Environmental and Urban Economics

The New York Times on wednesday had a great article on Russia's newest export to the West --- carbon credits. There is clear evidence that there are gains to trade between Russia's electric utilities and Western nations.

I was taught that good social science explains and predicts human behavior. I figure that this time of year we bloggers are expected to make some predictions for the next year.

It appears to me that the NYC public transit union has lost this strike.

After interviewing an embedded reporter (my father) about how New York City’s Public Transit Strike has affected this city's quality of life, I would like to ask some questions and make a few observations.

1.

A couple of years ago I published a paper in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management titled "Demographic Change and the Demand for Environmental Regulation". I was interested in what observable attributes of a person such as his education level predict environmentalism.

When he lives in Berkeley CA, my son drinks organic milk made by the Strauss Family Creamery. Until I looked at the bottle, I didn't appreciate how green a product this stuff is. Ecological economists should be impressed by the "closed loop" nature of this firm's production process.

Will a public transit strike in NYC cripple this town? Perhaps Newman from Seinfeld will offer commuters rides on his rikshaw? How would this City adjust to this surprise?

Relative to their next best employment opportunities, public transit workers seem to have a pretty good deal; namely elatively

Apparently there are investors who care about more than risk and return. Such investors intentionally constrain their asset choice set avoiding companies who pollute or do other evils.

Time consistency is an important idea in dynamics economics. The 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics was partially awarded for macro research on this topic

( see http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/2004/ecoadv.pdf).

For a big company such as DuPont, is a $17 million dollar environmental fine serious? Is such a company more concerned about the public relations issue that the media may cover the story because the fine is viewed as "big"? From the EPA's perspective does it seek out high profile polluters and try t

When can shame and ostracism be harnessed to achieve social goals? Environmentalists argue that such public information as the Toxic Release Inventory create a "Day of Shame" such that manufacturers take steps to avoid being called "The Top Polluter" in news media accounts.

A recent NBER Working Paper conducted an extensive Census Based analysis of how home prices change in a vacinity of recently cleaned up Superfund sites. The study nicely constructed a credible control group (see http://www.nber.org/papers/w11790).

As cities in the South West such as Las Vegas and Phoenix grow, water demand increases.

In the 2008 Presidential Campaign, will the Democratic Party's nominee run as an international "team player"? Will the typical U.S voter be looking for a candidate who wants to build coalitions to conquer global challenges? I thought that Tip O'Neil said that all politics is local.

Over 25 billion dollars were spent between 1970 and 2000 in sixteen major cities in the United States on the construction of new rail transit lines. Billions more have been spent on maintaining and improving existing rail transit lines.

Which U.S cities have a rising share of workers commuting using public transit? Consider Philadelphia. In 1970, 23% of workers in this city commuted using public transit but by the year 2000 this share has fallen to 11%.

Nathaniel Baum-Snow of Brown University wrote an excellent PHD thesis at the University of Chicago. Using data from the United States, he documents that highways have played an important role in contributing to U.S suburbanization.

Dora Costa and I have now written six different empirical papers on social capital. All of them are available here (http://web.mit.edu/costa/www/papers.html). We are now starting to write a book that will bring all of these ideas together.

The Oil Drum (www.theoildrum.com) is an intriguing blog site featuring an active community debating peak oil's causes and consequences. As an empiricist, I was interested in what is the correlation between the price of gasoline and the web traffic that this site generates.

Suppose that terrorists choose targets by maximizing their expected utility. Suppose these guys have rational expectations.

What have been the long run consequences of the 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl events? Did these events make it much harder for the U.S and Europe to reduce greenhouse gas production? If these events had not taken place, how much lower would U.S and Europe's greenhouse gas production be today as "clean

As discussed below, 9 northeastern states are getting ready to sign a pact to cap and trade electric utility greenhouse gas emissions.

Perhaps Paul Krugman's popular writings have had a strong treatment effect causing Republican economists to hide or change stripes. Perhaps economists are jockeying to join President Clinton's "Economic Dream Team" in early 2009. Today the New York Times points out an interesting fact.

Urban population density offers some advantages and some disadvantages. The usual laundry list of disadvantages includes congestion and pollution. When people think of pollution, they immediately think of air and water pollution.

Two leading environmental economists have conducted a thorough study of the costly Superfund program. They conclude that the $30 billion dollars spent on hazardous waste site cleanups does not pass a cost/benefit test.

Recently there has been extensive media coverage of this benzene spill near China's Harbin City. Part of the costs of this disaster will be borne in nearby Russia.

Dora Costa and I are starting to write a book on social capital during war time. Our setting is the U.S Civil War. In particular, we have unique soldier level data for over 36,000 Union Army Soldiers (30,000 whites and 6,000 blacks).

Can there be a large "silver lining" from environmental disasters? A Chinese city called Harbin offers another natural experiment today for thesting this hypothesis. A chemical plant exploded in Harbin and this has increased the local river's toxic benzene content.

Is Montana coal our nation's solution to achieving energy independence? The New York Times today sounds convinced. This article is quite interesting but I think it is a good example of why journalists needs to specialize and know the technical details of the subject they are studying.

Ther Mercer Rankings for the year 2005 rank San Francisco as the 25th best city in the world and New York City is ranked as #39.

Suppose there is sharp learning by doing in the renewable energy industry. As this article below discusses, China is getting ready to make a major investment in wind turbines.

Permit me to quote a 9/15/2005 Financial Times piece by Jeff Sachs: “The US has steadfastly resisted any new commitments on climate change, yet it won't feel quite the same way soon when Americans begin to understand that climate change is expected to lead to more Katrinas, and when they simultaneou

I read an interesting press release concerning who bears the brunt of climate change impacts see http://www.news.wisc.edu/11878.html. These researchers have the guts to forecast far into the future concerning likely impacts.

Do we have limited attention spans? In the aftermath of a shock such as the Tsunami or Katrina, people feel generous and give.

I often go to www.theoildrum.com to try to understand how smart non-economists think about resource depletion in a growing economy. There I see a fair bit of venting about economists and our "naive optimism".

The core Oildrum argument goes as follows: we have "locked in" to gasoline.