Environmental and Urban Economics

Why has Facebook's stock price fallen sharply?  As I understand it,  Facebook is now offering its users the right to "opt out" and not share their data.  You do not have to be as sharp as Professor James Heckman to anticipate that this will cause a selection bias issue.   Who will opt in to continue to provide their data to Facebook? How representative will this subsample be of the entire population? If advertisers are aware that the quality of the Facebook data has declined because of this selection bias issue, then they will bid less aggressively for advertising on this platform. This will lower Facebook's revenue.

Here are some suggested readings for those who want to learn about climate change economics. I name 3 books and one free article of mine.

Here is Nordhaus' book on greenhouse gas mitigation 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G2C1374/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Here is my 2010 book on climate change adaptation

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465063837/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4

Here is Wagner and Weitzman's book on climate change and risk.

Labor economists are investigating the role of market power in labor markets as a rising source of income inequality.  Here is a piece from the Washington Post and here is the Krueger and Posner Hamilton Project White Paper.

The intuition here is the following;  there are many workers who seek jobs.  There are a few large employers (such as KFC Franchises) who sign non-compete clauses so that branches of the same firm do not compete against each other for talent.

The economist's model of supply and demand is pretty straightforward but in this brief post I would like to highlight a few twists that urban economics offers.  These twists make urban economics a really interesting (and challenging) field.   Economists are a type of detective. We observe market prices and quantities and how they change over time.  Like a detective, we want to know why prices and quantities have changed. We have two "prime suspects" called supply and demand.

I have added two more problems and a free version is available here.

I'm going to keep marketing my free e-book.  Here is the Table of Contents listing the problems I present;

1. Trade vs. Autarky

2. The Roy Model of Comparative Advantage

3.  Household Economics

4. Standard Consumption Theory with a "Becker Twist"

5. The Cost of Climate Change

6. The Diet Problem

7. Hyperbolic Discounting

8. Rational Addiction

9. Risk Smoothing through the Family versus the Market

10. Risk Smoothing through the Village

11. The Family and the Quantity vs.