David Gerard

Author: David Gerard

Will Taxes Cause Golfer to Miss the Green?

As you probably know, the recent changes to the tax law mean that the most taxpayers are going to share more of their income with the government in the coming years.  Or perhaps you didn’t know?

Well, taxes went up for everyone who continues to work, at least.  Economists often worry that tax increases will have a deleterious effect on the economy, causing some to lose jobs and others not to be able to find jobs. 

Economists also sometimes worry that workers will quit working because taxes take such a severe bite that it simply isn’t worth punching the clock any longer.  Indeed, earlier this year the French government enacted a 75% tax on the wealthy, causing Gerard Depardieu (no relation) to flee the country.   Many who favor more modest government expenditures cheered Depardieu as he thumbed his nose at le percepteur.

Closer to home, golf phenom Phil Mickelson is now openly talking about “going Depardieu” after seeing a combination of federal and state tax increases that are shrinking his wallet.  But a funny thing happened on the way home from H&R Block,  someone took a look at the numbers and found Mickelson’s case less compelling.

Here’s a taste:

For starters, courtesy of President Obama’s re-election and the subsequent fiscal cliff negotiations, Mickelson will experience an increase in his top tax rate on ordinary income from 35% to 39.6%, and an increase in his top rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends from 15% to 20%. Clearly, when faced with tax hikes of that magnitude, it stops making economic sense for Mickelson to continue to swing a metal stick up to 70 times a day in exchange for the $48 million he earns on an annual basis.

Now, we know that when a man of means stands up to decry his tax burden someone will be there to ridicule him.  But, what makes Mickelson’s case special is that the source of this snark is none other than Forbes magazine.

Here’s some perspective on the high end of the U.S. income distribution:  The family cutoff to be in the 1% seems to be about $500,000 per annum.  Between tournament purses and product endorsements, Mickelson earns somewhere just south of $50 million.

That’s a long tail.

Outsourcing American Jobs

Outsourcing is once again in the news, including this attention-grabbing headline: “Developer outsources job to China so he can watch cat videos.”

That’s a pretty self explanatory, though misleading, characterization, I’d say.  It seems he’s outsourcing his job because he can reduce his own personal costs significantly without a detectable decrease in quality.  That’s efficiency enhancing, no?

Further evidence to support my conjecture comes near the end of the article:

The kicker: Further digging found that Bob was taking jobs with other firms and outsourcing that work to China too.  “It looked like he earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, and only had to pay the Chinese consulting firm about fifty grand annually,” said Verizon.

All this seems to suggest that there is no world equilibrium wage in the software industry right now.

And, as for what he does with the time saved — watching lolcats videos — well, de gustibus non est disputandum.

A Revolutionary Experience

Doug Allen from Simon Fraser University will be on campus on February 14 as part of the Senior Experience in economics.  In addition to The Experience, Professor Allen will also deliver a public lecture on his recent book, The Institutional Revolution: Measurement and the Economic Emergence of the Modern World.  The book is a collection of work that principally examines the ‘peculiar’ institutions surrounding the British aristocracy and other pre-modern European curiosities , including the sale of public offices and military commands to the practice of dueling to “settle” disputes.

Professor Allen’s talk will focus on dueling!

Here are a couple of the papers that serve as the foundation for The Institutional Revolution, available via the genius of Google Scholar.

Douglas W.  Allen and Clyde G. Reed (2006) “The Duel of Honor: Screening for Unobservable Social Capital,” American Law and Economics Review: 1–35.

Douglas W Allen (2002) “The British Navy Rules: Monitoring and Incompatible Incentives in the Age of Fighting Sail,” Explorations in Economic History, 39(2):113-232.

Douglas W. Allen (2009) “A Theory of the Pre-Modern British Aristocracy,” Explorations in Economic History, 46:299–313.

Douglas W. Allen and Yoram Barzel (2011) “The Evolution of Criminal Law and Police During the Pre-Modern Era” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 27(3):540–567.

 

Seems Like a Good Job Interview Question

I’m not sure this has anything to do with economics, but given the cross-disciplinary spirit that exists here on campus I thought I would post it anyway:

Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?

That was a question that was posed to President Obama (he declined to answer) that I read about at the Kottke blog.  And, as per usual, Mr. Kottke has way more on the topic than we could reasonably hope to expect.

Energy Revolution, Cont…

For the past two years or so, I have been telling students that the proliferation of natural gas production is one of the most significant stories — and certainly environmental stories — of the past decade.  I give you further proof from the Energy Information Agency website on electricity generation:

[F]or the first time since EIA began collecting the data, generation from natural gas-fired plants is virtually equal to generation from coal-fired plants, with each fuel providing 32% of total generation.

The 32% number for coal is astoundingly low, as within the past decade the conventional wisdom was that coal was likely to provide the majority (>50%) of electricity generation.

The Washington Post included this graph in its blurb on the demise of US coal. 

This brief from a few months back shows previous data in the right-hand box, and breaks down trends in the share of net generation in the left-hand box.  The accompanying text provides some reasons for the decline:

What does it all mean?  Well, it means a lot.  One of the causes of the switch is the much, much lower price of natural gas over the past several years. The switch from coal to natural gas also significantly reduces carbon emissions per unit of electricity output.

Much more here.

 

Train in Vain

If there is a story about incentives that is more awesome than this one, I’d be interested to hear it.

A cargo train filled with biofuels crossed the border between the US and Canada 24 times between the 15th of June and the 28th of June 2010; not once did it unload its cargo, yet it still earned millions of dollars…

Each time the loaded train crossed the border the cargo earned its owner a certain amount of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs), which were awarded by the US EPA to “promote and track production and importation of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.”  The RINs were supposed to be retired each time the shipment passed the border, but due to a glitch not all of them were. This enabled Bioversal to accumulate over 12 million RINs from the 24 trips, worth between 50 cents and $1 each, which they can then sell on to oil companies that haven’t met the EPA’s renewable fuel requirements.

It’s like a children’s joke: why did the train cross the border? As the man says, if you pay people to do something, you’ll get more of that something.

I wonder if this type of thing goes into the life-cycle analysis of biofuels?

Econ Read — Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty

“It says we need sixty five shoes”

This term’s Economics Department Read features Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty: Industry! Progress! Abundance! Inside the Fifties Soviet Dream.  The book is a hybrid history-fiction that uses many historical events and people to characterize the salad years of the Soviet Union, back when people thought central planning wasn’t a pipe dream.

Well, of course it was a pipe dream, and this book goes a long way to developing an understanding of planned economies and also the Soviet mentality. According to historian Marhall Poe, who has actually done some work on the Soviet Union himself, Red Plenty is the real deal:

[Red Plenty] contains more “truth” about the Soviet project than an entire library of “serious” novels and dry-as-dust histories. If I had to recommend one book on the Soviet Union to someone who wanted to understand it, Red Plenty would be it.

In the interview Poe says that Spufford “is one of those people that took all of that liberal arts crap seriously.”

Hey! Sounds like our kind of guy.

As for the logistics,  it is a one-unit directed study that will meet most Tuesdays during winter term from 11:10-12:15.  You can get sign up sheets and signatures from  Professor Galambos or Professor Gerard.

Link to book at Amazon.

(As long as we’re on the subject, Poe also interviews Appleton-native David Brandenberger about his recent book, Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror under Stalin.)

Economics Department Schedule, Winter 2013

Here are the course offerings in economics coming up this winter.  Click the links for course descriptions and availability. See you there.

ECON 100 ● INTRODUCTORY MICROECONOMICS ●  9:50-11:00 MTWR BRIG 223 09:50-11:00 ● Mr. Gerard

ECON 170 ● FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING ●  11:10-12:20 MWF BRIG 223 ● Mr. Vaughan

ECON 202 ● GLOBAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS ● 12:30-01:40 MWF BRIG 206 ● Ms. Beesley

ECON 215 ● COMPARATIVE ECONOMIC SYSTEMS ● 2:30-04:20 TR BRIG 217 ● Mr. Galambos

ECON 220 ● CORPORATE FINANCE ● 8:30-9:40 MWF BRIG 223 ● Mr. Azzi

ECON 271 ● PUBLIC ECONOMICS ● 3:10-4:20 MWF BRIG 217 ● Mr. Georgiou

ECON 380 ● ECONOMETRICS ● 1:50-3:00 MWF BRIG 223 03:10-04:20 T BRIG 223 ● Ms. Karagyozova

ECON 400 ● INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION  12:30-2:20 TR BRIG 223 ● Mr. Gerard

ECON 410 ● ADV GAME THEORY & APPLICATIONS   9:00-10:50 TR BRIG 217  ● Mr. Galambos

ECON 601 ●  SENIOR EXPERIENCE: READING OPT  02:30-04:20 T BRIG 317 ● Mr. Gerard

More From Rogoff on Innovation v. Stagnation

As we saw recently, Ken Rogoff is interested in engaging on the “innovation v. stagnation” hypotheses for the continuing global economic malaise. Rogoff comes down on the financial crisis as the root of the issue (see here), but the jury is still out.  Here is an Oxford Union Debate where Rogoff discusses these matters with the likes of technology legend Peter Thiel (the Thiel Fellowship guy) and chess great Garry Kasparov.

Listen / watch in if you have a few minutes.  Here’s some more background on the debate and the principals. That’s a lot of brainpower in that room.  The first ten minutes or so are predominantly pleasantries.

Our Annual Holiday Message: Give Her Something Expensive and Useless

Although most of LU is closed today due to the blizzardy conditions, the Lawrence Economics Blog trudges ahead.  And, what better way to celebrate the snowfall than to look ahead to the holiday gift-giving season?  As last year’s economists’ buying guide went over so well, I’ve decided to repost it here. So here we go…

Oh, Santa, how did you know?!

It’s that time of year where we bid you Happy Holidays from the Economics profession.

Up first, we have a truly heroic figure, Joel Waldfogel, author of Scroogeonomics.*  I don’t know your preferences as well as you do, so whatever I give you is probably sub-optimal, unless you tell me exactly what you want.  And even then, wouldn’t you rather just have the cash anyway?  For those of you intermediate micro students, you know that kids prefer cash over any in-kind equivalent.

Kudos to Professor Waldfogel for willing to be “that guy.”

Speaking of Scrooge, was he really such a bad guy?  Not so, says Steven Landsburg. Let’s give it up for our annual Scrooge endorsement from this classic Slate piece:

In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser–the man who could deplete the world’s resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and wide.

If you build a house and refuse to buy a house, the rest of the world is one house richer. If you earn a dollar and refuse to spend a dollar, the rest of the world is one dollar richer–because you produced a dollar’s worth of goods and didn’t consume them.

Ah, I just feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Moving on to The Atlantic, where we have “The Behavioral Economist’s Guide to Buying Presents.” Now this is some truly indispensable advice.  Like Waldfogel above, the money point is to just give money. But, for the true romantics who feel compelled to give a gift, the behavioralists recommend this:

Buying for a guy? Get him a gadget. Buying for a girl? Get her something expensive and useless.

The gadget I get.**  The expensive and useless? That’s from Geoffrey Miller’s, The Mating Mind.  Here’s a brief explanation of courtship:

The wastefulness of courtship is what makes it romantic. The wasteful dancing, the wasteful gift-giving, the wasteful conversation, the wasteful laughter, the wasteful foreplay, the wasteful adventures.  From the viewpoint of “survival of the fittest” the waste looks mad and pointless and maladaptive… However, from the viewpoint of fitness indicator theory, this waste is the most efficient and reliable way to discover someone’s fitness. Where you see conspicuous waste in nature, sexual choice has often been at work.

This presents something of a conundrum because “expensive and useless” seems to be at odds with Waldfogel’s hyper-utilitarian cold, hard cash suggestion.

Last year I suggested that we could solve the puzzle by giving her Euro!, but it seems that the EU keeps plodding along. Perhaps a holiday shrub?

…

* The book is a follow up to the classic, “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.”  Clearly, the book title Scroogonomics can be chalked up to the value-added of the publishing house.

**Conceptually, that is. I generally get ties and socks.

 

The Antitrust Legacy of Robert Bork

Whether one looks at the texts of the antitrust statutes, the legislative intent behind them, or the requirements of proper judicial behavior, therefore, the case is overwhelming for the judicial adherence to the single goal of consumer welfare in the interpretation of the antitrust laws.

That’s from the late Robert Bork, who died earlier this week.  I’m putting this one in a “people you should know” category. Bork was a Yale law professor and sometimes Justice Department official who is most famous for having his nomination to the Supreme Court shot down for being too conservative, or too wacky, or too something.  Whatever the reasons, the confirmation hearings and their aftermath are stuff of legend. (As was Bork’s beard!).

But for economists Bork’s greatest influence was certainly in the area of antitrust, and in particular his book, The Antitrust Paradox, from whence the above quotation was plucked.  Indeed, Bork is a seminal figure in the law and economics movement.  Note that Bork contends that consumer welfare is the end of antitrust policy, not the protection of firms from competition, not whether a given market is competitive or not, not even total welfare (!).  Think about that.

Steven Landsburg says that Bork won the antitrust argument and that we’re all the better for it.

Tyler Cowen also points us to some links discussing Bork’s life and legacy.

UPDATE:  A big piece on Bork’s influence in the Washington Post.

Briggs 2nd: Riker’s Island?

We previously told you about The Chaney Tapes — a chronicle of emeritus Professor William A. Chaney’s time at Lawrence. Among the things of interest to us is his particular his affection for some of the LU economists, and today we give you a quote on William McConagha:

“I would say that, of all the faculty I have known in my half century here, Dr. McConagha was the most beloved. A very gentle but firm-minded man. A real gentleman and scholar — soft-spoken but a ramrod when it came to integrity. He made the first public denunciation of Senator Joseph McCarthy in Appleton, not exactly the popular thing to do. He gave a public lecture in which, among other things, he simply told the McCarthy record, how McCarthy had accepted Communist support when he was running in Milwaukee. He told the facts of McCarthy’s record and talked about principles, about integrity. He was the first person to do that on campus.”

McConagha won the University Teaching Award in 1960, two years before it went to legendary political economist, William Riker.   Wow.

In that same year, Riker published The Theory of Political Coalitions and left Lawrence (College) to become head of the political science department at the University of Rochester:

WILLIAM RIKER WAS A visionary scholar, institution builder, and intellect who developed methods for applying mathematical reasoning to the study of politics. By introducing the precepts of game theory and social choice theory to political science he constructed a theoretical base for political analysis. This theoretical foundation, which he called “positive political theory,” proved crucial in the development of political theories based on axiomatic logic and amenable to predictive tests and experimental, historical, and statistical verification. Through his research, writing, and teaching he transformed important parts of political studies from civics and wisdom to science. Positive political theory now is a mainstream approach to political science. In no small measure this is because of Riker’s research. It is also a consequence of his superb teaching–he trained and influenced many students and colleagues who, in turn, helped spread the approach to universities beyond his intellectual home at the University of Rochester.

You can check out Professor Riker’s photo and short bio in the Government Department’s display case.  I believe he has had some influence on at least one of our colleagues in Government (note where he earned his Ph.D.). My own dissertation advisor cites Riker as one of his intellectual heroes.

That’s quite a legacy.

Innovation or Stagnation?

Harvard’s Ken Rogoff — of Reinhart and Rogoff fame — has a delicious Project Syndicate piece on the dueling theories of current global economic woes — “Innovation Crisis or Financial Crisis?”

As the title implies, once potential cause is that new innovation is simply not bringing the value added to world economic growth — advances such as the internet, iPhones, LED holiday lighting and the like are a lot more hat than they are cattle, so to speak. We have seen this stagnation argument from economists such as Tyler Cowen and Robert Gordon.

The other explanation is that the global economy is still feeling the effects of the financial meltdown from a few years back.  Indeed, Rogoff argues that excessive leverage overhang (in other words, lots of debt) is a prime reason why western economies have failed to ramp growth back up.  The purpose of the article is to weigh in on the stagnation thesis:

These are very interesting ideas, but the evidence still seems overwhelming that the drag on the global economy mainly reflects the aftermath of a deep systemic financial crisis, not a long-term secular innovation crisis.

Indeed, Rogoff is something of a technology optimist:

There are certainly those who believe that the wellsprings of science are running dry, and that, when one looks closely, the latest gadgets and ideas driving global commerce are essentially derivative. But the vast majority of my scientist colleagues at top universities seem awfully excited about their projects in nanotechnology, neuroscience, and energy, among other cutting-edge fields. They think they are changing the world at a pace as rapid as we have ever seen.

And the punchline:

Frankly, when I think of stagnating innovation as an economist, I worry about how overweening monopolies stifle ideas, and how recent changes extending the validity of patents have exacerbated this problem.

Overweening, an underused word if ever there was one.  But the point is solid — the economics profession since at least Schumpeter has fretted about the tradeoffs between providing incentives and the deadweight losses of monopoly power.  For some, that isn’t really the point anymore, as we learned reading Liebowitz and Margolis last year, as they focus on the serial monopoly phenomenon especially as it relates to high tech.

Nonetheless, it’s certainly the starting point and these are the types of questions that aren’t likely to go away.

“Hanging is too good for them”

Professor Galambos points us to The Chaney Tapes — a chronicle of legendary Professor William A. Chaney’s life and times here at Lawrence.  Of particular interest to this blog is the very high profile of Lawrence economists.  Here’s a taste of Professor M.M. Bober:

Some of Professor Chaney’s fondest memories are of his faculty colleagues in the 1950s and 1960s. M. M. Bober, professor of economics, is a particular favorite. His witticisms provide Chaney, himself the master of anecdotal enlightenment, with endless tales.

When discussing an art history professor’s latest attempts at painting, Professor Bober is reported to have said, “Hanging is too good for them”…

Bober’s sharp commentaries even warranted national attention when Time magazine published some of his more notable lines in a review of the retirement of several of academia’s greats in 1957: “If God were half as good to us as we are to Him, we’d be living in paradise,” “Businessmen have as much competition as they cannot get rid of,” and “When you leave this room I want you to feel that you have learned something. Don’t go out and just develop a personality.”

Hanging is too good for them.  I’m going to use that one.

Consumption Smoothing with a Non-Zero Probability of a Robot Uprising

True, but how will it affect your current consumption patterns?

One of the assumptions underpinning the life-cycle consumption hypothesis discussed in the previous post is that consumers have some beliefs about how long they (the consumers) will live.  If I expect to expire at age 50, for example, I might choose to spend my money stockpiling quality underwear at an earlier age.  But if I expect to die that young I would also expect to have lower lifetime earnings, which would potentially affect both my consumption levels and the levels of “excess savings” that I carry with the intention of bequeathing it to my little ones, if any (savings, not little ones). The important point, of course, is that the change of the expected terminal date would also cause a change in lifetime consumption patterns.

Another possibility that we should probably consider is that a robot uprising would pit machine against man, and wipe out civilization as we know it.  This would be different than simply expecting to die young, of course, because now not only will I not be around, my offspring won’t be around, either.  This little wrinkle completely wipes out any bequest motive I might have.  The comparative static results for both of those, I imagine, point toward greater consumption today. I would further conjecture that the greater the probability of a future uprising, the more it affects your current expenditures.

On this point, you probably have a lot of questions, as do I.  In particular, is this robot uprising likely to be anticipated by some but not others, is it common knowledge and we all see it coming, or is it a completely unanticipated shock to everyone?  These are important  because if I anticipate a possible robot uprising before the credit markets do, I can borrow heavily before interest rates spike. This is clearly the appropriate strategy and it would allow me to consume at levels well beyond what my lifetime earnings would support. In a macro model, of course, this would come out in the wash because my increased consumption would be offset by the lenders’ decreased consumption.

At any rate, if you think I’m just some lone professor thinking about these issues, you would be wrong. As just one example, Cambridge philosopher Hew Price is also very publicly concerned.  But rather than sitting idly by and awaiting the robot apocalypse, Professor Price is helping to get a jump by founding the Center for the Study of Existential Risk. And here’s why:

“It seems a reasonable prediction that some time in this or the next century intelligence will escape from the constraints of biology.”

Escape from the constraints of biology? I’m not sure what that means, but it sure doesn’t sound so good.  What’s more:

[A]s robots and computers become smarter than humans, we could find ourselves at the mercy of “machines that are not malicious, but machines whose interests don’t include us”.

Those snippets are taken from this BBC piece.

Regular readers of the Lawrence Economics Blog know that I worry what robots might be up to, and I have warned you that if push ever came to shove, you can bet that the robots won’t fight fair.

Robots taking your job may well turn out to be the least of your worries.

Consumption Smoothing and Peak Underwear

Back in the day, Modigliani and Brumberg (from their perches in Urbana-Champaign!) posited that individuals smooth out their consumption over the course of their lifetimes. In other words, total individual consumption expenditures are pretty stable, or smooth, from year-to-year, rather than having individuals curb consumption in one year to pay for big expenditures in the next. The big-picture implication is that individuals base their consumption spending on their expectations of lifetime earnings.  So, if I expect to make a lot of money years from now, I will spend at higher levels now, even if I don’t have it yet. As a result, the young and the old spend more than they make, whereas the middle aged make more than they spend.

The Modigliani and Brumberg work is now known as the Life Cycle Hypothesis, and it is a seminal contribution for a number of reasons.  First, it is a micro model that has significant macro implications –aggregate consumption depends on (expected) lifetime income, not current income.  It also implies that government deficits are a source of fiscal “drag” on economic growth.  You can check out more on Modigliani and his contributions at The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (available at campus IP addresses; otherwise, Google it).

Even if people spend the same total amount of money every year, however,  they will probably be some variation in the items they actually spend it on.  And empirically, of course, this turns out to be the case. Exhibit A: The Atlantic Monthly has a fascinating set of figures showing how U.S. consumer spending on various goods and services ranging from booze and smokes to lawn and garden services to men’s furs vary by the age of the consumer.

Presented without comment
Send Grandpa some new drawers

The figures are instructive.

First off, it appears that men pour increasing amounts of money into their undergarments as they age, reaching “peak underwear” at around age 50.  The average male aged 45-54 will drop about $120 on his drawers during that ten-year stretch. After that, underwear spending falls like a stone, and by age 75 or 80 it appears that most men are only spending a couple bucks a year on those closest to them.

At the same time, however, there is a decided uptick in spending on sleepwear/loungewear. I wonder what’s going on?  (Seems like a job for the Economic Naturalist).

In addition to these brief insights, the graphs seem to corroborate some intuition about how spending changes. For example, it seems that people in their late 20s and early 30s start dropping money on childcare services, which temporarily cuts into the amount spent going out boozing. I guess kids and the nightlife are substitutes, not complements.

It is also noteworthy and possibly surprising that 70-year olds spend as much on the sauce as 20-year olds do.

Or, perhaps that isn’t surprising.

As a bonus, some clever interns at The Atlantic have peppered each graph’s url with sometimes amusing, sometimes trenchant, and sometimes bordering on subversive commentary.

Well played all around.

Mental or Fiscal Cliff?

Those of you who occasionally turn on the news might have heard that U.S. policy is headed toward a “fiscal cliff” if Congress and President Obama fail to reach an alternate budget agreement.  For those of you who have been hiding under a cliff since the election, the “fiscal cliff” is simply a set of policies, both tax increases and budgetary cuts, that are probably more severe than most politicians are willing to take the blame for, and could possibly lead to a double-dip recession.  The situation is so severe that The Washington Post has set up an entire Fiscal Cliff Blog dedicated to the matter.

It seems most economists and policy analysts who blog have weighed in on the issue one way or another.  I recommend economist Ed Dolan’s blog, which points us to a reasonably cool background video by Lee Arnold. Arnold doesn’t seem to mention that the Congressional Budget Office projections assume that we go over the fiscal cliff and there are reasonably steep tax increases.  If you watch the video, be sure to check out Dolan’s commentary to put things in perspective.  Dolan also has a nice discussion of what “sustainable” fiscal policy looks like that is cross-posted at the EconoMonitor.

But, writing over at the Cheap Talk blog, Northwestern economist Sandeep Baglia says it won’t happen because the Obama Administration will cave. Why?  Because a fiscal contraction of this magnitude is likely to be significant enough to push the economy back into a recession, and the Administration politically can’t afford another downturn if it wants to do some of the other things that it probably wants to do.

Or probably won’t happen, at least.
UPDATE:  As you knew he would, the indefatigable Ironman at the Political Calculations blog provides a calculator so you can see the effects on you for yourself.

EPA Internship Opportunities

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has internships available, including opportunities for economics majors and other social scientists. Here is text from the announcement being circulated:

The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) has several research projects available at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

These projects provide opportunities to participate in ongoing research activities at various EPA offices and locations. Qualifications, appointment location and appointment length vary depending upon the project. Participants will receive a stipend depending on educational level and research experience.

The ORISE Research Participation/Internship Programs at the EPA are designed to provide a flow of scientists and engineers into the EPA to participate in current research and development activities and studies, and related projects. In addition, the program links the EPA’s technologies with the capabilities of the academic community.

Check http://orise.orau.gov/epa/ for details and the application.