Interesting blog bits

1. Homepaddock asks Do you want a sermon with that? It appears customers are being charged extra for something that will be better for the environment and then the company is using the extra money to contribute to "environmental causes". If this is a good policy for bags, why not give the majority of the profits from everything to environmental causes because everything they sell will impact on the environment?
2. Eric Crampton on Offsetting Behaviour: condom use edition. Condoms make you feel safer, so you take more risks. Always beware the offsetting behaviour.
3. Mike Sykuta on GM vs. TCE: Another “Block Upon Block”? General Motors seemingly plays the foil against Transaction Cost Economics again.
4. Matt Nolan on Tourism as low skilled and comparative advantage. May be we should do just what we are good at doing.
5. Nicholas Bloom says we are Halfway to recovery. This column says that the policy response to the financial crisis seems to have been adequate – we will not slip into another Great Depression. It argues that growth will resume by late 2009, as uncertainty is subsiding due to global cooperation. Maybe, may be not.
6. Market Power on If a Private Good Needs to be Subsidized, It's a Bad Investment. Yes, but why don't politicians get this?