Providing the Poor with $ Incentives to Take Care of Themselves
People seem to respond to financial incentives so let's pay the poor for getting medical checkups, atteding parent-teacher conferences and getting a job. That's what New York City is about to do.
Greening Cities through Pricing Parking
UCLA plays good basketball and great social science. In today's New York Times, my colleague Don Shoup makes the plausible case that properly pricing scarce resources (urban parking) could offer many big city "green" benefits. Don has convinced me.
UCLA Antropologists Study What Disgusts Us
What grosses you out? Why does it? Do you simply state that you derive negative utility from something? Buy why? Researchers at UCLA offer some answers.
Some Comments on "Freaks and Geeks"
In the April 2nd 2007 issue of the New Republic, Noam Scheiber has written a long piece titled "Freaks and Geeks". All academic economists should read this piece because it raises a host of issues concerning where academic economics is going.
The "Magic Formula" for Being Admitted at UCLA?
Admissions officers at elite schools have a hard job. Usually, economists model people as if they solve calculus problems.
Adaptation to Climate Change? Evidence from Arizona
This is an interesting case study highlighting how a specific geographical area has been affected by recent climate patterns. In this town in Southern Arizona, the temperature is rising and this has triggered fires and bug invasions.
Does Day Care "Cause" Kids to Act Bad? A Case Study Highlighting the Importance of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects
People seem to believe that social scientists can estimate treatment effects. Is day care "bad" for children? This New York Times article seems to say that "yes, a little bit" based on a giant expensive study.
Bargain Real Estate in Los Angeles?
The New York Times has discovered an arbitrage opportunity in Los Angeles real estate and was kind enough to report about it in today's paper.
One Household's Attempt to Have a Small Ecological Footprint
Are you as "virtuous" as this family? A year without toliet paper? It would be interesting to have a real doctor examine this family to look at their physical health at the end of their experiment.
The Economics of Agglomeration
Why do cities exist? In this Internet age, why do they continue to exist? Probably, so we can step in each other's dog poop and smell other people's cigar smoke? Perhaps, there are gains to trade that are facilitated by being in tight proximity that overcome the annoying noise, smoke and foulness of
How Clean Should Water be in LDC Cities?
This blog entry below argues that urban water treatment systems are expensive in terms of upfront expenditure and ongoing expenditure. While everyone would like to have clean water for bathing and drinking, such projects are expensive.
California as a "Lab" to test whether Immigrants Raise or Lower U.S Workers' standard of living
Immigration appears to be an important policy issue for the United States. This new research article I present below challenges the conventional wisdom that immigrants compete with incumbent citizens for scarce jobs and hence lower natives' standard of living. This author uses California as his lab.
Climate Change and Air Travel Delays: An Economic Research Agenda
A while back I did two hours of research to get a sense of how many hours a year did U.S air travelers lose due to bad weather at their origin or destination and how many more hours they might lose in the future if current hub patterns continued and climate change led to a higher frequency of bad we
Housing Supply Regulation in Environmentalist Communities
I am fascinated by whether reading the New York Times causes people to live their lives differently. Put simply, does reading Paul Krugman's column increase your devotion to President Bush? Today's Times provides a rational expectations data point.
Does Sprawl Enhance our Day to Day Urban Quality of Life?
Below, I provide a draft of a new paper of mine that I've written for a NBER conference that I won't attend late next week. I'd certainly appreciate any comments that would improve this paper.
Clash of the Titans: MIT vs. Harvard in a cage match
Here is a very nice ECONOBLOG posted to the WSJ online today. The debate presented here highlights the tricky issue of testing hypotheses when there are likely to be heterogeneous treatment effects from being "treated" with democracy.
Green Movies: Hollywood as a Catalyst for Climate Change Policy?
Silent Spring shocked us. The sinking of the Titanic shocked us. 9/11 shocked us. Can Hollywood shock us? These other "events" are associated with ex-post new regulations being enacted.
Living a "Green" Life
Forget lifestyles of the rich and famous. This article focuses on the lifestyle of the green and religious. It is an interesting test of "leader" effects if Green Evangelicals will be able to convince other evangelicals to join them in their efforts.
Profits from Being Green
Today, the New York Times has a whole special section on "Green Business".
http://nytimes.com/business/businessspecial2/
I thought that this was good stuff but I wanted to comment on some basic issues.
Why is the New York Times Mocking "Peak Oil"?
This article argues that engineers are doing a better job finding oil and thus the peak oil crew has been over-stating their alarmist position.
Glaeser on Modernism
When does a city have ugly buildings? What are the golden decades of architecture that are worth preserving? Glaeser does a good job here of sticking up for diversity in allowing different people to sort and choose what is best for them in how they live their urban lives.
Urban Governance in LDCs: Do the Urban Poor Have a Say in Governing Cairo?
In a diverse society, how are different people's preferences aggregated to determine what local tax and service policies will be? I had naively thought that if the median urbanite is a poor person that these people would vote for politicians who enact a "pro-poor" urban agenda.
