A Serious Home Price Discontinuity at the Scarsdale/White Plains Border in the NYC Suburbs
My UCLA colleague Sandy Black wrote a great Harvard thesis. Google Scholar says that the paper has already earned 292 cites; Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary Education, SE Black - Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1999.
Economists: Want to Raise Your Citation Count? Stay Alive!
How do you judge quality in your field? If you make airplanes, quality may mean that your planes rarely crash or fall apart. If you make hotdogs, quality may mean that people like how they taste and rarely have stomach problems the next day.
Nudge: Richard Thaler Speaks at UCLA
Behavioral economics swept through UCLA yesterday. Richard Thaler was on campus to give a speech. Somehow inertia and procrastination affected the turnout. The event was held in a room that seats 400 people but only 60 people were there.
The Energy versus Environment Tradeoff: Stark Evidence from Europe
Does demand create supply? Europe is building more coal fired power plants but wants to be "green" and reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.
The Opportunity of a Lifetime: Live in Los Angeles and Boss Kahn Around
UCLA's Institute of the Environment is looking for a new Director. Mary Nichols was our director until summer 2007 but she has moved on to a very important policy job at California's Air Resources Board .
This job has several excellent attributes.
The 10 Green Commandments
Free Riding isn't cool. The Nash Logic of relying on everybody else to do their share is looked down upon during Earthweek. In my role as intellectual middleman, I wanted to guilt you with 10 things you should be doing rather than reading this blog.
Lights Out
No lights were on this morning at my son's school. There was no blackout. Instead, the kids were learning a lesson in energy conservation. http://www.google.com/intl/en/earthhour/ .
PETA Provides a Big Push for Fake Meat Innovation
Do we need a government sponsored "Manhattan Project" for natural resource related innovation when we have PETA leading the charge? Will people in Europe label the testtube creations "Frankefoods"? (see http://www.frankenfoods.org/).
Food Prices and Social Unrest
Where is Lenin when you need him? Will there be a new cohort of populist politicians riding the commodity price spike to achieve a rise to power in poor nations? It would interest me if agricultural economists have convinced themselves of the relative importance of supply versus demand factors in ex
Limits to Growth? The Case of Harvard Undergrads
I'm in deep thought about the old debate between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon.
A Fair Review of Green Cities
I was at the Haas School at Berkeley yesterday giving a real estate seminar. Very constructive place in terms of feedback and my paper will improve! The number of reviews of my book on Amazon has doubled (from 1 to 2) and I wanted to share this.
Career Choice: Cosmetic Plastic Surgery versus Economics
Today, the New York Times is filled with interesting stuff. You can click on the two links below but I want to talk about this glamorous plastic surgeon named Dr. Prasad. His interactions with strangers on planes are a little bit different than mine.
Noisy Cairo
Is noise pollution in cities an important costly externality? Rich country cities' aren't very noisy. I do admit that 2am garbage pickup in Rome did wake me up but we did not have air conditioning at our apartment and in the summer our windows were open.
The Audacity of Environmental Optimism
I am back from my talk at the Santa Fe Institute. I had a great time and met some fascinating people. SFI's scholars are in deep thought about complex system dynamics. A city can be thought of as a complex system.
A Blogging Hiatus
I am going AWOL for a few days to participate in a sustainability conference at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico . Some of the core ideas I will talk about are here:
www.hks.harvard.edu/rappaport/downloads/policybriefs/greencities_final.pdf. I'm hoping that there will not be podcast.
The Death of the NYC Congestion Charge: Different Views of a Hicksian Pareto Improvement
Economists like policies where the winners win more than the losers lose. But, we often see cases where such "hicksian pareto improvements" do not become policy.
A Cynical Thought about Green Job Growth
Recently, a number of people have been asking me about the prospects of "green job" growth. Could this be a "win-win" of helping to green our economy and giving the United States its next Silicon Valley? The happy scenario posits that both low skill and high skill jobs will be created.
Greens Must Pick their Poison: Redwood Trees or Solar Panels
King Solomon, what do you do in this situation? You can't cut this baby in half.
April 7, 2008
Trees Block Solar Panels, and a Feud Ends in Court
By FELICITY BARRINGER
SUNNYVALE, Calif.
More Celebrity Spotting Near UCLA
Today was not a great day to be a UCLA professor. Yes, the sun was out and it was 70 degrees but we lost the big game.
Natural Resources and Military Dictatorships
NBER researchers continue to write some pretty good stuff. The "Curse of Natural Resources" is a macro literature that merits more attention.
Bernanke as Yoda: Can He Stop the Recession?
I've been watching a lot of the Star Wars movies. My personal ranking of the movies (from best to worst) is 4, 3, 5, 6, 1, 2. I am now an expert again on Yoda and the Jedi Knights as they try to gallantly save the galaxy from the forces of evil. Somehow Ben Bernanke reminds me of Yoda.
Am I an Economist or a Hollywood Celebrity?
While I was eating lunch today at a Brentwood restaurant, two women sitting nearby kept looking at me. I took my son to the toliet. My wife told me that while I was gone the women asked her if I was Quentin Tarantino . My wife assured them that I am a nobody and am certainly not QT.
