Environmental and Urban Economics

Should 100% of Berkeley employment away from the University be at Starbucks and Chez Panisse? If you say no, then what should the economy diversify into? One answer to this question would be to trust free market forces and allocate land to the highest bidder. Berkeley doesn't work this way. I'm in Berkeley this week studying how the invisible hand operates when it is being tickled by multiple interest groups.

This article from my local favorite highlights some of the political fights.

In California, it has been claimed that AB32 will not only help California to mitigate its greenhouse gases but that it will also create new jobs. I like this optimism but the skeptic inside me would like to see some good research on the role of environmental regulation as job creator.

I don't know Ben Bernanke but he doesn't seem to care much for guys like me. I'm a renter and taxpayer. I would like to see him and Rick Miskin explain in a press conference why home owners need to bailed out and protected from the loans whose terms they chose to accept. I would like to know how many of my tax dollars will go to this bailout of the Bear Stearns. If they like activism, they should go back to their home universities and attend a university wide faculty meeting.

Have other bloggers wondered how random websurfers find their webpage? At google, if you type "urban economics" you will pretty quickly get pointed to my webpage. If you type "environmental economics" it takes a little bit more work to find me. Today, somebody searched for "ucla econ professor grumpy" and was directed to my site.

The asymmetry of the web interests me. Our readers know a lot about the bloggers but we know next to nothing about who visits.

Despite Big Ben B's best efforts, we may be slipping into a recession. One way to increase national economic output is to increase the effective time that our workers are working. Assuming the typical worker has a 8 hour work day will these urine bags increase output per hour?

Union: Workers told to use urine bags

Union officials in Colorado say a Qwest supervisor tried to cut down on lengthy bathroom breaks by telling workmen to use disposable urinal bags in the field.

UCLA researchers in our sociology department have generated a series of interesting facts about Mexican American assimilation. I'm not sure if they have nailed the causal mechanisms here but first steps first.

Apparently, immigration will continue to be a hot policy subject. For you nerds with too much time on your hands, take a look at this new George Borjas paper.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w13887. Their debate with Ottaviano and Peri is an important one.

Harvard Law School has announced that it will waive the 3rd year of its tuition (a short term savings of $40 grand) for people who promise that they will enter public service for at least 5 years. Some question: who will take this offer? Liberal students will be more likely to accept this deal. Will women at HLS be more likely to take this offer? While I have no evidence for this claim, my intuition is telling me that the answer is yes.

Tomorrow's Wall Street Journal OnLine Econoblog will offer some excitement. Before I turn to Tuscaloosa, I want to mention real estate prices at the Venice Canals in Los Angeles. Yesterday, we toured a $2 million home whose entire lot was 2,000 square feet. The home was 2300 square feet (it had 2 floors) and the lot was a mere 2,000. Why is the hedonic gradient demanding $1,000 per square foot of land? The Canals are Very pretty. .

UCLA has a healthy rivalry with UC Berkeley. We can beat them at basketball but can we beat them at economics? In a recent piece, David Warsh seems to think so. He is worried that UC Berkeley may soon be exporting some talent to the rest of the country. I've got other things to worry about such as hair loss but I'm optimistic that Berkeley will always be able to recruit and retain talent. There is something about that hippie place that draws talent.

Let me offer one example, my friend Max.