Bruce Yandle

Bruce Yandle

  • Member, Financial Markets Working Group
  • Mercatus Center Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics
  • Dean Emeritus, Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences

Bruce Yandle is a distinguished adjunct professor of economics for the Mercatus Center's Capitol Hill Campus program and the dean emeritus of the Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences.

Dr. Yandle is the author or co-author of numerous books, including Taking the Environment Seriously, The Political Limits of Environmental Regulation, Environmental Use and the Market, Land Rights, The Economics of Environmental Quality, and most recently, Common Sense and Common Law for the Environment. He served as a member and chairman of the South Carolina State Board of Economic Advisors.

From 1976 to 1978, Dr. Yandle was a senior economist on the staff of the President's Council on Wage and Price Stability, where he reviewed and analyzed newly proposed regulations. From 1982 to 1984, he was executive director of the Federal Trade Commission. Before entering a career in university teaching, Dr. Yandle was in the industrial machinery business in Georgia for fifteen years.

Dr. Yandle earned his PhD and MBA from Georgia State University and his AB degree from Mercer University.

Dr. Yandle also publishes a quarterly working paper on the current economic situation. This quarter's paper may be found here.

PUBLISHED RESEARCH

Research Paper/Study
Everyman’s Deficit image

Everyman’s Deficit

Spending Beyond Our Means
Bruce Yandle | Jul 20, 2010
In March 2010, the total federal debt stood at almost $14 trillion. With each person’s share of the debt now about $40,000, the debt and the deficit now belong to families like the Everymans. Two combined forces yield a stout formula for endless deficits. To keep their jobs, politicians want to bring home the bacon to their constituents. This means they will almost always prefer increased spending to spending reductions. And to get (and keep) their jobs, politicians always promise not to raise taxes. The result is systematic deficits. Without constraints, the body politic will always tend to increase spending while avoiding the pain of raising taxes.

Research Paper/Study
21st Century Regulation: Discovering Better Solutions to Enduring Problems image

21st Century Regulation: Discovering Better Solutions to Enduring Problems

Bruce Yandle, Henry Wray, Richard Williams, Scott Farrow, Andrew Perraut, Gary E. Marchant | Jan 07, 2009
This publication is the first in a new series of long-term research and discussions focused on finding solutions to the most pressing regulatory hurdles. This compendium consists of five papers addressing multiple regulatory challenges for the new presidency and the federal government to consider.

Research Paper/Study
Local Knowledge image

Local Knowledge

This issue of Local Knowledge focuses on the role of entrepreneurs in rebuilding the Gulf Coast. In this issue you can read research articles that explain what entrepreneurship is; that discuss how entrepreneurs and their businesses play a critical role in the response to and recovery after disasters; and that detail where and when entrepreneurs have played key parts in rebuilding.

WORKING PAPERS

Can Freedom and Knowledge Economy Indexes Explain Go-Getter Migration Patterns? image

Can Freedom and Knowledge Economy Indexes Explain Go-Getter Migration Patterns?

Bruce Yandle, Tate Watkins | Mar 05, 2010
What explains the migration decisions of young adults in the prime years of their working lives, people 25-39 years old, the builders of future economies, those people historian Daniel Boorstin (1974) called the Go-Getters? Are they driven to find emerging knowledge economies where returns to their investment in human capital may be highest? Or are they more oriented toward avoiding high taxes and onerous regulation and finding greater personal freedom? Do people migrating within the United States behave like foreigners migrating to the United States? Does protection of personal freedom matter? In short, what are the knowledge and freedom determinants of migration?

A Theory of Entangled Political Economy, with Application to TARP and NRA image

A Theory of Entangled Political Economy, with Application to TARP and NRA

Bruce Yandle, Richard Wagner, Adam Smith | Feb 12, 2010
The recent financial crisis has provoked a raft of contending claims as to whether the cause of the crisis is better attributed to market failure or political failure. Such claims are predicated on a presumption that markets and polities are meaningfully separate entities. To the contrary, we argue that contemporary…

America’s New Fuel Economy Cartel: Trading Freedom for Barrels of Oil image

America’s New Fuel Economy Cartel: Trading Freedom for Barrels of Oil

Bruce Yandle | Jun 2009
In this working paper, Bruce Yandle, Mercatus Center Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics and Dean Emeritus, Clemson College of Business and Behavioral Sciences, explains the political factors affecting CAFE standards and the second-order effects of these regulations.

POLICY BRIEFS

Spending Beyond Our Means image

Spending Beyond Our Means

Bruce Yandle | Jul 30, 2010
The federal government’s deficit will reach $1.4 trillion this year—a whopping 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—and the total federal debt stands at almost $14 trillion. That’s $40,000 for every citizen of the United States. The U.S. fiscal picture is shaping up to be a category 3 hurricane of red ink. Unless Congress takes action immediately to reduce the deficit, the deficit will inflict devastating damage on our economy.

Mercatus on Policy: Regulation in the 21st Century image

Mercatus on Policy: Regulation in the 21st Century

Bruce Yandle, Henry Wray | Sep 2008
The next administration will have the opportunity to reformulate regulatory policy significantly. As the Mercatus Center launches a new program to investigate ways in which to improve regulatory processes and policies in the 21st century, we offer a few brief ideas for new directions a new administration could take.

TESTIMONY & COMMENTS

Public Interest Comment

Environmental Protection Agency's Proposed Water Quality Trading Policy

Bruce Yandle | Jun 26, 2002
This comment analyzes EPA's intention to accelerate support of permit-trading for improving water quality.

Public Interest Comment

The Environmental Protection Agency's Proposed Changes to the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Program

Bruce Yandle | Jan 20, 2000
EPA's proposed changes to regulating states' establishment of Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for managing water quality reflects a welcome shift from federally-mandated technology-based controls to controls based on the characteristics of individual watersheds. However, EPA's prescriptive, procedural rule is likely to undermine the benefits of a watershed approach.

MEDIA CLIPPINGS

Reuters

High unemployment and the education deficit

Bruce Yandle | Jul 28, 2010
Bruce Yandle has a guest post at Reuteurs about how an education deficit is contributing to high unemployment.

Reason.tv

Bootleggers and Baptists – A Conversation with Bruce Yandle

Bruce Yandle | Jun 21, 2010
Bruce Yandle talks about the "regulatory dynamic" in this concise interview with Reason.tv.

Star-Gazette

In search of cleaner energy

Bruce Yandle | Apr 26, 2010
Bruce Yandle's study on the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions is quoted.