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Two Comments About Richard Thaler's 2016 AEA Presidential Address
The AEA has posted a webcast of Richard Thaler's Presidential Address. I highly recommend it. Professor Thaler brings a new perspective that didn't exist when I was a student at the University of...
View ArticleRanking Economists as of December 2015
REPEC serves a useful purpose as it provides a type of accounting balance sheet on the performance of tens of thousands of academic economists. Does past performance predict future returns? Theories...
View Article"Behavioral Man" Provides Another Justification for Investing in Pre-K for...
In a recent blog post, I argued that many of the "anomalies" that behavioral economists point out would vanish if adults have acquired more human capital and developed their non-cognitive skills as...
View ArticleTwo Thoughts About Heather Sarsons' Paper on Team Production in Academic...
Justin Wolfers has written an important piece for the NY Times that introduced me to the research being done by Heather Sarsons of Harvard. Take a look at Tables 3 and 4 of her paper. Female...
View ArticleSome Uber Environmental Economics
I ride in Uber sometimes 8 times a week. I have met hundreds of drivers and done repeat business with so many guys who remember the conversation we had on the previous ride. I now know more about the...
View ArticleCan Renewable Power Adoption Really Bend the Global GHG Curve as World Energy...
Richard Tol's tweets have nudged me to read the UK's Guardian. 30 years when I was a student at the LSE, I didn't read the Guardian because the Independent had just launched but I guess it is never...
View ArticleSome Thoughts About Abraham's book "The Elements of Power"
I will now review a book that I haven't read. I have read the Economist's Review of "The Elements of Power" . David Abraham wants to educate Western readers about the key role that "Rare Earths"...
View ArticleMore Uber Economics: How its Rise Will Accelerate the Development of High MPG...
Today on a walk to the local coffee shop, I sketched my recent Uber post to my wife and she pointed out that I only told half of the story. To recap, Uber's drivers drive more miles than individual...
View ArticleThe New Economics of Coastal City Adaptation to Climate Change
There is an interesting debate stirring in academic economics focused on urban adaptation to climate change.. In one corner, I sit as the reigning optimist. Read my new post published today in the...
View ArticleDoom and Gloom from Environmental Economists?
A Center at NYU Law School (my mother graduated from this fine school in the early 1970s) has released a study in which it tried to survey 1000 environmental economists. Here is a news release about...
View ArticleUSC: My New Home
I approach environmental and urban economics research and my undergraduate teaching in my own distinctive way. I'm flattered that USC appreciates what I have done and what I will do over the next 20...
View ArticleA Ph.D. Microeconomics Research Dissertation Topic Suggestion: LDC Resilience...
I have visited the Philippines once. This is a highly populated developing nation featuring "bad geography" in the sense that it gets hit with many natural disasters. Its proximity to China is both...
View ArticleNew News from USC Economics
We have now launched the USC Department of Economics Twitter page. To learn more about economics, you can visit our site or you can visit other sites such as this one. You are free to choose.
View ArticleSnow Storms as a Test of the Resilience of Urban Productivity to Nasty Shocks
As I sit in 65 degree Los Angeles, I read about the big snow storm back on the East Coast. In terms of urban productivity, we were lucky that the shock took place on a weekend but will Monday's local...
View ArticleKrugman on Gordon: Both Need to Re-Read Dixit and Stiglitz
Paul Krugman has written an excellent book review of Robert Gordon's new pessimistic book about the future of economic growth. Ed Glaeser also wrote an excellent review for the WSJ last week. Krugman...
View ArticleCheap Gas and Cheap Talk at the December 2015 COP Climate Change Mitigation...
The NY Times asks just the right question in this article. As gas prices decline, will the world's consumers now revert to buying fuel inefficient large safe vehicles? Will governments around the...
View ArticleStaffing President Trump's Future Council of Economic Advisers
Suppose Don Trump wins. Which economists will be invited to be leading members of his Administration? What cognitive and non-cognitive traits would they need to succeed in getting his attention?...
View ArticleMy New Paper on Climate Change Adaptation
The environmental economic journal REEP has a "reflections" section where economists write about their views on an important research literature. I have just published a paper in REEP on the emerging...
View ArticleMy 5 Year Plan?
One of my Chinese co-authors asked me a simple question over coffee yesterday. "What is your 5 year plan?" I'm usually not at a loss for words but this question caught me off guard and I paused to...
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David Foster Wallace Ponders a Behavioral Economics Puzzle
It is Sunday and the NY Times has little substantive content. So, I turn to the Sports Section and I stumble upon a long article focused on behavioral economics and the sport fan's pursuit of a free...
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