Wayne Winegarden
Commentary
Creating Better Forestry Certification Programs through Competition
It is basic Economics 101. Competitive markets create better outcomes than monopolists. Monopolists restrict supply and charge higher prices. Dynamically, monopolists face fewer incentives to create new products or improve how their products are made. In fact, creating new technologies or processes could undermine a monopolists current market dominance. What ...
Business & Economics
Outside Opinion: ‘Swipe fees’ aren’t so bad
Most Americans swipe their credit cards in the checkout line without thinking twice. But our ability to do so is under attack. Seven years ago, a group of stores launched a lawsuit alleging that credit card issuers unfairly dictate the so-called swipe fees. Although the parties agreed to a settlement ...
Business & Economics
An Economic Assessment of New York’s Smoking Policies
By some measures, New Yorks decline in smoking incidence, particularly youth smoking incidence, was even less flattering. The percentage of 9th through 12th graders in the U.S. who smoked more than 10 cigarettes per day fell from 13.8 percent in 1997 to 7.8 percent in 2011, it rose in New ...
Business & Economics
Consumers paying at retailer’s expense
Most Americans swipe credit cards without thinking twice. But our ability to do so is under attack. Seven years ago, a group of retailers launched a lawsuit alleging that card issuers unfairly dictate merchant credit card fees. Although the parties agreed to a legal settlement, some retailers are threatening to ...
Commentary
Treating Alzheimer’s with regulations
Bureaucracy stands in the way of the best treatment The U.S. health care system is rife with rising costs and stagnating quality. All too often, the cure for these ailments calls for ever greater government intervention. Such cures misdiagnose the problem. The health care systems problems are caused by too ...
Agriculture
Uncle Sam likes his sugar
The federal government continues to envision itself as Saint Michael, whose role is to save failing industries from the horrors of the market’s cruel discipline. At least it would seem so from its recent actions. Government bailouts for investment banks, insurance companies, large banks, small banks and the automobile companies ...
Commentary
Mandating Inefficiency in the Health Care Industry
Despite 50 years of failure, faith that the federal government can cure what ails the health care industry endures. That enduring faith drives a seemingly never-ending call for plans, both grandiose and modest, that attempt to address the failings of this sector. Grand redesigns of the health care system began ...
Business & Economics
Fiscal mess deeper than ‘cliff’
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, nothing focuses the mind like a crisis. And, perhaps that is why the political class continually manufactures fiscal crises. The manufactured crises can be used to focus the collective political mind and help solve the underlying fiscal problem. The fiscal cliff the tax increases and ...
Business & Economics
New Report on Controlling Rising Government Compensation Costs
New Report on Controlling Rising Government Compensation Costs The Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a free-market think tank based in San Francisco, today released a new report providing policy reforms to help control the rising compensation costs of state government employees. The report Policy Reforms to Control Rising Government Compensation Costs ...
Health Care
Benefits from Orphan Drug Research Outweigh Costs
PRI RELEASES PRIMER ON ORPHAN DRUG MARKET BENEFITS FROM ORPHAN DRUG RESEARCH OUTWEIGH COSTS A new study from the Pacific Research Institute reviews the economics of the orphan drug market and determines that the benefits from continued orphan drug research outweigh the costs. The report A Primer on the Orphan ...
Creating Better Forestry Certification Programs through Competition
It is basic Economics 101. Competitive markets create better outcomes than monopolists. Monopolists restrict supply and charge higher prices. Dynamically, monopolists face fewer incentives to create new products or improve how their products are made. In fact, creating new technologies or processes could undermine a monopolists current market dominance. What ...
Outside Opinion: ‘Swipe fees’ aren’t so bad
Most Americans swipe their credit cards in the checkout line without thinking twice. But our ability to do so is under attack. Seven years ago, a group of stores launched a lawsuit alleging that credit card issuers unfairly dictate the so-called swipe fees. Although the parties agreed to a settlement ...
An Economic Assessment of New York’s Smoking Policies
By some measures, New Yorks decline in smoking incidence, particularly youth smoking incidence, was even less flattering. The percentage of 9th through 12th graders in the U.S. who smoked more than 10 cigarettes per day fell from 13.8 percent in 1997 to 7.8 percent in 2011, it rose in New ...
Consumers paying at retailer’s expense
Most Americans swipe credit cards without thinking twice. But our ability to do so is under attack. Seven years ago, a group of retailers launched a lawsuit alleging that card issuers unfairly dictate merchant credit card fees. Although the parties agreed to a legal settlement, some retailers are threatening to ...
Treating Alzheimer’s with regulations
Bureaucracy stands in the way of the best treatment The U.S. health care system is rife with rising costs and stagnating quality. All too often, the cure for these ailments calls for ever greater government intervention. Such cures misdiagnose the problem. The health care systems problems are caused by too ...
Uncle Sam likes his sugar
The federal government continues to envision itself as Saint Michael, whose role is to save failing industries from the horrors of the market’s cruel discipline. At least it would seem so from its recent actions. Government bailouts for investment banks, insurance companies, large banks, small banks and the automobile companies ...
Mandating Inefficiency in the Health Care Industry
Despite 50 years of failure, faith that the federal government can cure what ails the health care industry endures. That enduring faith drives a seemingly never-ending call for plans, both grandiose and modest, that attempt to address the failings of this sector. Grand redesigns of the health care system began ...
Fiscal mess deeper than ‘cliff’
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, nothing focuses the mind like a crisis. And, perhaps that is why the political class continually manufactures fiscal crises. The manufactured crises can be used to focus the collective political mind and help solve the underlying fiscal problem. The fiscal cliff the tax increases and ...
New Report on Controlling Rising Government Compensation Costs
New Report on Controlling Rising Government Compensation Costs The Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a free-market think tank based in San Francisco, today released a new report providing policy reforms to help control the rising compensation costs of state government employees. The report Policy Reforms to Control Rising Government Compensation Costs ...
Benefits from Orphan Drug Research Outweigh Costs
PRI RELEASES PRIMER ON ORPHAN DRUG MARKET BENEFITS FROM ORPHAN DRUG RESEARCH OUTWEIGH COSTS A new study from the Pacific Research Institute reviews the economics of the orphan drug market and determines that the benefits from continued orphan drug research outweigh the costs. The report A Primer on the Orphan ...
