Working Papers
Cost-Effectiveness of Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions from Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles
Goldman School of Public Policy Working Paper: GSPP08-014 (November 2008)
We find that plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) could significantly reduce automotive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and petroleum consumption, while improving energy security and urban air quality. Widespread PHEV adoption will depend upon technological and economic advances in batteries because the initial fuel savings do not rapidly compensate consumers for the capital costs of batteries today. For PHEV purchases to become economical to consumers, battery prices must decline from $1,300 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to about or below $500/kWh, or U.S. gasoline prices must remain at about $5 per gallon-or the federal government must institute policy innovations with equivalent effects, such as policies to lower battery cost and increase battery lifetimes (e.g. a broad and sustained program of battery RD&D), or those to widen the difference between gasoline and electricity prices (e.g. changes in energy taxes). However, even before PHEVs become cost-effective consumers, their purchase can still be highly valuable to society if their significant GHG reductions can be achieved cost-effectively (using a benchmark price of about $50/t-CO2-eq). Using the GREET model, we determine that in order for PHEVs' reductions to become cost-effective, either their purchase must approach current unsubsidized prices-requiring the same policy innovations described above-or very low-GHG electricity must be used to power them. This requires policies to decrease the GHG intensity of electricity, such as renewable portfolio standards, feed-in tariffs or other measures. Importantly, we find that any carbon price would have to exceed $100/t-CO2-eq in order to render PHEVs' reductions cost-effective, and hence a carbon price alone represents an impractical short-term means of achieving this goal.
Mortgage Guarantee Programs and the Subprime Crisis
Goldman School of Public Policy Working Paper (September 2008)
Arts Policy Research for the Next Twenty-Five Years: A Trajectory after Patrons Despite Themselves
Goldman School of Public Policy Working Paper: GSPP08-006 (August 2008)
This paper was commissioned for a plenary session at the Association for Cultural Economics International 2008 Research Conference recognizing the 25th anniversary of the publication of Patrons Despite Themselves: Taxpayers and Arts Policy. It proposes five “big questions” to which arts policy research should attend if carried on in the spirit that animated the book, namely that arts policy should seek to generate “more, better, engagement by more people with better art.” The five issues are:
1. Waste of cultural resources represented by works that are not heard or seen, such as unperformed music and works in reserve collections of museums.
2. Design and implementation of a workable business model for works in digital form (recordings, video, text, etc.).
3. Increasing the value created by amateur participation (in contrast to passive consumption of art provided by professionals).
4. Withdrawal of elites, especially economic elites, from their historic participation in arts governance and support.
5. Fragmentation of collective patrimony as people have fewer and fewer works commonly experienced and art serves niche markets.
The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility
Goldman School of Public Policy Working Paper: GSPP08-003 (August 2008)
This paper argues that the new interest in so-called "corporate social responsibility" is founded on a false notion of how much discretion a modern public corporation has to sacrifice profits for the sake of certain social goods, and that the promotion of corporate social responsibility by both the private and public sectors misleads the public into believing that more is being done by the private sector to meet certain public goals than is in fact the case.
Clubs
Goldman School of Public Policy Working Paper (August 2008)