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Energy consumption is critical to economic growth and quality of life. America’s energy system, however, is malfunctioning. The status quo is characterized by a tilted playing field, where energy choices are based on the visible costs that appear on utility bills and at gas pumps. This system masks the “external” costs arising from those energy choices, including shorter lives, higher health care expenses, a changing climate, and weakened national security. As a result, we pay unnecessarily high costs for energy. New “rules of the road” could level the energy playing field. Drawing from our work for The Hamilton Project, this paper offers four principles for reforming U.S. energy policies in order to increase Americans’ well-being.

energy environment cost economics

We investigate the role of identity and self-image consideration under “pay-what-you-want” pricing. Results from three field experiments show that often, when granted the opportunity to name the price of a product, fewer consumers choose to buy it than when the price is fixed and low. We show that this opt-out behavior is driven largely by individuals’ identity and self-image concerns; individuals feel bad when they pay less than the “appropriate” price, causing them to pass on the opportunity to purchase the product altogether.

economics cost self-concept pschyology

e-books publishing publisher economics cost

We’ve become a nation of hypochondriacs. Every sneeze is swine flu, every headache a tumor. And at great expense, we deliver fantastically prompt, thorough and largely unnecessary care. There is tremendous financial pressure on physicians to keep patients happy. But unlike business, in medicine the customer isn’t always right. Sometimes a doctor needs to show tough love and deny patients the quick fix. A good physician needs to have the guts to stand up to people and tell them that their baby gets ear infections because they smoke cigarettes. That it’s time to admit they are alcoholics. That they need to suck it up and deal with discomfort because narcotics will just make everything worse. That what’s really wrong with them is that they are just too damned fat.  Unfortunately, this type of advice rarely leads to high patient satisfaction scores.  

medicine health health-care cost risk expectation

"The problem was that the vending machine operators and owners suddenly realized once the coin was available that it was going to cost them about $50 to retrofit each machine so that it would accept dollar coins...and most flatly refused to spend the money. They wanted the Mint to pay for the retrofitting, which it wasn't authorized to do.

With banks refusing to order the golden dollar in big numbers or distribute them exclusively when they had them, retailers refusing to order them because of the additional cost, consumer wanting them but having a substitute -- the bill -- that they liked at least as much, and vending machine owners refusing to get in the game, the golden dollar died the same ignominious death as the Susan B. Anthony."

history sts infrastructure cost standards money coins

publishing textbook teaching college cost economics

"Contemplating what I should tell them, there are only three things I’m sure of: News has to be subsidized, and it has to be cheap, and it has to be free."

journalism media future cost public-goods information economics philanthropy profit

"The problem is that faculty at many institutions mandate that students pursue the liberal arts via distributional or general education requirements, but there are no obligations on the faculty themselves to match or embody that vision. Students are expected to make connections between subjects and courses largely on their own, and often find that the connections that they have made are complicatedly inexpressible within any given course or disciplinary major, in conversation with any given professor. "

education academia college economics bubbles cost generalist interdisciplinary liberal humanities history

"While universities routinely maintain that it costs them more to educate students than what students pay, a new report says exactly the opposite is true.

The report was released today by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, which is directed by Richard K. Vedder, an economist who is also an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a Chronicle blogger. It says student tuition payments actually subsidize university spending on things that are unrelated to classroom instruction, like research, and that universities unfairly inflate the stated cost of providing an education by counting unrelated spending into the mix of what it costs them to educate students."

academia academic college cost spending research university

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academia cost money humanities crisis state(California)

"As a result, a 20-year-old man today can expect to live about a year longer than a 20-year-old in 1998, but will spend 1.2 years more with a disease, and 2 more years unable to function normally."

age longevity demography health medicine cost

Fee-for-service versus other payment models in medicine.

medicine health politics government cost insurance reform

by Peter Singer

health medicine insurance policy rationing money cost cost-benefit-analysis

The basic story of the U.S. health care system is that prices are inflated by enormous rents everywhere. Our doctors get paid twice as much as doctors in Canada, Germany, and elsewhere. (I know, they will all work as shoe salespeople and custodians, if we cut their pay.) We pay twice as much for prescription drugs as everyone else. And we throw 15 percent of our health care expenditures in the garbage, paying insurance companies to deny people care.

medicine cost health politics

The map above shows an estimate of road-traffic congestion in 2010. In most major metro areas, it is steadily worsening. The cost of congestion, including added freight cost and lost productivity for commuters, reached $78 billion in 2005. Half of that occurred in just 10 metro areas.

transportation cost traffic rail economics money

The bottom line is there are two distinct issues here. The first is the issue of for-profit vs. association publishing. The current relationship between the scientific community and the for-profit publishers makes no sense to me. The second issue is the business model of association publishing, for example, "reader pays" vs. "authors pays." This is a legitimate topic of discussion, as long as we understand that it cannot be separated from the overall business model of the association. Just remember, "free" is not a sound business model.

publisher publishing business non-profit associations professional-association cost editorial open-access business-model

medicine health cost economics

economics medicine health cost

education technology future productivity learning college cost