The New York Post reports that Little Italy in Manhattan is shrinking as Chinatown expands. The New York Times reports that Spike Lee is upset that African-American communities in Brooklyn are shrinking as "Girls" (white yuppies) move in.
Nate Silver's new blog is generating some readers and some excitement. University of Chicago graduates are supposed to engage in active debate about important ideas and Silver represents the UC well. Recently, there has been quite a lot of talk about Roger Pielke Jr's post for the 538 blog.
Here are my slides for my talk at UCLA this Monday. You will see my usual blend of humor and wisdom. My topic is the economics of the nascent California partnership with Quebec on carbon permit trading. Here are the details about our conference.
I read in People Magazine today that NFL great Tom Brady is selling this home in Brentwood, California (located 4 miles from me) to move to Boston. For details about this $50 million dollar home, click here.
Google has been good for me. It has allowed me to efficiently search for stuff that interests me and it has allowed me to write several economics research papers. People have been interested in my past work on Google Searches as a tool to learn about interest in climate change.
I haven't swam in an Ocean for 35 years. Today, I made my comeback in the surprisingly warm Pacific. If you had been at this beach at 5pm, you would have seen quite a sight.
This Stanford Anthropologist argues that Facebook makes us miserable. She advances an interesting hypothesis that until people are connected to the Web that they are blissfully unaware of how little fun and status they are achieving relative to everyone else.
The NY Times has published an interesting piece making the case that more cities should raise their minimum wage. The authors argue that firms can benefit from complying with such wage hikes as their workers will be more loyal and will quit less.
As a 1993 graduate who is married to a 1993 graduate and who hopes that his son may be a 2022 graduate in its college, the future of the University of Chicago is of mild interest to me.
This NY Post article tells a story about the transportation of rich Manhattan people to a weekend beach community. There are a finite number of slots on the fast train.
Real estate is a field that greatly interests me. Much of my current work is about commercial real estate energy efficiency and another piece of my work is focused on real estate in China but Los Angeles real estate continues to interest me.
On Wednesday morning, I had the pleasure of participating in an Urban Land Institute event in Century City. Here is a photo of my panel. As you can see, I'm sitting on the far right and dressed more casually than my peers.
Read this NY Times piece by Justin Gillis and you will quickly see that he is tired of reporting the same old story again and again that climate change is real and potentially scary.
I attended an interesting meeting today where I had the opportunity to speak to a policy analyst who works for an elected official.
Somebody named Rebecca Traister doesn't like Dalton Conley's new book about parenting. Shouldn't a University Professor at NYU and a former Dean of Social Sciences be treated with more respect? In the review, Ms.
Read this article about why startups locate in Santa Monica on the beach. The great quality of life in this Los Angeles city attracts these young people and also acts as a co-ordinating device. Young hipsters with ideas know that others like them are gathering in this location.
Reading this article about vehicle fatalities and GM air bags got me thinking about "Big Data".
Can government mandates cause innovation? The CAFE fuel economy standards are a prime example of Federal attempts to nudge vehicle makers to invest more in R&D for creating more fuel efficient vehicles. In California, there is now a new push for consumer product makers to design safer products.
In this blog post, I would like to preview my three new NBER papers. One is on Walmart's energy consumption. One is about public bus purchases and scrappage and the third is about learning about California voter's preferences for carbon mitigation based on voting on AB32 and High Speed Rail.
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The NY Times reports that some Senators will be leading an all day "teach-in" on reducing U.S greenhouse gas emissions. While I support this effort, the Senators' aids might want to consider some basic economic research.
Read this article about the water intensity of different foods (i.e how many gallons of water it takes to create a pound of meat) and note that water prices are never mentioned. While millions of people have studied Econ 101, the basic ideas of supply and demand do not sink in.
Here is the overall ranking of the World's Economics Departments . Here is REPEC's Rankings of individual economists over the last 10 years. While I like my ranking of #290, I see that UCLA is under-represented among economists who rank < 290. I see Andy Atkeson at #277 and nobody else.
The New York Times Editorial Board has written an unsigned piece about flat wages for college graduates. While I do not believe that a single Ph.D. economist serves on their board, they offer various hypotheses and cures.
How is California's drought affecting the state's economy? This is an interesting natural experiment.
