I have never understood why Occidental Petroleum had their headquarters in Westwood Village (located .75 miles from UCLA). Now it has been announced that it is moving to Houston. The news is saying that LA is only home to 3 of the Fortune 500 companies while New York City has many more.
Was China's One Child Policy a binding constraint? The NY Times reports that for some households the answer is "no".
On Wednesday, the UCLA Institute of the Environment and the Anderson School of Management will co-sponsor an event on Green Buildings. We expect that 400 people will show up. I will speak for ten minutes and I will present these slides.
Today, I published a short popular piece on this topic and its relevance for Californian home owners. Here is a more academic piece I wrote on this subject back in 2009 called "Urban Growth and Climate Change" and here is a recent Albouy et. al. paper that further examines some of the key issues.
When you walk in Italy's cities, you see and smell a lot of dog poop. For years, I have been asking my wife whether authorities could trace the DNA sample (i.e the poop) back to the supplier and hold its owner accountable. Today, the NY Times reports that Naples is implementing this idea.
It appears that Gov. Brown didn't study economics when he attended UC Berkeley. My state is suffering from a drought.
For the many climate change adaptation pessimists out there, read this and think. Investment under uncertainty will remain an active economics research topic.
Nils Kok and I have released a new NBER Working Paper studying the electricity consumption of Wal-Mart stores. We received no funding from Walmart. Walmart has made a concerted effort to be "sustainable". The corporate social responsibility literature tends to have "mushy" benchmarks.
Yale Press sent me a copy of Bill Nordhaus' The Climate Casino. Here is Paul Krugman's highly favorable review. Here are glowing quotes from Larry Summers and Jeff Sachs.
"Nordhaus is the world’s clearest, best informed and most serious thinker on climate change policy.
"Nordhaus is the world’s clearest, best informed and most serious thinker on climate change policy.
I lived in Boston for seven years. I got married there and my son was born there. This weekend, I flew back to slushy mushy Cambridge to participate in this NBER China Conference. I learned a lot from these papers and I suggest that folks read them.
In December 2013, I had the chance to visit the University of Chicago to give some seminars about the economics of U.S transit buses. I'm not sure if I succeeded in convincing their economists that this is an interesting topic.
Even "rich" universities such as Columbia are experiencing the pain of reduced NIH grants. This article tells the story of the reduction in soft money faculty working at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia.
This is a strange story that recently unfolded at Yale. A proud new Nobel Laureate in Economics (not named Fama or Hansen) must not have expected this reaction from some of his undergraduate students.
The NY Times has found some reasonable people who wrote a very impressive piece about the consequences of California's drought. Unlike 99% of the NY Times coverage of water, these guys talk about water prices, incentives and behavioral change.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has identified a growing industry. The market wants more "big data" analysts.
The WSJ's editorial page salutes Casey Mulligan's micro economics research on the incentive effects induced by President Obama's policies. Here is their "photo" of Casey.
One person's challenge is another person's opportunity. To rephrase this point, there is demand and supply. As the cold regions of the country have experienced heavy snowfall, this has created jobs for guys to clean it up and opportunities for guys who sell salt.
VP Joe Biden had some wise comments about NYC's ugly airport. The same remarks applies to Los Angeles' main airport called LAX. In a nutshell, this infrastructure was built up in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Mankiw vs. Solow on the 1%.
A few years ago, I prepared this presentation about cities and fat tail risk. The slides still look pretty good. I argue that terrorist attacks on cities are fat tail events that feature a strategic unpredictable dimension while Mother Nature's disasters are fat tail events that are predictable.
This document provides a broad overview of a key academic investment decision that UCLA will soon make. It represents a valuable case study for those who might be curious about how public universities make decisions. UCLA's Chancellor has endorsed this plan.
Drought can be modeled using a supply and demand graph as shifting in the supply curve. But water is not a "free market" good and instead is sold in a politicized market at an artificially low price.
