Problem is that the authors are just looking at the raw data, not what people thought. NPR had an article about it yesterday:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/09/02/129608251/cash-for-clunkers To quote: -- Christopher Carroll, a Johns Hopkins economist who until last month was a member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, said he wasn't convinced by the new study. He cited a survey that found that cash for clunkers persuaded people to buy a new car two or three years earlier than they would have otherwise. -- So who knows you cannot run a quasi-experimental design to show the outcomes, and there are too many other uncontrollable variables to say anything definitive about it. On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 4:44 PM, Judah McAuley <ju...@wiredotter.com> wrote: > > I was dubious about the Cash For Clunkers program when it was > announced. I understand the desire to get really old, trashy, > polluting cars off the road and help get auto sales going but the > logic wasn't quite there to me. If you had the money to spend on a new > car (even with subsidies) would you have a really old, nasty polluting > car? I think not, hence the program brought in lots of cars that > weren't really all that bad. > > Anyway, a retrospective analysis shows that it wasn't a terribly > worthwhile program. It seems to have influenced the timing of > purchases rather than stimulating new purchases and it took a lot of > ok cars off the road that has since resulted in higher prices in the > used car market due to lower supply. > > Good magazine has an overview: > http://www.good.is/post/more-bad-news-about-cash-for-clunkers > > And they link to a well written article in the Boston Globe: > http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/09/01/clunkers_a_classic_government_folly/ > > I'm not familiar with their conservative op-ed guy Jeff Jacoby. This > was a nicely written piece and lays things out logically. I'm going to > have to try and keep track of other stuff he writes. > > Cheers, > Judah > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:326886 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
