Tex-ternalities and the China/Europe Spectrum
posted by Frank Pasquale
I’ve recently come across these three facts about Texas:
1) About 60% of US executions occur in Texas.
2) About 20% of children in Texas do not have health insurance–almost twice the national average.
3) Texas produces more greenhouse gas emissions than California and New York combined.
When I first saw these figures, I thought that Texas may be burdening the US with some “reputational externalities” abroad, manifest in books like Vernon God Little. The judges who awarded it the Booker Prize called it a “coruscating black comedy reflecting our alarm but also our fascination with America.”
Some economic theories predict that these externalities will eventually be internalized. For example, there are many stories about a European condo-buying boom in New York; I haven’t seen as much on residential real estate purchases by overseas buyers in Texas. According to Anup Malani, “The value of a law [may] be judged [in part] by the extent to which it raises housing prices.” So perhaps more highly valued laws elsewhere in America will push up housing prices, comparatively enriching those property owners.
On the other hand, perhaps Texas’s policies are a bid to flatter China by imitation. Pollution in places like Shenzhen is a big problem (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg). Executions are common. And China’s decisions about health care in the 1980s and 90s might warm many laissez-faire hearts: “From 1978 to 1999, the central government’s share of national health care spending fell from 32 percent to 15 percent [and] the central government drastically reduced its ability and commitment to redistribute health care resources from wealthy areas to poor areas.”
Looking at world trends, a modern-day Tocqueville might think that the US’s future lay in political development of either a Chinese or EU variety. Texas appears to be a red state in more ways than one.
December 26, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Posted in: Capital Punishment, Criminal Law, Current Events, Economic Analysis of Law, Environmental Law, Politics
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Responses (3)
Daniel Goldberg - December 26, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Now now, Frank . . . our general agreement on most matters of law and ethics may come to a sharp disunion if I hear you bagging on Texas. To be sure, there is much to be embarrassed about, and most Texans whose judgments I tend to value agree with those sentiments.
But I was born on another continent, have traveled and lived all over, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be than Texas, warts and all.
Patrick S. O'Donnell - December 26, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Daniel,
Have you been to California, especially the coastal areas from Cambria northward? I was raised in Irving, Texas, and although I have fond memories of childhood and friends there, I remain grateful to IBM for moving my dad and his family out to California in 1969.
OK, Henry Gonzalez was from Texas, so was Barbara Jordan, and the inimitable and sorely missed Molly Ivins too, as was Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys…and Janis Joplin…and C. Wright Mills…and there was that rather vigorous Austin chapter of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)….
Still, “Californy is the place you ought to be…”
Frank - December 27, 2007 at 7:41 am
Well, I don’t want to say that all Texans are responsible…there are interesting issues of collective responsibility in politics generally, but we all know enough about gerrymandered districts and unpersuadability not to blame resisters for political results wrought by the rest!
I also didn’t mean for the post to simply mess with Texas. Rather, I think it raises some “iron cage” questions about the types of incentives and constraints the global economy creates. Might China’s growth result in part from its draconian criminal justice/health policies and laissez-faire view of pollution? Have more environmentally ethical nations simply exported their pollution problem to China?
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