Environmental and Urban Economics

Yale University's Law School produces stars.  Due to the diversity of the Yale Law School faculty, and the fact that students are randomly assigned to first year classes,  researchers have the opportunity to tease out whether taking Law classes with friends of Adam Smith shapes law students.   While Yale is known to be a liberal law school, there are some faculty sketching the benefits of pursuing "efficiency".  According to this paper,  students who were randomly assigned to the "neo-classical economics" sections for courses such as torts and contracts reveal themselves to be more likely (on average) to act like economic man.  If you look at the tables in back, you will see that the "Tiger Mom" is one of the instructors.  She is coded up as "neutral".

The NY Times recently reviewed two books that go on at length that the U.S Southwest is an unsustainable hellhole that will soon suffer greatly because of climate change and drought.  What is striking about the article is that it never mentions the price of water in Phoenix, Las Vegas or other Southwest cities.  The Econ 101 solution to this real challenge is ignored.

In this morning's SF Chronicle, Scott Ostler writes about Stanford QB Andrew Luck's choice to take easy classes this semester as he focused on his Saturday games and his chance to win the Heisman Trophy.  Here is the quote that caught my eye.

"Luck needs two more classes to graduate. He will skip the upcoming winter quarter to prep for an NFL career, then come back in the spring to pick up the classes.

Macro economists do not have a monopoly on term "crowding out".  The NY Times uses it today in an article about the night use of Central Park.  As crime has fallen in the Big Apple and people are feeling safer, they are dropping their guard and taking more risks by walking in the park at night.  So, the cops, abortion, and anti-lead reduce the crime and this "public investment" in safe streets displaces "private self protection" as people unlock their front door and go for a walk at night.

Washington DC will soon make a major investment in cleaning up its rivers.  The details are provided here.  Such infrastructure investment takes serious $.   As more cities, ranging from Chicago to NYC to Boston to London to Seoul, have discovered that beauty is one of their main "golden geese" for attracting tourists and keeping the skilled amenity seekers happy, they have strong incentives to invest in "greenness".  This isn't hippie stuff but merely good business.

As China grows richer, electricity demand will rise.  Given that China's urbanites are buying cars and that China is a net importer of oil, it appears to be a reasonable home market strategy for China's powerful state to nudge forward the production of electric cars.  As this article discusses,  the grid operators in China anticipate that the rise of the electric car will further increase the demand for their services.

From an environmentalist's standpoint, they must "pick their poison".

You know that you are growing older when the obituary section is your favorite part of the newspaper.   Say what you want about the NY Times but it has a very solid obituary section.  When I was a 5th grader, we took a class trip to the NY Times and I was shocked that they already had written 80% of many leading living people's obituaries. I recall that they showed us the lead in for some baseball player who I admired.

Why do I tell you this?  Well, this obituary impressed me.     Mr.

I am making plans to visit Fudan University in Shanghai this summer.  To prepare for this trip, I enlisted Google to teach me a bit about its economics department.  Since I can't read Chinese, I have to rely on English translations and I found one here.  Permit me to quote the first 2 paragraphs and please read the 2nd paragraph which Dora and I both think is very funny.

This book chapter taught me several facts.  Based on its Table 2.1, 3.9% of workers worked for government in 1900 and this percent grew to 6.7% in 1935, 15.1% in 1970 and shrunk to 14.1% by 1984.  The military is not included in these percentages.  Here is the break out of employment in 2010 by sector for state employees.  If I'm reading this BLS table correctly, roughly 17% of national employees work for government in the year 2010.

2012 will be an election year and in the Summer of 2012 there will be an intense focus on London and its Olympics and whether the Miami Heat will win a NBA title. Putting these issues to the side, I predict that in 2012 that there will start to be a serious discussion about climate change adaptation.  Articles such as this one by CNN will mushroom.