well actually, it was the opposite policy under the George HW Busy administration, that made federally funded research owned by the university/researcher that is credited for a huge increase in practical university education. It's a simple matter of giving incentives for innovation.

I think that Krugman mention is my favorite part of that post.

probably the best summary of the stupidity of the green jobs debate I have seen.

Probably the best summary of my frustration with Krugman's column, and the frustration of many if not most economists.

it actually makes some sense. in many papers (see ORNL papers for example) the externality from national security is much bigger than air pollution externalities from oil. so it may make sense to reduce oil use for nationals security reasons alone. Furthermore, electric motors powered by coal plants are actually more efficient than gasoline engines, so even if we just build more coal plants, we'd reduce CO2 emissions (though those estimates are more controversial)

but there is a literature showing that a gas tax is inefficient because most of the externality from driving is on the Vehicles Miled Travel margin, rather than on gasoline spent, so it is inefficient to tax a more fuel efficient car the same amount as a less fuel efficient car for the impact on driving externalities like congestion or accidents (parry and small's AER paper has some analysis on this and I know people have calculated the DWL from using a gas tax alone vs a gas tax and a driving tax). also, tamper proof meters are not so crazy, progressive already offers such meters for free to its customers to better track moral hazard.

"That seems to be a misquote ... I think it should read "consumption" instead of "production."" No, the mandate is for production. If the gasoline refiners want to produce gasoline they have to produce a certain amount of ethanol as well. Though of course as you said, it doesn't really matter.

"The tax (or cap-and-trade) would provide the incentives to use more renewable energy" Actually it wouldn't. Optimal carbon tax only raises electricity prices by maybe 20% in the short run. If the costs are 50% higher than, that would be insufficient. You would need the RPS, which may be justified, if you believed the RPS would overcome innovation externalities that would bring the added cost back down to 20%.

except google docs doesn't handle equations terribly well. (though it has been getting better). I've dealt with this myself (I have Word 2007 and she uses Word 2003). The files actually saved correctly, but she would need Word 2007 in order to edit the equations. Otherwise, her edits came through fine. If that's unacceptable, there are programs that convert the equations properly (to Latex even if you like). I tell people it is worth getting Word 2007. The equation editor is infinitely better. Basically as good as Latex without giving up the benefits of Office.

Also, if you look at Parry and Small's AER on optimal gas taxes, you find that of the $1/gallon optimal gasoline tax they find, only 25 cents is attributed to inelasticity.

Being an economist who studies identity and who read a lot of sociology in grad school, I am very interested in Akerlof and Kranton's work and your response. However, there is a flaw in both your response to economists and sociologists which highlights why many economists have found their work to be very interesting but somewhat unsatisfactory, more an excellent first step rather than a complete theory. (Though I must admit that while I have read most of their academic articles on the subject, I have not read this book yet.) As AK acknowledge, economsts are skeptical about the exogeneity of identity. While their mathematical models tend to assume it is exogenous for tractability sake we know that not only are identities changeable (a rural/black/southern/woman is sometimes black, sometimes a woman, sometimes rural, sometimes southern, sometimes a combination of those 4). Thus their analytical model does not give us any guidance to perhaps the most important feature of identity (though I do acknowledge they do talk about these issues more informally). Similarly, when you say the main contribution for sociologists is to aprpeciate equilibrium and how identities and norms form. We agree. (My co-authors and I have for years been working for years on such a theory.) Akerlof and Kranton's highlight the importance of these questions but have not pushed as far analytically on the important questions of identity and norm formation.