Environmental and Urban Economics

Does this strike you to be distinctive research? It is pretty freaky!  UCLA is a special place with special minds working on PG-13 research questions.  I will stick to my research on climate change adaptation.  This work discussed below by Meg Sullivan is a little too much for me.

In the new Chronicle of Higher Education,  Michael Ruse takes a look at a large number of new climate books including Climatopolis.

First he talks about everyone else's new books;

"Secular apocalyptic thinking continues; indeed, it thrives. The cold war may be over, but the world is not right.

Derek Jeter is in the midst of some tough negotiations.  Will he accept a real pay cut?  The market says that he better but his sense of fairness and his past compensation are nudging him to be a pinch unrealistic here.     Now, $19 million a year averages out to $117,000 per game.

Robert B. Daugherty's life offers a classic example of an economist's optimism that ideas can substitute for natural capital.   "The breakthrough for Mr. Daugherty came in 1953, when he bought the rights to manufacture a new irrigation system, the brainchild of a Nebraska farmer, Frank Zybach.

I will be speaking about Climatopolis at the Claremont McKenna College Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Thursday December 2nd.  As a warm up, I gave a lecture to my UCLA undergrads about the economics of climate change adaptation.  They pushed me on the broad issue of international migration.

The Wall Street Journal has provided Joel Kotkin with the space to sketch the tradeoffs of living in megacities (such as NYC or Tel-Aviv) vs. living in smaller cities such as Raleigh.

Norfolk, Virginia  is facing more flooding risk these days.  Whether climate change is the cause of this problem remains an open question. But, FEMA is spending over $20,000 per home to raise them to protect them from the next flood.

I wrote Climatopolis because I wanted to nudge forward the discussion of how diverse urban households and firms will adapt to climate change.

In my new Journal of Urban Economics paper , I use data for California's cities and argue that the answer is "yes".

David Leonhardt has increased his carbon footprint to study Consumption in China.  If David had asked me to co-write this long article with him, I would have suggested that we focus on a couple of families and look at their actual consumption patterns.

Major court cases such the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill liability case and the Microsoft Antitrust case have increased the earnings of some prominent economists.   Such high stakes cases push the lawyers to hire the very best talent to help them win.

NBA Basketball players are giving up their bling consumption in the name of increasing their savings in anticipation of the coming basketball strike.

In competitive capitalism, prices mediate our interactions through markets.  If due to climate change, I want to drink more ice tea on hot days --- then I will have to buy that from some vendor.

With the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi and my beloved state is going to lose out on some federal cash.

The Terrorists appear to have a strong grasp of the basic economics concept of maximizing marginal product per dollar spent on inputs.  Our problem is that their "product" lowers our overall quality of life.

In the midst of an ongoing recession, will the people of California cut back on their Thanksgiving expenditure and solely eat beans and rice?  No! Many are eating expensive Organic Turkey.

The people  have spoken and they want a free lunch.  

Colleges for Californians

Re "Schools recruit out of state," Nov. 15

If the University of California system is looking to boost revenue by recruiting out of state, then it ought to forgo California tax revenues.

In My National Geographic Blog Post on China,  I take on the smart guys from the NY Times including Keith Bradsher and Tom Friedman who argue that we are losing a "zero sum" game with China over who will "win" the green tech competition. When China invests, we all win. Ideas are public goods.

Stanford's James Sweeney  has written a quite reasonable review of my Climatopolis book.  I have been amazed by the diverse set of reviews that have been written.   Here is a subtle quote from his review:

"Kahn characterizes his book as optimistic. It may be.

Glaeser explains why he refused to take David Leonhardt's quiz for reducing the deficit.

Here is the Conference Summary from the September 2010 Giannini Foundation conference on Climate Change Economics held in Sacramento. It was a very interesting conference.  If you click on that link, you can read my exciting 3 page paper.

Every year the newspapers love to run stories such as this one clucking about the superstar 7 digit pay for University Presidents.  The articles always hint that cozy boards of directors are granting their friends unmerited pay.

Apurva Sanghi has led a Dream Team to issue an important new World Bank Report.

"Earthquakes, droughts, floods, and storms are natural hazards, but unnatural disasters are the deaths and damages that result from human acts of omission and commission.

China builds a 15 story hotel in 6 days!  Watch the video. It is pretty cool and their workers are working hard. Now a cynic might ask whether the quality of this hotel resembles the Lemon Liberty Battleships during World War II that were built in haste.

People ask me why I work at an Institute of the Environment.  They say; "you are a free markets guy.

Why did Freakonomics conquer the world?   Great raw ingredients, great timing (pre-recession), great writing, we all know this already but the "new news" to me are these details about the secret sauce.

Does Jerry Brown really want the job?  Here are the facts about the budget he will inherit.  Apparently his predecessor did him no favors.  I expected that a macho man would have stood up and said "hasta la vista public pensions".

The Green Guinea Pig

Matthew E. Kahn

Now that the Republicans control the House of Representatives and Prop 23 has died, the California Air Resources Board (ARB) takes center stage with its rollout of AB32.

In the Siberian Town of Baikalsk, there is some nostalgia for "the good old days".   "In the Soviet era, life was better,” Ms. Merkulova said. “There was stability.

Contrary to what you may think, I haven't retired from academic economics.  I can offer you  Kahn and Mansur (2010) as proof.

Is this the right time to be buying up waterfront land in Brooklyn and Queens?  On the one hand, in the midst of a recession --- prices for good properties could be real low.

My friend Soren Anderson has a new paper using some funky data to examine household preferences for ethanol as a gasoline substitute. Here is part of the Abstract; " I estimate the model using data from many retail fueling stations. Demand is price-sensitive with a mean elasticity of 2.5–3.5.

Bob Herbert needs a new fact checker-- the rich aren't as rich as he thought.  Quote:  "My column on Tuesday incorrectly described the situation of the small group of Americans earning $50 million or more annually. Their incomes declined by 7.7 percent between 2008 and 2009; they did not quintuple.

Forget High Speed Rail, the nerds are making a very solid case for the medium term payoff of large investments in  antibiotics research (for details) and renewable energy R&D.

Do social scientists have too much fun?  The macro scholars aren't having that much fun. Their field just gets harder as the number of data points grows by 1 a quarter but the number of theories is an uncountable infinity.  But back in micro land, there is glory and fun.