Our hotel is a half block from the "Hard Rock Cafe" and a Starbucks. No matter how far you travel, you are still at home! As we walked the hot streets of Center City Munich, we spent some quality time at the Englischer Garten.
I am in the center of Munich drinking beer and eating more sausage. The City Center is walkable and the people look happy. I am proud of myself that the thought that Germany should drop out of the Euro crossed my mind before I read the OP-ED by Griffin and Kashyap.
The NY Times is devoting a fair bit of its real estate to the life of Nora Ephron. I understand that the Times is tired of writing about Europe and Syria and a number of its readers must identify with Ms. Ephron.
In the ever important battle for "journal impact factor", the European Economic Review will surely take a step forward now that it has published two of my papers in its July 2012 Special Issue titled Green Building, the Economy, and Public Policy Edited by Piet Eichholtz and John Quigley.
I offer a few thoughts here.
I am in Salzburg, Austria. I have seen Mozart's home and listened to many German tourists. Today, we took a bus across the border and went to Berchtesgaden, Germany. We took a long boat ride the beautiful Lake Königssee.
Over the next couple of decades, California will try to use national tax payer money to construct a high speed north/south train that will connect San Fran to LA to San Diego.
If you are looking for me, you can soon find me in Salzburg, Austria as I slowly make my way to Singapore. If I hear some good Mozart, I promise to blog about it but now permit me to discuss this recent blog post at environmental economics.
Floyd Norris (a cousin of Chuck?) presents a "chicken and egg" story in today's NY Times about the slow growth of natural gas vehicles. According to Norris, capitalism breaks down in this case and the gains to trade are not exhausted and thus government intervention is needed. Here is the story.
Alex Hall's recent work has triggered some wild LA Times comments. To counter some of this zany discussion, I have found a few low cost pointers for how to adapt to 100+ degree days.
How To Survive Hot Weather (source)
Foods generate metabolic heat when the body breaks it down.
How To Survive Hot Weather (source)
Foods generate metabolic heat when the body breaks it down.
Anne-Marie Slaughter is a very successful academic. Here is her long essay on the tradeoffs of joining the Obama Administration. I am surprised that she didn't investigate the time requirements for the job before she accepted it. Academia offers personal freedom that "real jobs" don't.
All scientists seek to make "causal statements" rather than simply uncovering correlations. The U.S northeast is in the midst of a heat wave and the NY Times has made a strong causal statement about last year's August heat wave.
I just skimmed through Michael Mann's book "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars". A couple of thoughts flashed through my head. First, Dr. Mann has tenure at an excellent University (Penn State) and should have no fear of being "blacklisted". All publicity is good publicity.
I am in the center city of Vienna. It is not easy to lose weight in this walking city because you offset any exercise with too many calories. We took a fast train from Budapest to here and now we are seeing the sights. My son was shocked that a "statue" was really a living human.
I am leaving Budapest and on my way to Austria. My efforts here are to provide aggregate demand to lift Europe from its financial woes. I am not "small" in this economy but I do take prices as given.
When I want the facts, I turn to the NY Post. Today, the Post reports that NYC has made a big investment in a company that Al Gore is associated with. Wanting to know the facts, I went to Generation Investment Management's webpage and found this report.
When economists want to help our students get some sleep, we teach national income accounting. I can't say I remember what are "C", "I", "G" or "X" but I have vague memory that we can add them up so that C + I + G+ X = toothpaste. (If we measure GNP in such units then this is correct!).
James Wolfensohn and UCLA's Rob Jensen agree on at least one thing; cell phones offer substantial benefits. JW was the President of the World Bank and in today's NY Times he suggests that everyone should have a cell phone.
It is 6am in Budapest, Hungary. I am near the Castle for the upcoming GDN Conference on Cities. My 25 minute "plenary speaker" presentation is a work of wonder. If it is well received, I will provide a link for my slides in the near future. But, now I would like to celebrate the Munich Airport.
The NY Times has a fun piece focused on a Stanford Prof named Balaji Prabhakar. Dr. Prabhakar seeks to reduce traffic congestion at Stanford University and has figured out a clever nudge for how to achieve a separating equilibrium.
Optimists will not be surprised that Norfolk, VA has issued a series of flood maps to highlight which parts of the area are at risk from floods. Such information is a necessary step to help households and firms adapt to the "new normal". We are not passive victims.
A couple of weeks ago, I gave a seminar at Stanford Econ where I focused on my recent research on the role of environmental ideology as a key determinant of behavior in a variety of different private consumer choices ranging from; using public transit, annual miles driving, probability of owning a
Next week, I'll be in Budapest participating in this GDN Network Conference titled "Urbanization and Development: Delving Deeper into the Nexus". I will take an indirect route back to LA as I will also make my debut in Singapore to see my friends at NUS.
Nature (an academic journal) is grabbing headlines with a new "big think" piece.
This article provides a "teachable moment" for urban economists. Consider a low home price neighborhood where one home owner defaults on his loan and gives the keys to Bank of America.
On June 9th, I will be on the UC Berkeley campus to attend the Memorial Tribute to John M. Quigley. This will be a special event as we honor his contributions to economics and the University of California. At his Goldman Public Policy Office, he kept a copy of every Ph.D.
Exhibit #1 is from the Harvard Crimson. Harvard had sought to reduce its GHG footprint by 30% below its 2006 baseline level by the year 2016 but its emissions are only down 7%.
Read this new paper by Andrei Shleifer and his co-authors and tell me that you don't start singing the Elvis song "Return to Sender". Before I tell you about the Shleifer paper, I suggest that you review the lyrics of the King.
The NY Times is a "city slicker" newspaper as it focuses on Mayor Bloomberg's paternalism over big gulp sugar drinks and debates whether San Francisco is becoming uncool as it attracts too man Twitter type firms.
Next month, I will spend a fair bit of time in Singapore. This will bring me pretty close to Thailand so this article caught my eye. Young Thai people are revealing a taste for moving off of the farm and moving to the big air conditioned city. This isn't shocking.
Tom Friedman reminds us that the Republican Party used to support environmental causes. Teddy Roosevelt's conservation efforts and Richard Nixon's Clean Air Act are offered as an example of the past "G (reen) OP".
I just attended a two day conference at UCLA where leading economists discussed Harold Demsetz's core contributions. As you can see from his Google Scholar citations, there is a lot to talk about.
The WSJ has an interesting piece about freakish weather in March 2012 ruining nearly 185 million pounds of Michigan cherries. Cherries are a key input for the Cherry Republic retail chain .
