Archive for category Economics
Response in Full Fact to concerns over wind power
Posted by Nigel Williams in Economics, Environment on 02/02/2012
The web site Full Fact ran a feature on their blog about Ruth Lea’s report, Electricity Costs, the Folly of Wind Power. They kindly published a Civitas response, which is reproduced below:
What is the relationship between debt and growth?
Posted by Stephen Clarke in Economics on 30/01/2012
Last Friday the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced that it had estimated the growth in American GDP in the fourth quarter of 2011. The BEA estimated that the American economy had grown at an annualised rate of 2.8 per cent. This shines a harsh light on the current economic growth, or economic contraction, of the British economy, which shrank by 0.2 per cent in the final quarter of 2011.
Britain isn’t a business (but thankfully businesses aren’t like Britain)
Posted by Stephen Clarke in Economics, Tax and Spend on 13/01/2012
Yesterday on The New York Times online and today in the print edition, economist Paul Krugman discussed why ‘America Isn’t a Corporation’. Krugman makes a number of interesting points that all politicians would do well to remember, however, he perhaps fails to explain one of the most important reasons that a state is not a corporation: that it is not exposed to competitive pressures.
Wind-power: inordinately expensive and ineffective at cutting CO2 emissions
Posted by Nick Cowen in Economics, Environment, Press Release on 09/01/2012
Energy experts warn that unwarranted support for wind-power is hindering genuinely cleaner energy
The focus on wind-power, driven by the renewables targets, is preventing Britain from effectively reducing CO2 emissions, while crippling energy users with additional costs, according to a new Civitas report. The report finds that wind-power is unreliable and requires back-up power stations to be available in order to maintain a consistent electricity supply to households and businesses. This means that energy users pay twice: once for the window-dressing of renewables, and again for the fossil fuels that the energy sector continues to rely on. Contrary to the implied message of the Government’s approach, the analysis shows that wind-power is not a low-cost way of reducing emissions.
Electricity Costs: the folly of wind-power, by economist Ruth Lea, uses Government-commissioned estimates of the costs of electricity generation in the UK to calculate the most cost-effective technologies. When all costs are included, gas-fired power is the most cost-efficient method of generating electricity in the short-term, while nuclear power stations become the most cost-efficient in the medium-term.
Environmentalists are undermining their cause by defending emissions trading
Posted by David Merlin-Jones in Economics, Environment, European Union on 06/01/2012
On Wednesday, the Guardian published an article in ‘Comment is Free’ dismissing the claims made in Civitas’ latest report, CO2.1: Beyond the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (available here). Damien Morris, the author of the article and senior policy advisor at Sandbag, described the report as ‘cynical’ and containing ‘remorseless pessimism’. What is the report’s crime? To argue that the EU’s flagship environmental scheme delivers no environmental benefit and is being manipulated by governments, businesses and bankers for profit and should therefore be scrapped. There was no discussion of the report’s positive messages of alternative ways to reduce carbon emissions, if that is what we must do, for much less cost while also reducing the future price of energy.
Read the rest of this article on The Commentator here
Linking the Offender and Benefits Databases
Posted by Nigel Williams in Crime, Economics, Social Security on 04/01/2012
The Ministry of Justice and Department for Work and Pensions are to be congratulated for linking together databases of offenders and benefit claimants to see what can be learnt about individuals appearing on both systems. There is enough overlap, people that at different times offend and receive benefits, to reveal some patterns, provided one is careful not to assume that all benefit recipients must also be offenders.
