Environmental and Urban Economics

Have you ever opened the NY Times and turned to the second to last page of the news section and read the forceful but unsigned editorials?   Each day, I'm consistently amazed by this newspapers editorial board's certitude about how the world works. I'm jealous about their ability to make aggressive claims without presenting any evidence.  I have often wondered who writes these things.  After reading through this weblink I now know the answer.   Note that there are only 2 Ph.Ds on the board and neither are economists. Note that nobody with a real world business background serves on the board.  Nobody with a medical degree serves on the board.

I didn't know the answer until I read this.

Unlike many of my colleagues, I teach summer school.  While UCLA faculty can be paid 1/9th of their salary for teaching summer school, I choose to collect $6,000 in extra salary.  My 9 month salary at UCLA isn't $54,000.   The "profit" (total tuition - 6000 - payment to my teaching assistant) is collected by my Institute of the Environment and this is my way of being a good citizen as I generate some cash for my home unit.

But, self interest does motivate me.

Today was graduation at UCLA's Institute of the Environment.  Steve Westly gave an excellent and inspired graduation day speech.  It was short, uplifting and honest as it focused on offering some advice to the Class of 2013.  I plan to follow his advice and I'm part of the class of 1988.  While I didn't attend my 25th reunion at Hamilton College, I have carefully looked at the recent photos and video posted on Facebook.

Suppose that you own a Montana coal mine and you have millions of tons of coal that you would like to sell to Asia's energy hungry cities.  As the U.S environmental rules discourage new coal fired power plants, you need to find new customers and send them the product.  You can't email this coal to Asia.   A major logistics challenge is how to cheaply ship the coal to the final consumers in Asia.

The NY Times's obituary for Robert Fogel  is worth reading.  He was a great man and a kind man.

Mike Bloomberg provides a tutorial here.

I haven't been posting much because I'm focusing on finishing a draft of my new book "Blue Skies" co-authored with Siqi Zheng of Tsinghua University. We have signed a book contract with the University of Chicago Press. Our book will  we raise that Press' average sales and quality!

For reasons I can't explain, I'm teaching summer school again this summer and my course starts June 24th.

Back in 2000, my wife and I wrote a paper about Power Couples that interested many people.   We argue that big cities solve the co-location problem so that in an age of ambitious working women that such couples will increasingly cluster in such cities as they meet and marry and stay in such cities or move to such cities.   But, a recent research line has found that some men appear to be troubled by their wife's earnings.   Read this summary here.

The NY Times profiles the last working person in Los Angeles.  She tracks down celebrities as they land at LAX or cruise the Sunset Strip and then she takes their picture.