Articles by Clark Williams-Derry

For problems like air pollution from cars, it’s often a tiny number of actors doing the bulk of the

Looking for something cool to read? Try this article by Malcolm Gladwell in this week's New Yorker. Gladwell discusses an unusual intersection of policy, politics, and mathematics -- namely, social ills that follow the "power law," in which a relative handful of bad actors are responsible for the bulk of a problem. Take, for example, pollution from cars:

Most cars, especially new ones, are extraordinarily clean. A 2004 Subaru in good working order has an exhaust stream that's just .06 per cent carbon monoxide, which is negligible. But on almost any highway, for whatever reason -- age, ill repair, deliberate tampering by the owner -- a small number of cars can have carbon-monoxide levels in excess of ten per cent, which is almost two hundred times higher. In Denver, five per cent of the vehicles on the road produce fifty-five per cent of the automobile pollution. [Emphasis added.]

The problem, according to Gladwell, is that even if the lion's share of problem is caused by the statistical outliers, our solutions tend to treat everyone the same -- as if we're all equally responsible. The patina of fairness may be reassuring to politicians. But substantively, fairness doesn't always lead to the best outcomes.

Gas taxes are OK, but they aren’t a silver bullet

The basic point of this NYT piece is pretty good: The idea of coupling a gasoline-tax increase with a cut in payroll taxes deserves a much closer look. It makes sense as policy -- gas taxes should be higher, and a payroll tax cut could help soften the blow. Plus, pairing a tax increase with a tax cut seems to draw far broader political support than a straight-out hike in gas taxes:

The gasoline tax-cum-rebate proposal enjoys extremely broad support. Liberals favor it. Environmentalists favor it. The conservative Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker has endorsed it, as has the antitax crusader Grover Norquist. President Bush's former chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, has advanced it repeatedly.

OK, so it's a good idea. But I can't help myself -- I'm going to pick some nits.

The more compact your neighborhood, the less time you spend in a car

One benefit of living in a compact neighborhood rather than a sprawling suburb: You don't spend as much time in your car. The chart below, derived from a national transportation survey, makes the point pretty clearly:

More evidence that individual purchases mean less than changes in the system

Apparently I didn't do such a good job in this post explaining why I found this New York Times article on higher-mileage, gas-electric hybrid SUVs so troubling. So I'll try again.

To recap -- the Times article claims that, under the system governing vehicle fuel economy in the U.S., selling a hybrid Escape lets Ford sell an additional Lincoln Navigator without running afoul of federal CAFE standards. In other words, while buying an Escape may mean that you're driving a more efficient vehicle, it doesn't mean that the average fuel economy of all the Fords on the road will change one whit.

A couple commenters over on my blog mothership said this is bunk. But I think the article is on to something.