Think Tank Round-Up

• Reason Online and The Center for the Study of Energy Markets take on the "Cash For Clunkers" program in the article, "The Godzilla Solution," by Shikha Dalmia.
• The program receives mixed reviews in Christopher R. Knittel's study, "The Implied Cost of Carbon Dioxide Under the Cash for Clunkers Program," from the Center for the Study of Energy Markets at the University of California Energy Institute, in Berkeley.

  Here's Knittel's conclusion:

  "The Cash for Clunker [sic] program is both a stimulus and environmental program. In this note, I calculate the implied cost of greenhouse gas emission and find that they exceed those estimates from the Waxman-Markey bill by nearly tenfold."

  A free .pdf download is available here.

• The Milken Institute's next public Forum likewise addresses ecology and, of course for MI, economics. To be held August 26 @ 4:30pm, the program is titled, "The Future of Biofuels: Can This Green Energy Pay Off – and Save the Planet?"
• The Pacific Research Institute's Vicki E. Murray has an on op-ed today in the Sacramento Bee titled, "Money Doesn't Give the Whole Picture in Evaluating Schools (via Reason Online's "Out of Control Policy Blog").
• KPCC's Kitty Felde, now working out of Washington, D.C., visits with the Cato Institute to talk immigration policy.
• And RAND and the UCLA School of Public Affairs have combined on "The Dynamics of Deterrence," a criminology model said to developed in part using game theory.

  UCLA's Mark A.R. Kleiman, who co-authored the above, previously co-wrote "Fixing the Parole System," which was published online by the National Academy of Sciences.

Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user Kevin Dooley. It was used under Creative Commons license.