Environmental and Urban Economics

I missed this announcement 2 weeks ago that the Air Resources Board will take the revenue collected from California's Carbon Cap and Trade and give the $20 billion dollar a year flow back "to the people".

A couple of points:

1. California has a $20 billion dollar deficit.

2.

I was not aware that Larry Summers, Susan Athey and Brad Delong were leading environmental economists but REPEC knows all and Dr. Summers is #1. As #41 on the list, I have to believe that I would jump into the top ten if REPEC would count kahn book #1 or starting in fall 2010 kahn book #3 .

We all know that if we were identical, then President Obama would have an easy time shaping public policy. He could poll one person and ask her for her policy priorities and everyone would love the resulting public goods agenda.

Now that I know that I won't be named to be Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank nor will I be named as the Head Coach of the Oakland Raiders, I have decided to teach this one week course at the UCSB Bren School. I go tomorrow night and monday I will meet my 50 students.

My son should read People Magazine more carefully. He said that some dude had come by his class to talk about Haiti. After receiving this email from the School's Principal, I now know that my kid should have asked for an autograph.

In this age of quantification, how do we judge a politician's performance? By doing before/after comparisons of public opinion dynamics? That sounds silly.

This New Yorker piece bemoans the death of "old-school" Walter Cronkite journalism. Back in the day (pre-Internet), reporters had all day long to drink and think and eventually file their story for the next day's paper.

There is a good QJE paper to be written on explaining public opinion dynamics. I envision a paper that looks a little bit like the Fox News paper . Recall that when Rupert Murdoch arrives on your TV, your probability of voting Republican rises.

I believe that I've heard of the economist Snoop Doggy Dog but I had not heard of EcoSnoop until today.

"Love is inelastic." This wise phrase was written on one of my Columbia colleague's blackboards back in the mid-1990s. Do we love the NY Times? How much will their readership fall when it starts charging readers in 2011? I see that print subscribers will read online content for free.

I did not know that Akerlof and Kranton had written a book about Identity until I saw this . Recall the favorite example of where economics and sociology merge.

So, the Ruggedly handsome Mr. (Senator?) Scott Brown of MA could change the course of the galaxy if he is elected today. This sounds like a new Star Wars movie. I predict that he will only win if a majority of Harvard and MIT vote for him (am I kidding?).

Back in 1920, the Economic Journal had more cache than the AER or JPE or QJE.

This NY Times magazine piece laments the decline in quality of life for California's middle class. Attending the flagship UC's best campuses costs a family roughly $25,000 a year per kid.

Not according to the LA Times. This article mentions 7 other priorities without touching upon climate change. The big 7 are; health care, improving the intelligence system, job creation, international engagement, guantanamo, immigration, gays in the military.

Twenty years ago, when I was a Ph.D. student at the New Yorker's John Cassidy's favorite Mid-Western Economics Department , I learned that I wasn't very clever and that I should always remain a modest man.

In the early 1970s, the average Californian used roughly 15% less electricity than the average person in the USA. Why? Easy, less air conditioning demand. Today, the average California uses 50% less electricity than the average person in the USA.

California researchers, I want to make sure you know about this funding opportunity. I'm hoping that the ARB receives some great proposals that highlight the constructive role that serious economic analysis can play in shaping cost-effective carbon mitigation regulation.

The NY Times feels sorry for "Mikey" . Recall that he is the 8 year old who is suspected by the airport computers of being a terrorist. While many students sleep through Stats lectures on type 1 and type 2 errors, you must admit that this is an interesting case.

The NY Times points to unenforced building codes and low quality cement as leading causes of the damage caused by the Haitian earthquake. The 2nd point is interesting. Cement is costly in Haiti. To economize on it, construction waters this stuff down.

My UCLA colleagues continue to do interesting research. The key finding is that older people (over age 70) who do volunteer work are less likely to become frail as time passes.

"specifically volunteering, paid work and child care -- prevent the onset of frailty".

Perhaps demography is an interesting social science topic. I just received this email for an upcoming demography talk here at UCLA. Given that the basketball team is losing, everyone can focus on what we are supposed to be doing (thinking).

Today, David Brooks celebrates Tel Aviv's success as an innovation hub. He tells an increasing returns story about a vibrant city.

This news story about the 24 million lonely bachelors in China due to government policy got me thinking about an Anthony Burgess (the dude who wrote Clockwork Oranage) book that I read 22 years ago.

Will climate change cause wheat production in India and China to sharply contract? The Times Green Blog thinks so. As an urban economist with some interest in how our food is produced, this got me thinking.

My first thought concerns the benefits of globalization.

We know that the future of cities is as "consumer cities" where the educated want to live and play.

I was reading this article about Peter Orszag's busy social life, when I stumbled across the following sentence in the print edition; "declared Mr. Orszag's brother Jon, an economic consultant in Los Angeles who talks to Peter about five times a day."

Several Points: 1.

I am not with King Tut but I have sent two of my top reporters to Cairo to observe the urban growth in the developing world. Their presence in Cairo is a field experiment and I'm eager to see their "treatment effect" on all 8 million people they meet.

Here are two quick case studies of allocating public property in Los Angeles. In this first case , a doctor has just been sentenced to 5 years in jail after he drove in front of two cyclists and slammed the brakes and they were injured as they hit his back bumper.

Forget Tiger Woods. I want to talk about Scottie Pippen. As a graduate student in the early 1990s in Chicago, I could have learned a lot more economics if I hadn't been watching the Chicago Bulls. Scottie Pippen's life has taken a strange turn in recent years.

I will switch subjects.

While economists talk about comparative advantage, deep in our heart we believe in the 1 factor model of quality. Who is the top dog versus who is at the back of the pack? REPEC tells us that Joe Stiglitz leads the field with Shleifer, Barro, Heckman and Lucas trying to close the gap.

The Doors were right. These are strange days indeed. Low probability events, that in the past that I would have thought had a zero probability of taking place, continue to occur.

Over the next couple of decades, hundreds of millions of Chinese households will move to their cities.