Environmental and Urban Economics

Does anyone know what is the date when the Swedes choose the new Nobel Laureate in Economics? The actual winners will be announced in about 2 weeks. The recent market turmoil raises the likelihood that Richard Thaler and Robert Shiller will share the Nobel. My claim is that the Swedes have been nudged as recent events encourage them to reward two great scholars and to simultaneously make a political statement about neo-classical economics.

While I will congratulate the winner of this year's prize, I would like to see a nobel prize in environmental economics.

Rob Shimer raises a number of key points in his post . I have a dumb question. If Wall Street firms who want to participate in the bailout must submit all of their assets to sale to the Treasury (rather than the subset that they want to sell) would this solve the Lemons problem? So, my solution is to introduce a randomization device. Each asset would be assigned a unique ID and the Treasury would pre-commit to draw from a random number generator (like the Lotto).

Congress cares about what the voters want. The median voter is a home owner. Home owners want their key asset to go up in price. Chris Mayer proposes a solution to reduce defaults and prop up home prices. He wants to lower interest rates down to their historical spread. If people could borrow at these interest rates (financed with "bail out" $), then demand for housing would rise, home prices would rise and defaults would slow down.

Everyone loves rankings. But a B-? UCLA's Green Report Card What are these guys smoking?

If I had to objectively discuss whether UCLA is green or not, I'd make the following points;

1. The campus is beautiful. So we are green on aesthetics. This is a nicer campus than any other University in the US including Stanford and Princeton.

2. Given the perfect weather, our electricity bills must be lower than more humid areas

3.

Each day UCLA emails me a news blast highlighting important new work by UCLA faculty. Below I report one that examines whether a Los Angeles police effort has reduced crime.

In today's New York Times, there were some subtle ideas in this "H" section on the environment and business. Today, I learned about the existence of the New York Times "Green Blog" . After visiting this site, I like it but I'm hoping that they will add some "meat" to this blog by including actual statistics and statistical research.

Obama has lost votes in some parts of the country because he has been tagged as an ivy league elitist. Yet, there is a flip side to this point.

Who says that UCLA is about sunshine and basketball? Below, I report some serious research and I didn't even do it! Forgot Iraqi Bond prices, if you want to know whether the surge works turn to the Satelites.

Along the Venice Canals in West LA, Dora and I toured a $2 million dollar home on a 2,000 square foot lot. That's not a lot of land my friends. With such expensive land, how do people respond? You can't build up due to building codes. You can't afford more square footage so there is only one direction to go. Down.

Economists like data and numbers. California's Air Resources Board is now offering some firm predictions concerning the benefits to our state's economy from enacting AB32. I hope they are right but are they right? More AB 32 Economics .

I would like to see the Air Resources Board convene a panel of California academic economists to sit down and in public discuss and debate what we know and what we don't know about the economic consequences of this legislation.