Environmental and Urban Economics

We know that no Presidential candidate in 2008 will campaign on raising U.S gasoline taxes. While such a tax would induce green innovation, it wouldn't play well outside of Cambridge, MA. Perhaps, some candidates will claim that to insure our "national security" we need a strong defense and the development of alternate fuels and infrastructure investments to protect our coasts from future consequences of climate change.

I could imagine that democrats will try to claim that Republicans are beholden to oil interests and claim that the incumbents in power have made "bad decisions from the social good perspective" because they have been captured by this powerful special interest group.

Below I report an interesting case study of a public/private partnership that appears to have achieved its two goals of greening a big chunk of center city Atlanta and creating urban economic development. The article does not say how much public money was spent on this project so it is impossible to begin to do cost/benefit analysis here. I'm always interested in "demonstration effects".

Events such as Chernobyl, Bhopal, Three Mile Island, 9/11/2001 focus attention on an issue that people in their busy day to day lives may not have thought much about. Media coverage keeps the story "in the news" and it becomes cheaper for readers to become educated about the issue. Such educated voters may demand new regulation to reduce the likelihood of risks posed by the events listed above.

A movie about a politician giving "great man talks" about climate change will surely become a bestseller. My question for you is whether any movie like this can be a policy catalyst? There are 3 groups of people. Group #1 are people like al gore. They do not need to see this movie to be convinced that climate change is real threat. This movie may stir them up to keep being politically active.

Group #2 are people like George Bush. They will not see this movie.

The Fletcher School's graduation starts in 45 minutes. So, I'm sitting in my office in Phil Cagan's old University of Chicago graduation gown (he gave it to me) waiting for the fun to begin. I'm actually in the middle of a reflective moment. Has it been a productive academic year?

While my teaching ratings wouldn't reveal it, I actually think I gave fewer bad lectures than usual. In all 3.5 classes I taught, I think that I did a pretty good job.

Tufts University's graduation day is this sunday May 19th 2006. I hope to see you there. The biker Lance Armstrong will be our graduation day speaker. Is he the right guy for the job? What is "the job"? When I was a student at the University of Chicago, I noticed Chicago asked nerds to speak. For example, Robert Lucas (the 1995 Nobel Laureate) gave a speach about causing a monetary depression at an amusement park by reducing the supply of ride tickets.

Urban interest group politics is always interesting. Today burried deep in the New York Times is an interesting case study of the battle between "green" gentrification and ugly, dirty auto-parts stores in Queens, NYC.

Just two weeks ago, I drove from Manhattan to Queens to see my 94 year old grandfather. Queens is shocking. Just 2 miles from downtown NYC, you would never guess that you are so close to fancy real estate.

Suppose you own a car that travels 25 miles per gallon and you drive 10,000 miles per year. Some deep math shows that if you increase your driving up to 12,000 miles per year using a car that gets 35 miles per gallon your consumption of gasoline would decrease from 400 gallons to 343 gallons or a 14% decline.

While your scale of driving has increased, the technique effect (mpg) has been greened enough to offset the scale effect such that your ecological footprint would shrink.

I predict that we will soon see a large number of papers written about adaptation in the face of climate shocks. I read one interesting paper that argued that rural to urban migration will accelerate in LDC nations where farmers are not able to adapt to climate change shocks.

Below, the New York Times suggests that some Florida homebuyers are self protecting by moving inland to reduce their asset's exposure to flooding risk.

If you are a U.S university professor who sometimes envies colleagues at richer universities, the New York Times article reported below will cheer you up.

The French have done it again.

The intellectual puzzle to me is given the U.S example, private, excellent high amenity research universities, why haven't more universities in Europe experimented with adopting our model. I have heard that a couple of schools in Italy have.