Hear, hear!<p>I once read a study from a major state university, commissioned by the state government, that argued that it was more economic to recycle plastic bottles than to landfill them.<p>BUT... when you dug into the details of the report (something the journalists and general public were unlikely to do), you found the calculations didn&#x27;t correct for taxation (landfills) and subsidies (recyclers) as regulatory distortion.  The report simply treated them as natural economic components; itemized, yes, but not removed from the conclusion.<p>When I saw that I have to admit I became rather more cynical about the intersection of politics and academics.  It just wasn&#x27;t right.