Environmental and Urban Economics

Starbucks has taken its business model (expensive good coffee) and exported this concept to every major city around the world.  I was just in London and didn't have to walk far to find a Starbucks (namely 300 feet).

Below, I supply a photo of Moshe (not Buchinsky) Cavalin. He is a 13 year old UCLA student who has just published a best selling autobiography.   At age 13, my autobiography would have been a pinch thin.

Economists should have something smart to say about the consequences of making our tax code more progressive.

Are the people of Los Angeles tough on their San Francisco nude associates?

"I brought my out-of-town guests here to show them an ‘only in San Francisco’ experience,” said Maggie Cahill, 53, a technology manager at a bank who stood scrunching her nose at the scene with friends from Los Angeles.

Everybody now knows that the DOE blew it when it guaranteed roughly $530 million dollars of loans to the "green" solar firm Solyndra.  But, we do not know what criteria the DOE used to judge whether this was (ex-ante) a good use of public funds.   Read this letter sent to Secretary Chu in 2010.

Some things do not change. Back in October 1988, I wasn't the best macro student in Prof. Lucas' class.  This morning I tried to raise my game and read through his interview in today's WSJ.    I didn't think it was a very informative interview.  Here are the questions I would like to ask him.

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The NY Times has published a politically incorrect piece  about immigrant purchase and use of poisons in big cities.  Typically living at high density and facing a rodent problem, some immigrants turn to purchasing powerful poisons to solve their problem.

This news was not good news.   California is phasing out a surcharge on electric utility customers that was earmarked to subsidizing purchases of energy efficient appliances and for paying for basic research.

There may be a serious lesson here.

2011 has been a terrible year for natural disasters but for those of you who need some optimism, read this report about long run trends in deaths from  natural disasters.  I was happy to see that the author has read my 2005 RESTAT paper the "Death Toll from Natural Disasters".

PERC's Terry Anderson has a smart OP-ED in today's WSJ.  Here is a line from his last paragraph; "

It is not enough to strut your stuff in clothes made of recycled materials while driving your hybrid to an environmental protest.

As China's domestic durables market grows, this nation will use its increasing market clout to extract better terms of trade for those multinationals who seek to sell there and seek to qualify for government incentives from the Chinese government.

After 25 years away, I returned to the LSE and had a great time.  Both the International Growth Center and the Department of Geography and the Environment were wonderful hosts.

When I was an undergraduate, I was taught that in a closed economy that C+I+G=Y.   Given that I'm back at the LSE, I've been pondering this deep macro identity.   Government spending, G, is going to decline as we try to cut the deficit.

In the late 1960s, Gary Becker published this paper on the economics of deterrence.   Expected fines induce good behavior.   As I was walking in London this morning, I saw this poster and took a picture of it.  While its a pinch blurry, you should see a shoe that just stepped in someone's gum.

After a 25 year absence, I returned to the LSE campus today.  I couldn't resist entering their bookstore.  When I was 20 years old, I spent a fair bit of $ there.   Now that I'm 45,  I know most of the authors of the books they have in stock.

I'm always looking for new ways to track city quality of life.  This article from the NY Post talks about the recent reduction in smoking rates in NYC.  That's a good new indicator.  Two more indicators that I'm having trouble collecting data on are dog poop and public spitting.

Here  is the announcement for my talk at the LSE next Tuesday afternoon.   There's several different ways to approach the broad question of how will Europe adapt to climate change.

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I've always liked the letters to the editor that Donald Boudreaux posts to his blog.  He needs to reveal what % are actually published!  In my attempt to make my mom proud of me as a "public intellectual", permit me to point you to My letter in today's LA Times.

This article by Peter Applebome has an excellent lead; "If they had decided to pave paradise and put up a parking lot, the issues might have seemed simpler.

The rankings are in and UCLA has lost out to cross-town rival USC in the great US New & World Report Rankings.  As a UCLA faculty member, I view this defeat to be a good thing.   Competition makes us stronger and I believe that UCLA has been complacent.

Does Al Gore watch the Indianapolis 500 race? Millions of people do but do people in Berkeley and Santa Monica?  I don't watch the race.  The thought of watching other people blow out their tires as they race 500 miles doesn't interest me. But, perhaps I am wrong for being such a snob.

25 years ago I embarked on spending my junior year abroad at the London School of Economics. I arrived in London in September 1986 not knowing what to expect.  I knew that the LSE was a serious place but I had never met Ph.D.

If you read my quote in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal, I hope that I come across as a nice fellow.   When the WSJ contacted me about their story, I was told that I couldn't mention my own books or Glaeser's Triumph of the City (because he is a co-author of mine).

Forget "The End of History",  new Yale research makes the claim that the end of baldness is near.   Tyler Cowen will need to amend his Great Stagnation book to acknowledge this coming triumph.

A non-random sampling of blog posts suggests that Paul Krugman is our "public intellectual".  To test this claim, I asked Google Trends to provide me with the data with a head to head competition between Larry Summers and Paul Krugman.

Information about the future is valuable stuff. Do you remember "Biff" in Back to the Future? He became a zillionaire because he knew who would win the Superbowl and World Series before they were played (thanks to Michael J. Fox's mistake) and this allowed him to make a fortune betting.

This article celebrates the fact that dozens of pro NBA players hang out at UCLA to scrimmage.

The NY Times writes an interesting article  about drought in Texas but manages not to mention water prices.

Joel Fox has written an interesting piece  about his hope that California will roll back some environmental regulations.  He quotes a piece I wrote several years ago when I was asked to give my prospective views on the likely impacts of AB32.

Can Uncle Sam pick green winners?  David Brooks doesn't think so.  Industrial policy appears to go through fashion cycles. It was in vogue but now during this time of deficits, the urge to offer strategic subsidies is declining.

This article talks about a dude with 150 children.  This is a productive guy and he doesn't even hang out with the ladies or these kids.   He has won some competition as 150 different women independently chose his DNA as "the right stuff".