Green Cities Cracks Into one "Top 10" List
It may not be the David Letterman Top Ten list or the New York Times Book Review's top 15 list, but I'll take it! I salute Planetizen for its good job judgment and I'm glad they liked my new book.
"Planetizen is pleased to release its sixth annual list of the ten best books in the planning field.
Ed Glaeser Takes on Tom Wolfe
Logical consistency has never been one of my strengths. Today, I wanted to blog about three different unrelated items.
70,080 Hours of Marriage
Time is our scarce commodity. Have you wondered where the time goes? This e-mail below offers an answer. Would you fill out their survey? I think I will.
A New Urban Economics Blog
Given the importance of cities in the modern economy, it is surprising how little academic blogging there is focused on cities. There seem to be zillions of environmental blogs but few urban blogs.
A Superstar City Prepares to Grow
New York City is wrestling with the question of how to increase its supply of land that can be developed. As this article below stresses, brownfields offer one source of land that can be revitalized.
Present Discounted Value Calculations and the Benefits of Fighting Climate Change
The Stern Report has generated world wide headlines. A leading economist argues that climate change will be quite costly perhaps costing us 5% of world GNP each year in the future.
“Most economics departments are like country clubs” says a Nobel Laureate. Is This True?
“Most economics departments are like country clubs,” said James J. Heckman, a Chicago faculty member and Nobel laureate. “But at Chicago you are only as good as your last paper.” This quote is from Milton Friedman's obituary in today's New York Times.
Milton Friedman’s Impact on my Chicago Training in Economics
I entered the University of Chicago’s PHD program in Economics in the fall of 1988. Milton Friedman had moved west more than ten before that. His ongoing impact on that Department was clearly visible in the subject matter taught by Gary Becker, Sherwin Rosen, and Bob Lucas.
Is Los Angeles Dangerous for Kahn? A test of the "Law of Small Numbers"
Don't ask how I found the story I reprint below. Another guy named Matt Kahn who currently lives in Los Angeles was assaulted as he made the mistake of supplying replacement workers in the middle of strike. The "law of small numbers" claims that we are not good bayesians.
Harvard's Effort to Mitigate Climate Change
Below, I report a concise punchy editorial in today's Harvard Crimson. The unsigned authors are pretty good economists thinking through different policies and their likely cost effectiveness. This editorial raises the bigger issue of adoption of greenhouse gas policies by Universities in general.
Two New Environmental Economics Papers
Apparently, we don't get paid for blogging! So, I've sat down and written some new academic stuff. This blog entry is a paid advertisement to tell you about these exciting two new papers available at www.ssrn.com.
Finding "Green" Neighbors and Product Bundling
I'm getting ready to move to Los Angeles and I don't drive. Apparently, I'm in the minority here.
Climate Change and Cities
The last chapter of my Green Cities book discusses climate change and cities. Surprisingly, there has been relatively little work on this subject. As I discuss below, there are 2 questions here.
Political Cycles and their Impact on Environmental Policy: Will the Democrats Pursue An Active Climate Change Mitigation Policy?
Bloggers have had a lot to say about this recent election. Despite all of this brilliant chatter, I haven't been able to find any discussion of what a Democratic House and Senate mean for U.S environmental policy for the next two years.
Toliets and Public Health in LDCs
Below I reprint an interesting article suggesting that there is a market failure in LDC cities. Urbanites in these cities demand clean toliets but a good sanitation system is costly. Wall Street has plenty of capital to lend out for good projects that pay a rate of return.
Kahn is Quoted in Today's London Guardian
When I was a student at the LSE during the 1986-1987 year, I often read the London Guardian newspaper. Thus, I was happy to find out today that my piece for the Policy Exchange titled "Green Growth: The Economics of Green Cities" was reported on in their newspaper today.
My Chapter for a new London Policy Exchange Book
Yesterday I gave an applied micro seminar at Penn State. I had a great time. My only complaint was that I had to take 4 flights to get from Boston to State College and return. Now I'm trying to catch up with all of the excitement and I teach in 1 hour.
New Climate Economics
Below, I report some recent research on the weather. Estimating climate change's consequences is both important and difficult. The Freakonomics column presented below sketches an intriguing paper by Deschenes and Greenstone.
What is "Frontier" Environmental Economics?
In late February 2007, Resources for the Future will hold a conference with the impressive title "Frontiers of Environmental Economics". What will this conference be about? I won't be around to find out. I'll be in the sun at UCLA but still I'm curious.
Overfishing, Tragedy of the Commons and Resource Depletion
Extrapolation is always fun stuff and makes for great headlines. But, rising demand for fish, the absence of Ocean private property rights and technological advance (i.e boats that can extract more fish per hour) all combine to potentially exhaust the fish supply.
Is Golf a Legal Means of Achieving Racial Segregation in the Suburbs?
Economists celebrate Tiebout sorting. A heterogeneous population "votes with their feet" and like minded people cluster into more homogenous sub-communities. So Berkeley and Cambridge attract more liberals and environmentalists than other towns.
Kevin Murphy: Profiled in the Chicago Alumni Magazine
Last month, David Meltzer was featured in the University of Chicago's Alumni magazine. Now it's Kevin M. Murphy's time.
