Environmental and Urban Economics

Permit me to announce that my new book has been published today! If you spend $45 on the hardcover or $19 on the paperback, you can now buy Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment from the Brookings Institution Press. While my current amazon book ranking is 1.5 million, I have a feeling that the distance between my book and Al Gore's new inconvenient classic will quickly shrink. I must warn you that my book does have fewer pictures than his.

WHY DID I WRITE THIS BOOK?

I could tell you the polite answer or the true answer. The polite answer is that ever since I finished my 1993 PHD thesis at the University of Chicago I have worked on a diverse set of topics related to urban and environmental issues. I always saw the links between these papers.

The San Francisco Chronicle today reports an opinion piece making some points about the full cost of adopting a California only cap on carbon emissions. This guy argues that facing higher energy prices due to the regulation will lead some manufacturers to seek out other states that are "pollution havens". Thus, he argues that while the California policy proposal is well meaning that an unintended consequence of this policy may be to raise greenhouse gas emissions.

In Berkeley, the esteemed Daily Planet newspaper is available for a low price. I picked it up the other day and actually read parts of it. The article I report below is thought provoking. The author's article would have been even better had she considered calculating what is the current market price of purchasing each of the 15 items she lists on her "Urban Bill of Rights".

These are exciting days. Classes begin at Tufts next week. This week my new book titled "Green Cities" will be published by the Brookings Press. This weekend I was in Los Angeles studying its rental real estate market and observing its day to day quality of life.

A few observations.

1. Los Angeles certainly offers beauty

A. I loved watching the sunset while at the Santa Monica beach

B. The UCLA campus and the local community around UCLA is charming and quite pretty.

C.

Knowing that field experiments are a powerful methodology in applied economics, I've decided to conduct one. Tomorrow, I will fly to Los Angeles and search for housing near UCLA. We will be renting there starting in January 2007. If you offer a blogger discount and have a nice place near campus, please contact me!

On an unrelated note, the New Yorker offers more than cartoons this week.

Intellectual property usually is sold at a positive price. My new book seems to offer a counter-example. Posted to the Brookings Institution Press is Chapter One of my new book www.brookings.edu/press/books/chapter_1/greencities.pdf . For those of you who are interested in environmental issues and city quality of life, this book may be for you!

The book has 7 other chapters. The paperback version of this 160 page book is priced at $18.

Several urban economists are writing papers with the following theme. In a world of rising income inequality, and housing supply restraints --- desirable and productive cities such as New York City and San Francisco are experiencing sharp increases in home prices that benefit the rich incumbent home owners and squeeze out the middle class.

Some scholars have called such cities --- "Superstar Cities"

http://www.nber.org/papers/w12355 .

The New York Times today reports how some cities have used aerial photos to mitigate asymmetries of information with regard to which home owners have improved their properties. Cities are now collecting more property tax revenue due to this change and homeowners have less scope to lie as they seek reductions in their property taxes.

A broader point can be made that government use of information technology has improved urban quality of life.

If people don't like sprawl, do they like high density? A recent New York magazine piece by Chris Smith does a great job tracing out the anxiety that incumbent Brooklyn residents are experiencing as a new large Atlantic Yards is planned. These incumbents are worried about their "Quality of life" being hurt by rising congestion and they should also wonder whether the value of their housing units will decline as supply increases.

How do students choose their undergraduate major? In my case, I switched to economics after being bored in a political science class. Back in 1984 at Hamilton College, the political science teacher chose me and another student to sit in front of the class. We played a prisoner's dilemma against each other. She chose to "stay quiet" while I played "rat her out" and she went to jail. The rest of the class hissed at me for not playing nice.