg State University, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William D. Nordhaus, Ph.D. Economics, MIT, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William W. Beach, M.A. Economics, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Willis Eschenbach, B.A. Psychology, USA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wolfgang Kasper, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of New South Wales, Australia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yaron Brook, B.Sc. Civil Engineering, Ph.D. Finance, USA </font></div>