Environmental and Urban Economics

I am happy to see that the sophisticated NY Times Arts Section is filled with "elasticity of demand" hypotheses in this piece.    The Metropolitan Museum of Art is "free" but has a suggested donation. To the deep surprise of non-economists, this isn't yielding that much revenue.  Apparently, there are free riders among us.  Based on some statistical sampling, the museum believes that 66% of its visitors are from outside NYC.  There is a proposal to charge this set of tourists.  This raises "demand" issues.

The Director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment (my old home) is Peter Kareiva.  Here is a recent Variety Fair piece he wrote with a very successful business man.    They seek to use Hollywood's influence to nudge perceptions about the risks posed by climate change.

Chris Blatmann and Stefan Dercon have published a great NY Times piece about their new field experiment set in Ethiopia.  Throughout the developing world, urbanization is taking place.  People who were farmers are moving to cities to take industrial jobs.  In a world of uncertainty and risk, some people might regret making these moves away from the "sure thing" and social network of the countryside.  Yes, cities pay more and offer more excitement but there are urban risks.

My first two years at USC have flown by.  As I prepare to become the New Chairman of USC Economics, I look forward to helping our #22 ranked department take its next steps.  A big part of my focus will be undergraduate and graduate education.  An Ivy League quality school must have an Ivy League quality economics education. It is that simple.  The New York Times today celebrates one piece of USC's rising excellence. Read Frank Bruni's piece on "Lifting Kids to College".

Last week Paul Krugman pointed out the negative labor market consequences of the rise of Amazon over downtown retail.    Today, the University of Chicago's new Dean of the Harris School suggests that the health care sector should reduce its labor/output ratio in order to reduce its costs.

Here is a quote from this NY Times piece;

As President Trump seeks to fulfill his campaign pledge to create millions more jobs, the industry would seem a promising place to turn.

The NY Times Magazine has published a whole issue today about climate change.  I've skimmed all of the articles and I believe that the magazine chose to avoid the economists (except in a brief correct quote here) for some insights.   Below is a "subtle" cartoon from the Mooallem piece and here is some standard "doom and gloom" from  a psychologist named "Kahn" ;

"Still, we insulate ourselves from the disorientation and alarm in other, more pernicious ways, too.

An airplane is an interesting "Commons".    You pay for the right to enter the plane and if you pay more you enter earlier ("now boarding Business Class") and get a nicer seat.   But, once you are on the plane the fight begins for overhead space, armrests and toilets.  People start sneezing and eating stinky food and have strange conversations.

The NY Times provides an impassioned list of likely effects of climate change.  While I skimmed the list quickly, it is notable that the list focuses on non-urban consequences.  Yet, all over the world we live in cities.  As I have been arguing for a decade, urbanites have an edge in adapting to climate change. Urbanites live and work inside in climate controlled settings (don't believe me, visit Singapore).

Back 25 years ago,  Sherwin Rosen tried to teach me many economics ideas.   I think of him as I read Robert Reich's December 2016 piece "Have Liberal States Won America's Tax Experiment?"   Here are a few quotes from Mr. Reich.

"But what about so-called over-taxed, over-regulated, high-wage California? California leads the nation in the rate of economic growth — more than twice the national average. In other words, conservatives have it exactly backwards.

In May 2016, Princeton Press published my co-authored book Blue Skies Over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China.  Today, I was sent a kind book review by G. Tracy Mehan.   Not all of my books have received such kind reviews.  My 2010 book Climatopolis was fairly treated by Matthew Kotchen in his Journal of Economic Literature review  but there were other reviewers such as this wacky physicist who weren't as even tempered.