Environmental and Urban Economics

My son attends the UCLA Lab school. We are generally happy with his education but we would like to see him doing more math and having more homework. I voiced these opinions to another UCLA faculty member, whose child is in my son's class, and she told me that I'm not a progressive thinker. I'm hoping you are willing to defend me. Here is taste of her work --- http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=8211

Front Page Los Angeles Times

UCLA's Seeds school wants new branches in low-income areas.

By Carla Rivera, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

January 28, 2008

Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School at UCLA has a rich history of providing experimental teaching to students lucky enough to secure a spot at its wooded Westwood campus.

In democracies, the state is supposed to respond to the desires of "the people". Is this also the case in non-democracies? This case study below tells an interesting tale of of urban protest in the face of a new transit Mega-Project in Shanghai. There will be winners and losers from this project and the losers clearly want some Coasian compensation.

My six year old son is a big fan of Senator Obama and does not particularly like Senator Clinton. These impressions were based on seeing both of them on TV. He also once had a snack at the UC GSB with Austan Goolsbee and he thinks that Austan would be a fine CEA Chair. He is confused about who Senator Clinton would choose to run the CEA. Somehow I doubt that it would be Robert Barro.

My son has evinced some Barro-esque world views.

What do sociologists do all day long? We know that some Columbia University sociologists study social networks and others write about their graduate student days embedded in a Chicago street gang. But what do UCLA sociologists do? By reading my recent campus email, I can now provide a partial answer.

Jan.

Be careful what you wish for! I had hoped that the Journal of Economic Literature would review my Green Cities book and in the December 2007 issue they do. Ed Mills is a giant in Urban Economics. He is not one to hide his opinions. In this review I cite below, he gives me a good spanking. I can't say that I deserved it but I slightly enjoyed it! His review reminded me of his grumpy day to day talking style that I enjoy so much. His review displays his contempt for environmentalists. Unlike Dr.

I started to write the following editorial for submission to the Los Angeles Times. Rather send it there, I decided to shirk and publish it here. The gist of the idea is that California's home prices have soared in recent years and a 5% sales tax on the 500,000 homes that sell each year in the state would generate enough revenue to balance the budget.

This New York Times Article highlights that armed with trillions of "petro-dollars" Saudi Arabia is getting ready to build some brown cities whose employment base will specialize in making plastics and other dirty manufacturing activity. This will be a fascinating test case of "Scale versus Composition versus technique" in determining urban environmental externalities.

In past blog entries, I have talked about the environmental benefits of sprawl. When people live at low density, this creates a moat effect reducing contagion and exposure risk. I am well aware that people consume more resources when they live a low density.

UCLA's Economics Faculty Recruiting is in high gear. We made good progress on senior recruiting in the fall and now we are in the middle of junior recruiting. There are a large number of talks taking place so there are endless 1/2 hour meetings, lunches, dinners, talks. Yesterday, I attended two job talks (one in public policy and the other in Economics).

You have to be a little bit envious of Harvard and MIT. Each of these heavyweights may have 6 job talks, vote 4 offers and hire 2 or 3.

The Chronicle of Higher Education offers more insights than simply providing academic gossip about which Dean from which state school is moving to the Ivy League.