Environmental and Urban Economics

Congratulations to Nick Kristof of the New York Times.  I am really impressed with this discussion between him and Carol in Berkeley.

In recent decades, U.S Clean Air Regulations have focused on reducing the emissions of new cars, new factories and new power plants.  Old cars, old factories and old power plants have often been "grandfathered" and haven't faced regulations.

Post-pandemic many educated people will be working from home 3 days a week.  Some of these people will choose to live further from city centers.

Several excellent urban economics research teams have access to U.S geocoded cell phone data.  Since I am not part of any of these teams, I will use this blog post to offer them some unsolicited advice.  For some examples of these teams; skim this  and this .

An active research field in climate economics uses natural disasters as "natural experiments" to learn about the economic effects of such shocks.  Amine Ouazad and I study how major hurricanes impact bank lending and securitization patterns in this study.

The New York Times has published an excellent piece about an emerging coal shortage in China.  Let's use the supply and demand framework to study this issue.  Aggregate demand for coal in China is rising because it is winter and much of the nation's winter heating is supplied by burning coal.

Mark Tercek's recently posted an interesting column where he makes the case for why major cash investments in the "blue chip" environmental interest groups is a wise use of Jeff Bezos' funds.

This blog post builds on my last post on a related topic.      My critics say to me;  "Matt, our centers of productivity are located in coastal places and these places face ever increasing climate risks.

I have been to India once.  In this note, I would like to sketch out a research agenda on the microeconomics of urban slum dweller adaptation to emerging climate risk.  My points will only zero in on India's specifics a couple of times.  There are many slums throughout the developing world.

With the upcoming publication of my 2021 Yale Press book Adapting to Climate Change,  I am making plans to follow the advice of Esther Duflo and Al Roth and try to be both a plumber and a market maker.

Microeconomists define a lulling effect to take place when an intervention (such as taking a dose of a vaccine) or a safety regulation (such as child proof bottle caps or vehicle airbags)  convinces an individual that she is less exposed to risk.

As a Miami Heat fan who lives in Los Angeles right now, I marvel at the success of the NBA Bubble.  I am a fan of Jimmy Butler's grit.   The league has created a "safe space" featuring no infection for months.  The private sector (the NBA) achieved this.

Weizeng Sun, Siqi Zheng and I have just released a new NBER paper titled "Clean Air as an Experience Good in Urban China".  In this blog post, I want to talk about our paper and make some general points about the persistence literature.

Fire fighters in a city such as Baltimore have a better defined job than the police.  Fire fighters do not set fires.  They put out fires and save those at risk.  Fires occur at random times in random parts of the city.

The quality of the fire fighting unit can be measured using;  1.

In 2019, Ian Coxhead wrote a tough Journal of Economic Literature review of my co-authored 2016 book Blue Skies Over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment (joint with Siqi Zheng of MIT).

Almost 20 years ago, Brian Jacob, Steve Levitt and Mark Duggan taught economists how to detect cheating teachers and cheating sumo wrestlers.

Information is highly valuable and costly to acquire.  Some of us know more about some things than others. A mother of a young child knows more about the child's health and personality than does the child's teacher.  A friend knows more about you than a stranger.

In early June 2020, Baltimore's Democratic Primary will take place and the winner will be highly likely to be elected mayor in November.  Here is a profile of the key candidates.  In this brief blog post, I want to sketch out a few thoughts about Mayors.

At dinner tonight, my wife told me that between 1/3 to 1/2 of COVID-19 deaths have taken place at nursing homes. I asked her a Chicago Price Theory question.

As American cities enacted indoor anti-smoking laws, smokers responded by smoking outside.  If from now on, we are wearing masks outside --- smoking becomes more inconvenient and fewer people will smoke.

The Harvard Crimson has published an interesting piece that debates the merits of another Zoom semester in fall 2020.  The author endorses delaying this semester until Spring 2021. 

Suppose that Harvard follows this plan.

The world needs a COVID-19 Vaccine.   Is there now a patent race to deliver a high quality vaccine?  Will the "winner takes all" winner gain a multi-trillion dollar patent?  There are over 7 billion people on the planet.

As each nation engages in a large Keynesian government expenditure expansion to reduce the short run economic impacts of COVID-19, this will create a huge budget deficit for every nation.

In this blog post, I will argue that larger firms have an edge in adapting to workplace COVID-19 risk.  For impatient readers, take a look at this article about Amazon's recent efforts to screen workers.

Some time this summer, I will revise my  Price Theory Problems e-book.   Here is a new problem I will add.

Many urban scholars have noted that richer people tend to suburbanize.  Bob Margo's 1992 paper makes this point in a straightforward way.

A growing group of urban scholars are now considering the long run effects of COVID-19 on optimal urban density patterns.

Do Social Networks Increase or Decrease the COVID-19 Contagion Rate?

Dora L. Costa

Kenneth T. Sokoloff Professor of Economic History

UCLA

Costa@econ.ucla.edu. 

Matthew E.

As the world's scientists race to find a cure for the Coronavirus, will they work in private labs or will they openly share data and work in an "open source" research environment.

With some types of machines such as a coffee grinder, it works when you press the button and it doesn't work when you don't.

The City of Baltimore has one of the highest murder rates in the United States. The murder rate has remained high since the Freddie Gray riots in April 2015.