Environmental and Urban Economics

Today's Business Section of the NY Times had some wild stuff.  There was a large advertisement from the Stanford University Medical School announcing its new search for a Dean of the Medical School. Now, the interesting part was to announce this in the Business Section!  Maybe medicine and capitalism are connected?  There was also an article about Tom Sargent as he explained that he is both liberal and conservative but he doesn't like simple labels and slogans.

Finally, on the back cover of the Business Section was another Ad. The Ohio State University was announcing that it has borrowed a 1/2 $ billion dollars by issuing 100 year bonds to help it remain a great university.  As I read this, I asked myself; "Why isn't UCLA doing this?".

Google just directed someone to my blog who searched for "who is more likely to have a sex change a liberal or conservative" .

This article  sketches an interesting election decision this Tuesday.  Will the greens from Boulder, Colorado continue to buy their power from the "big bad" Xcel private electric utility or will they switch to a municipal provider?

The article provides some additional support for my old finding that greens do "walk the walk".

If the wind blows at night but nobody is consuming electricity then, what is the value of wind farms?  Batteries are the answer.  Such batteries create a storage technology that breaks the link between when power is produced and when it is consumed.  this article highlights the point that the price of electricity varies sharply during a day.  A wise arbitrage move is to "produce low" and "sell high".

This article claims that Prof. Kevin Murphy is a key "player" as he works with the NBA union in forming their bargaining strategy with the owners.

The Economics of new goods literature has tried to estimate how much our well being is improved by when for profit companies design and sell new cereals or new mini-vans or new drugs.  An analogous question can be asked about "new regulations".  Whether it is Bernanke's QE2 or California's anti-carbon AB32, how much will  these new regulations improve our quality of life?  As you can imagine, this is a tough question.

People are well aware of the Thailand floods.  The WSJ is reporting  that a consequence of such floods is that global supply chains are being disrupted.  For profit firms have strong incentives to sign contracts with intermediate input suppliers who are not risky in terms of delivering promised products.   Why does this matter?  Suppose that you are a political leader of Thailand and you gain if your nation's firms sign more international agreements to participate in global supply chains.

Both the National  Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health must be deeply concerned about cuts to their future budgets.  If the NSF and NIH experience a 15% annual cut, what research won't be funded? Universities such as UCLA count on the overhead $ (roughly 50% of the size of the grant) as revenue for the school.  The researchers applying for this $ use it to pay for equipment and to hire research assistants and Post-Docs.

The editorial writers at the Harvard Crimson offer some thoughts about how to improve the educational experience there.  Their piece raises some mildly interesting issues.  What would motivate the lazy faculty at leading schools to try harder in the classroom?   As UCLA raises its tuition, we need to raise the quality of our undergraduate educational experience.

Here I offer my magic recipe for cooking some fresh high quality teaching.

First, there is selection.

As Tom Friedman and other wise people ponder what jobs will remain in the U.S, the New York Times offers a new industrial category for the NAICS to incorporate.  They introduce the "eco-concierge".