US Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure

Peter Z. Grossman

Mar 2013 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

US Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure is an analytic history of American energy policy. For the past forty years, the US government has tried to develop comprehensive policies on energy, yet these efforts have failed repeatedly. These failures have not resulted from a lack of will or funds but rather from an inability to differentiate between what could be undertaken and what could actually be accomplished. This book explains how and why various policy efforts have come about, shows why politicians have been eager to back them, and analyzes why they have inevitably failed. Over the past four decades, US energy policy makers have pursued not just policies that have failed but also a policy process that leads to failure.

About the author

Peter Z. Grossman is the Clarence Efroymson Professor of Economics at Butler University. He is co-author, with Edward S. Cassedy, of Introduction to Energy (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and co-editor, with D. H. Cole, of The End of a Natural Monopoly: Deregulation and Competition in the Electric Power Industry. His scholarly articles have appeared in journals such as Energy Policy, Economic Inquiry, The Journal of Legal Studies and the Journal of Public Policy. For seven years, Professor Grossman was a regular columnist on economic issues for the Indianapolis Star and he has contributed commentary to many magazines and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor.