President Hugo Chávez may not name Greg Mankiw to be his Secretary of the Treasury. If you are a fan of cross-country comparisons, then President Chavez's "low" (i.e negative) gas taxes are helping to sketch out a demand curve.

How costly is it for a "green" consumer to vote with her wallet? As this article reveals, the tax subsidy for buying a hybrid is being phased out for vehicles made by Toyota and Honda.

As a 1984 graduate of Scarsdale High School in Westchester, New York -- I am willing to skim articles about that town. This New York Times article celebrates the rise of a more environmentally conscious culture at schools. Here the "environment" has several dimensions.

The New York Times has a great special section today on cars. I didn't know that hybrid technology was an old idea.

The Malibu fires raise a bunch of questions regarding self-protection.

Today's New York Times Magazine asks a good water policy question. Climate change may reduce the supply of available water in the U.S West (i.e Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix) at the same time that regional migration and income growth is increasing the demand to live and work in such areas.

Accountability matters so below I give you the weblink so you can grade my television perfomance today. No listeners called in to ask questions. Does that mean that nobody was listening?

If you missed it the first time, let me offer you a second chance.

Can quality offset quantity of consumption such that we achieve "green growth"? Mr. Helfer does not think so. This pithy letter unintentionally summarizes a recent literature in environmental economics pretty neatly.

As a young man, I watched the movie "Wayne's World" and wondered what it would be like to be on Cable TV. Saturday, I will find out. I appreciate the opportunity to appear on Beth Evans' show. We'll be discussing the role of environmental issues ins the 2008 election.

If you live in the greater Los Angeles area and you have a deep urge to hear me speak about hybrid vehicles for ten minutes, then maybe you should attend the AltCar Expo this friday in Santa Monica. I promise to sign any Readers Digest or Green City book copy that I'm handed.

The real reason that Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor studied at UCLA was not Coach Wooden. They knew that in time that UCLA would become the leading place to study and do research on real estate and urban topics.

As private insurers drop insurance coverage for home owners who live near coasts, the states and the federal government will become the residual claimant on these policies. The Congressional Representatives for these home owners will demand legislation to protect their constituents.

The old joke says that economists can predict what happened last year. In 2005, I generated a set of 11 credible Nobel Prize Winners. For the last 2 years, I've been wrong but this year I was right.

Proof that I called this year's Nobel Prize in 2005

So, 33% success rate (N=3).

Suppose that Al Gore has helped to put climate change on the policy issue "front burner". Suppose that climate change mitigation policies will be adopted in part due to the increase attention being paid to this issue. Suppose that climate change mitigation efforts will be successful.

More academics are blogging.

Many people find academic research boring and esoteric.

I doubt that this blog will ever rival the Job Openings for Economists or the SSRN Job Announcements but I thought that it couldn't hurt to reveal some "insider" information. UCLA has posted a great job for a social scientist who works on "climate change" issues.

The New York Times today offers 3 interesting stories relevant for big city life. Below, I reproduce them. The first story is about property rights and an implicit game of chicken between the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles home owners.

Economists are writing about media slant but I think they should devote more effort to video game slant.

I have a brother named Michael Kahn but I don't think he wrote this piece. While this paper is suggestive, I'm impressed by what flimsy evidence on social interactions (based on surveys of self reported quality of interactions) qualifies for a publication in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

I greatly enjoyed participating in the new RFF blog. You can take a look at the final 800 word product here;

New Resources for the Future Blog

As usual, I learned that I'm not a good writer and that I have trouble following instructions.

There are many deserving economists who might win the 2007 Economics Nobel Prize on monday 10/15. I hope you won't mind if I offer a political hypothesis. Paul Krugman will win this year's prize.

Should an investment of $1.5 million get you a nice house? In St. Louis it might, but on the westside of Los Angeles, it will get you a 3 bedroom house with a 6,000 square foot lot.

Economists track our publications, cites, burps and other measures of output. I thought that google might offer some clues about our daily value to the profession based on how many photos of us lurk on the Internet. So I ran searches for myself and two more prominent researchers.

This booster article would have you believe that Bucharest is an underappreciated city whose quality of life is on the rise. So, this would be a wise place for you to bring a bag of cash to buy a cheap apartment unit.

This Op-Ed author wants to treat different water differently. He wants water we drink to be quite clean while he isn't too bothered about water quality when we use the water to flush a toliet. So, he appears to say we need more water quality variance.

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