Environmental and Urban Economics

In December 2016, I wrote a short Amazon book on the economics of revealed preference.  I wrote this book after teaching "Econ 101" at USC.  While I have taught Econ 101 on and off for 25 years (starting back at Columbia University), I have now concluded that the right way to teach this class is to cast the economist as "a detective".   We observe clues about a person's "type" based on the choices we observe her make when she is confronted with different choices sets (that vary due to her income changing and the relative prices she faces shifting).  Under the assumption that a person's tastes do not change much over time, we can begin to pin down a specific person's tastes.

An example of my book's logic.   Sally is offered a meat pizza at a price of $15 and she doesn't buy it.

Now that 2017 is wrapping up it might interest some people to hear why I choose to work on some research questions.  For each paper I published in 2017, I offer a few "big picture" comments to explain what questions motivated the research.

2017 Articles

Jerch, Rhiannon & Kahn, Matthew E. & Li, Shanjun, 2017. "The efficiency of local government: The role of privatization and public sector unions,"Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 95-121.  Delmas, Magali A.

The recent Los Angeles fires have been quite scary.  When I'm scared, I start to run new regressions.  I take daily PM2.5 air pollution data from the EPA and keep the subset of observations for the following states; California, Arizona and Nevada.  I use data from the years 2000 to 2017.   I merge in data on daily wind speed and average temperature.

The Repec competition continues.  I do not believe that Martin Browning is part of our cohort. 

1993

Repec has informed me that my rankings "peers" are:

Similarly ranked authors

These peers are ranked around you and are listed in random order: Gert G. Wagner Martín Uribe Laurence Ball Athanasios Orphanides Andrew Abel Roger B. Myerson Richard H. Clarida Jason Shogren Harvey Rosen Edward E. Leamer Marcel Fratzscher Thomas R. Palfrey Viral V. Acharya Giancarlo Corsetti Norman V.

Under the pending Trump Tax Plan, Universities whose endowments are above $500,000 per student will face an endowment income tax of 1% a year.  A $7 billion dollar school would pay roughly $10 million dollars in cash (that's a lot of Assistant professors slots).  Holding a university's endowment fixed, if this school increases its student population by 20%, it will be less likely to face this tax threshold.

Given California's high taxes on those who are well paid, such individuals keep 45% of each dollar they earn.  If such a person lived in Texas, he might keep 60% of each dollar earned.   President Trump's new tax proposal will further raise the tax price of living in California.  If state and local taxes are no longer deductible from federal income, then the tax price will rise sharply.

At USC Economics,  I (in my role as department Chair) have a busy schedule. We are hiring new faculty, creating new curriculum and engaging in fundraising.  Each day brings new challenges and new opportunities.   On  Tuesday, I will be interacting with our talented majors outside of the classroom in two different events;

Noon:  Lunch with Undergraduates

6pm  The Economics of Bitcoins

A department chair is a type of cheerleader.

This new NBER paper looks quite interesting.  Suppose that I am an inventor and I create a blood test that correctly detects your probability of having cancer .5 years from now.  For my test to accurately predict your future risk probability, a trained nurse must administer the blood sampling.   As I debut my product, I will make sure that the qualified nurse does the test.

Sherwin Rosen was one of the greatest University of Chicago economists.  While he did not win a Nobel Prize (he died at age 62 during the year when he was the President of the American Economic Association), his student Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize and his student Kevin Murphy has won multiple major economics honors.   I was not his best student but he continues to teach me new lessons about economics.   I just read his 1997 paper on Austrian Economics.