24 Nov 2009

Counting Jobs Created or Saved by the "Stimulus" Bill, Part 2:
Program design prevents error correction

by Richard Belzer

in Information Quality

The federal government's reported figures for jobs "created or saved" by the "stimulus" bill (formally the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or "ARRA") are now known to be wrong. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which oversees these figures, apparently has decided not to correct them.


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20 Nov 2009

Counting Jobs Created or Saved by the "Stimulus" Bill:
A lesson in information quality

by Richard Belzer

in Information Quality

A scandal has erupted over the federal government's reporting of the number of jobs created or saved by the "stimulus" bill (formally the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). 

This scandal would have been avoided if the government had complied with the Information Quality Act.

6 Nov 2007

The Economics of Cell-Phone Jammers:
A case study in government misallocation of property rights

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Economics, Regulatory Policy

New York Times reporter Matt Richtel seems to have set off a pandemic news stories and commentaries with his profile of "otherwise respectable people" who use jamming devices to illegally obstruct the cell phone conversations of people nearby. Based on groundswell of support that appears to have formed for jammers, this looks like a problem worthy of a small amount of economic analysis.

As it happens, there are simple market-based solutions. The real problem is that the federal government has preempted them by disallowing market forces to work. One thing should be clear: jammers have appeared on the market because there is considerable consumer demand for them. That means there used to be a "market failure," and this market failure will persists as long the federal government insists on sustaining it.