Environmental and Urban Economics

Paul Romer has posted an important blog post on the urbanization process.  In the case of the nation of Colombia, he seeks to help the leaders of this urbanizing nation to create the necessary conditions to have productive and "livable" future cities.  Rather than embracing a "Soviet Style" deterministic plan, he advocates setting up rules of the game that permit many development paths as individual cities discover their industrial comparative advantage and the needs and desires of their growing urban middle class.

Here is a direct quote:

Q:  What do you think are the items that a “quality city” should have?

Romer quote "In the beginning, all you can do is make an allocation of public space.

The Risky Business Project is not a Tom Cruise vehicle.  Instead, it is a group of talented people who are deeply worried about the consequences that climate change will pose. This group has now released a new book.  Here is its Amazon webpage.    The authors provide a real service highlighting the challenges we are likely to face if we take no actions to protect ourselves from the serious threat of climate change.

Social learning is an important and interesting research and policy subject.  Suppose a big city mayor implements road pricing to mitigate the traffic congestion externality.

The AEA has posted a new 8 minute video making the case that a career in economics is both intellectually challenging and perhaps offers the prospect of having a job.  You can watch it here. 

A few thoughts;

1.  Unintended Consequences --- you don't have to be Sam Peltzman to recognize that almost all government policies have unintended consequences.

For a finite price, I tried to sell Thomas Piketty but I can't find a buyer.  Economists of the world sign up for REPEC Fantasy Economics. 

Matthew Edwin Kahn's IDEAS fantasy league portal

Messages

To dismiss the dated system messages, either make a change to your roster 

2015-08-25 13:32:02: You sold Marianne Baxter for 5. Congratulations! 2015-08-25 13:32:02: You sold Laurence Ball for 25. Congratulations! 2015-08-25 13:32:02: János Kornai's auction has expired and attracted no bid.

USC's fall semester has just started and I have already taught for 4 hours, met with students and colleagues, attended lunches, seminars and cracked jokes and tried to teach the power of price theory applied to environmental and urban topics.   My undergraduate class has an enrollment of 24 students and USC has been kind enough to assign me a high quality TA who has already double checked my algebra for our first calculus based homework assignment.

Eduardo Porter makes some bold predictions in today's NY Times.  He writes;   "A totalitarian regime may be good at deploying capital and labor to deliver raw economic growth. Yet autocracies are not good at fostering innovation and creativity, which rarely flourish where there is no freedom of thought or speech.

Back in 2005, Ed Glaeser and Joe Gyourko published an important paper on the asymmetric implications of durable housing.  Detroit was their favorite example. During the 1950s as the car industry boomed in Detroit, developers built houses that could last for 75 years. Flash forward to the 1980s and the jobs were gone but the houses were still there.

Columbia University celebrates the contributions of Ken Arrow (a PhD graduate of the program). This video is worth watching.   You will see three Nobel Laureates and other superstars discuss his influence.

How much do urbanites value "green space"? Do they value it less if it is very hot outside?  This article argues that Singapore's high daily heat reduces the joy that their urbanites gain from proximity to green space.   Given the impending challenge of climate change, I find this an interesting topic but I have several questions.

1.  The authors of the academic study rely on a survey rather than studying home prices close to green space.