Environmental and Urban Economics

Sandwiched between "gays in the military" and "gold standard and fiat money", I find the entry for "global warming" in Jeffrey Miron's new book Libertarianism from A to Z . (Full disclosure --- Basic Books published this book and they will publish my book this fall).

I will paraphrase his entry and then discuss;

1. Debate will continue about the underlying science of global warming.

2. There are benefits caused by global warming.

3. There are pre-existing government distortions that encourage the use of fossil fuels so we should consider getting rid of these "unlevel playing field policies" before we introduce new policies (i.e carbon tax).

I don't own a tv so I don't know what goes on --- on this new show called The Big Bang and I don't care. But, I am happy to see pro physicists receiving some public attention without getting a hair style like Einstein or making pronouncements about world peace. My colleague Dr. Saltzberg is clearly diversifying his portfolio of pursuits.

From looking at his resume, I see that we were at the University of Chicago at the same time for graduate school.

With the UC furloughs, I have been thinking about retiring but as the year continued, I find myself mildly interested in economics again and have now written a new paper titled; "Urban Policy Effects on Carbon Mitigation".

Here is the paper's first section. I will present this at this NBER Conference next month.

Introduction

Suppose that your household was choosing between living in suburban Houston or center city San Francisco.

Economists are still learning about capitalist firms. The recent recession has convinced me that there are many incentive problems that I had not fully appreciated how they can add up to having "macro consequences". Microeconomists continue to look at specific cases. Recently, we have studied bagel delivery , and Starbucks' sales responses to caloric information on drink contents.

I just read this sad story and watched the video. If you watch, you will see a number of people walk by this victim. He is lying on the sidewalk. He must have been moaning in pain but nobody stops to help him. If you refuse to read the NY Post, then here is the same story in the NY Times.

We can lament anomie in the Big City. People may have thought that he was a drunk bum or worried about being dragged into a lawsuit but still this is quite gross.

Read it here .

Energy Conservation “Nudges” and Environmentalist Ideology: Evidence from a Randomized Residential Electricity Field Experiment

Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn

Abstract

“Nudges” are being widely promoted to encourage energy conservation. We show that while the electricity conservation “nudge” of providing feedback to households on own and peers’ home electricity usage works with liberals, it can backfire with conservatives.

One of my favorite reporters attended my class on wednesday. The Hawthorne Effect was out in force and here is what I said . Would I have lectured about more "conventional material" had she not been there? Who knows? Who cares? My wife (and my students) thinks that my wacky quotes are funny and that's all I care about.

I do suggest that you read the entire piece. Its a nice overview of what UCLA's Institute of the Environment has achieved in building up a first rate major.

One size does not fit all. Costa and Kahn (2010) are fans of the "nudge" in certain nuanced cases but those who nudge to achieve social goals (such as increased energy conservation) must keep in mind that the population is diverse. If you want to read a new NBER paper that I think is both interesting and funny (I did write it!) then click here .

On an unrelated note, this is a ridiculous NY Times story.

Here is an interesting debate about the merits of ramping up residential solar power generation in California. So far, Dora and I have resisted joining the "million solar roof" army. We received a piece of mail that showed our roof (it is white) with a nice solar panel in one corner of it. Dora saw that I was staring intently at "my future" and she took this piece of mail away from me.