Environmental and Urban Economics

My new book is currently ranked #13 on Amazon's best sellers in the "exclusive" Environmental Economics Category.  One book that ranks ahead of mine is Nina Munk's  The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty.

As I try to distribute my distinctive "free markets" environmental economics textbook, I'm now giving away the lecture notes and other class material.  All of this stuff is posted here.

A horrible accident has taken place in Mumbai India as a building has collapsed and many people have died.

On Monday, October 7th 2013 I will give a lunch time talk at the UCLA IOE titled "Why Should Environmental Scientists Talk to Economists?"  I had originally planned to give a less sexy talk about buses.

Have you ever wondered who chooses to become a university dean or to run for public office?  Once these folks are in office, how do we set up a set of rules to incentivize these guys to do their job rather than to pursue their own narrow goals?  Tim Besley's book Principled Agents? is a great place

The September 2013 issue of the Journal of Economic Literature has a great Glaeser book review of Moretti's New Economic Geography of Jobs and also features a China pollution paper by myself and Siqi Zheng but the best paper is written by Pindyck.

In today's New York Times, Keith Bradsher makes some very reasonable points about China's bullet trains.  In March 2013, Siqi Zheng and I made exactly the same points in our published PNAS article.  Our work isn't mentioned.

Abstract:   Economic theory predicts that people should not vote because they are unlikely to be the pivotal voter and voting takes time and effort.

UCLA ranks 77th in the nation based on this criteria while UC Berkeley ranks #20 based on mid-career salary data posted here.  Our other rival USC is ranked #54 and Stanford is ranked #8.  Now, there are at least three explanations for these facts.

I have broken my 3rd toe on my right foot and this is causing me pain and making it hard for me to walk. Despite this short term setback, I would like to talk about progress.  The NY Times' Eduardo Porter serves up some doom and gloom in a piece he posts today.

I have returned to California after being in Asia for almost 4 weeks.   While Singapore and Hong Kong are both hot and humid, I could certainly live in either of those cities.  Both cities are safe and clean and offer good consumer amenities.

Regional Science and Urban Economics has published the Kahn and Kok paper estimating hedonic residential real estate models of the price premium for "green" real estate.   Here is our paper's abstract.

I have always wondered what substances are baked into a Sausage McMuffin.   There has been some debate that the "meat" is lizard rather than being chicken.  This photo highlights the key empirical question.

Notice the "lizard tail" hanging out to the lower left of the photo.

I have uploaded my lectures to YouTube.   Yes, the audio isn't great but if you turn up the volume you will hear some wisdom and some jokes.

I fly from Singapore to Hong Kong on Sunday morning.  I will spend my time at HKUST.    Two of my UCLA colleagues (Rui Wang and Cameron Campbell) are visiting professors there and I'm eager to hear about their new life.  I will miss NUS.

For teachers looking to inject some "new blood" into their tried and true lectures, consider grabbing some of my free short videos covering the big issues in environmental and urban economics.  If your students aren't interested in strange ideas and good jokes, then don't bother.

The Singapore Straits Times is more interesting than the New York Times.  Today my Singapore newspaper reports a new investment effort by Malaysia's major city (KL) to become a "green city"as it seeks to clean up the Klang River.

Here is a reasonable new review of my Climatopolis book.  Unlike 98% of the inane reviews of my book, this review joins Matt Kotchen's in the winner's circle.

I have now used public transit in Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore.  Tonight I commuted by myself from the city center back to the NUS campus as I managed to take the purple line to the orange line to the bus and return to my apartment without a map or a cell phone.

There were very heavy rains in Singapore for 2 days last week.  Flooding occurred close to NUS.  How is the government responding?  There is an engineering plan discussed here.

Here is a photo of the soggy day.

How can the engineers prevent this?  Here is the key graph.

In 2012, I had the opportunity to work with the ADB on a project called Green Urbanization in Asia.    Next Wednesday, I'll have the opportunity to give a big talk on this subject at NUS.

NUS Professor Alberto Salvo is doing some exciting research on fuel switching and ambient pollution in Brazil.  He is also teaching environmental economics.  He sent me a kind note saying that my teaching videos have been useful for him in teaching some basic material.

I am visiting NUS in Singapore to learn new things and to meet and listen to other scholars.  In this blog post, I will sketch yesterday.  At 10am, I spoke to Professor Craig Brown about his research on national leaders and economic growth.