Independent Study Explicit Update
Posted in Econ, Personal, School by George
For those of you who keep up with gimme-five, you know that I am in the process of working on an independent study in the Economics department of William and Mary. The study is on the economics of transportation, with particular focus on the environment. Although the last article (about ethanol) was part of my independent study, I thought I would give an explicit update.
I am planning on creating a policy proposal to address a three-pronged problem associated with transportation. The three pronged problem is:
- We are running out of liquid fuels
- Congestion is becoming worse in and around major cities
- Our current system of transportation is not environmentally friendly.
Of course, there are many sub-problems associated with the three points mentioned above, however, I will try to focus on the three broad issues. Of course, this idea is not set in stone yet and is dependent upon what my professor and I decide is an appropriate plan.
There have been a number of different policies proposed or enacted to address one, two, or all of these problems. These include:
- Subsidies and development for electric cars and hybrids
- Alternative Fuels and Technological Improvements
- Congestion Pricing
- Awards for Development, such as the X-prize.
- Increasing the gas tax
- CAFE Standard modification
- Encouraging telecommuting
- Improving public transit
A number of these solutions are laden with potential, and others are lackluster. At this point, I plan on weaving some of these policies together to create a “super proposal” that will address the three pronged issue I mention above, and describe it in paper form, which I will post on gimme-five, of course.
My early research has focused heavily on electric cars and hybrid-electric cars, alternative fuels (especially ethanol), and CAFE standards vs. gas taxes. My research has indicated, at a very preliminary standpoint, that there is a lot of promise for hybrid-electrics, a gasoline tax increase is a great idea, and ethanol is bogus.
I’ll post more specifics in individual articles.
March 26th, 2007 at 10:26 am
So, have you figured out a way to turn this global calamity into a personal opportunity? From a financial point of view, someone will profit and handily by chattering about the issues. Large investment banks need people that specialize in esoteric risks and opportunities.
Maybe we’ll see you Cnbc and on Cnet soon.
That will be interesting. Here’s a suggestion: Super-proposals can be all-encompassing or just too much — thrown and piled haphazardly into the middle of the floor for the decision maker to actually sort through. They hate having to go through a pile of whatnots in the middle of the floor because it’s not fun work. That’s why they hire the smart guys and gals — to do the arranging and stacking for them.
One way to address is to create an issues matrix with quick-hits (cheap), mid-term (less expensive), and long-term (more expensive), effort driven tasks — clearly identified as near term, mid-term and long term. This way, complexity is displayed and demonstrated, but you also offer the funding organization near-term “wins” that can be used to build the success of the long term and funds the longterm effort driven tasks. It also gives you the ability to do something and show results in the interim, while working on the effort driven tasks and adjusting.
It’s also helpful to create a single-page roadmap (and label it a roadmap) of how you get from here to there, so that policy A will progress to policy G logically and the costs are incremental rather than monolithic. Well designed and presented, roadmaps are intellectual property that differentiate one services provider from another.
Managers and executives want thought-leadership (Enron thought it had it, which is why they were given free reign). This thought-leadership is the ability to point to a project/program and say, Yes — we’ve been doing that since FY200x and we’ve got all these intermediate results to show for it. Our competitors have put less thought in this area.
This sounds tedious, but I think it works when presented correctly.
March 26th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Those are some good points, and I agree that it is very important to have short/medium/long term parts to the solution. I especially like the roadmap, not only because it affords me the opportunity for puns in my paper, but also a good way to organize information.
Thanks for the comment!