Dr. Krugman's Analysis of the Demise of Coal Ignores Economic and Political Geography
Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in part for his work on economic geography. Today, he has published a very good piece on the economics of coal while ignoring local economic and political geography. That is interesting on several levels.
Global Carbon Mitigation if President Trump Walks Out on the COP21
Suppose that all 7.5 billion people on the planet achieve the "American Dream" and buy a car that achieves 25 MP G and each drives 10,000 miles per year.
My Upcoming China Real Estate Talk
My friends and students know that I like to talk. Here are my slides for an upcoming speech I'm giving about real estate in China.
A "Julian Simon" Style Test of the Climate Change Adaptation Hypothesis
President Obama just gave a major speech in which he argues that climate change is causing food prices to spike. Economists often write down models of induced innovation (see Acemoglu and Lin 2004 or my recent NBER paper).
Will President Trump's Energy Budget Doom Technological Progress?
Brad Plumer is a thoughtful young columnist for the New York Times. In this piece , he argues that a byproduct of President Trump's gutting of the Department of Energy's green subsidies is that world climate change mitigation will suffer a great blow.
What is "Convincing" Evidence in Modern Economics?
James Heckman and Burton Singer have written an important AER P&P piece on "evidence". This piece borders on philosophy as it touches on the deep issue of how do we as economists update our beliefs about how the world works. Put simply; "what is convincing?".
Geoffrey West's New Book; Scale
Geoffrey West has just published a new book Scale that was recently reviewed in The Economist. I have met Geoffrey on several occasions. I'm a big fan of his and I have few points to make.
Contingency Planning: The Case of Air Travel
Air travel literally features little "wiggle room". If you are late to your flight, you can't board.
Some California City Worker Pension Economics
The New York Times has reported a story on Puerto Rico's fiscal challenges. The area has a large deficit and a large part of this is due to allowing workers to retire on a generous pension plan at roughly age 50.
Urban Adaptation to Climate Shocks: The Case of Heavy Rain in NYC
The media reports that NYC received almost a month's total of rain in 3 hours recently. While this imposed some time and inconvenience costs, I see little evidence from the following NY Times story that the city was "crippled" by this shock. Urban areas are already ready for such shocks.
Peers at Work; the April 2017 version
Repec is kind. Based on one's last 10 years of output, I like my peer group with a Nobel Laureate (Sargent 3 ahead of me and another Nobel Laureate 5 below me (Tirole)). 50,000 academic economists are ranked by REPEC.
A Superb New Week of Research from NBER
The NBER plays a central role in academic economics as it solves a co-ordination problem and the financing problem of bringing ambitious applied economists of all ages to meet and debate new ideas.
