The second problem is that an increase in gasoline taxes would have very little effect on aggregate tailpipe emissions.  That’s because consumers will primarily respond to a fuel tax over the long run by purchasing more fuel efficient vehicles, not by driving less.  And for every incremental increase of automotive fuel efficiency, a 20 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled follows, and this increase in driving will greatly reduce the emissions reductions that we might otherwise see in response to the tax.  Economist J. Daniel Khazzoom, for instance, calculates that doubling the gasoline tax under the current regulatory regime would only reduce tailpipe emissions by 6 percent over the long run.

Here is the paper.  You’ll see the footnotes and citations in the original text.  Here is one relevant Khazzoom piece, JSTOR only.  How is this work regarded?

Citigroup , Bank of America and other
top banks took the rare step of borrowing $2 billion from the
U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday, in a bid to reassure markets
and remove the stigma associated with getting financing from
the central bank.

U.S. shares rose after the move, as the banks’ moves
signaled that battered credit markets may start to heal, though
bank stocks were mixed amid lingering concern about mortgages.

Borrowing money directly from the Fed has historically been
seen as a sign of weakness, but Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase
& Co, and Wachovia Corp said they did it for the sake of the
financial system. All four banks emphasized they have access to
other, cheaper funds.

Here is the story.  I don’t know if this will work, but it is a neat trick.  Imagine that you, as a smart person, went around saying stupid things, in an attempt to limit discrimination against the stupid.  You can come up with other analogies of your own.

It’s not that big:

Of the sixty articles in AER, EJ, JPE, and QJE that had been cited more than 500 times, only one article contained an author written lemma.

Here is the paper, and thanks to Johan Almenberg for the pointer.  On p.6 you see a good graph, "Lemma frequency by decade."  Note also that a top paper in Econometrica is much more likely to have a lemma.

…Levy and Peart propose a simple solution: randomization. 
Rotate ratings firms the way that baseball rotates umpires. 
If they were assigned by lottery, rating agencies would have enhanced incentives to take the public interest into account — and diminished incentives to try to please underwriting institutions that were paying the bills.  Something of the sort was incorporated among the reforms mandated for accounting firms by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 — the rotation every five years of the lead audit partner and the reviewing audit partner was required, for example, and more frequent changes of firms themselves was recommended. But the measures stopped well short of randomization.

Here is the full discussion.  Yes that Levy is my colleague David Levy, who has been a major influence on our department, most of all through his book The Economic Ideas of Ordinary People.

Natural experiments have their uses.  Saurabh Bargrava reports his joint work with Vikram Pathania:

…we document a 20-30% rise in cellular call volume during the time of the day– 9pm on weekdays– when cell phone providers systematically transition from "peak" to "off-peak" pricing.  We then measure the resulting increase in fatal and non-fatal crashes during this period as compared to weekends and earlier periods which serve as controls.  We find no evidence for a rise in crashes, and estimate small positive upper bounds for the effect size at 9pm (~1% for all crashes, and 2.4% for fatal crashes).

Here is the paper.  Here is a related press release.  You might wonder how this can be reconciled with all those studies showing that talking on a cell phone is as bad as driving drunk.  The authors discuss the other work starting on p.8 and score some good points.  Furthermore get this:

We confirm our
results with three additional empirical approaches–we compare trends in
cell phone ownership and crashes across areas of contiguous economic
activity over time, investigate whether differences in urban versus
rural crash rates mirror identified gaps in urban-rural cellular
ownership, and finally estimate the impact of legislation banning
driver cell phone use on crash rates.  None of the additional analyses
produces evidence for a positive link between cellular use and vehicle
crashes.

No, I am not encouraging you to talk on your cell phone while driving, if only because so many of you already talk so much, and besides, what if these guys are wrong?  But science must progress, and in that spirit I report these intriguing results.

…there are now Chinese companies that are happy to sell you fake receipts that look just like the real thing.

But what if they sold you a "fake receipt" for buying…*fake receipts*.  Would it be a fake receipt, a real receipt, or a real fake receipt?  Here is the story, and thanks to Derek for the pointer.