Justin Gillis focuses on which U.S Eastern coastal areas are at increased flood risk due to rising sea levels. People have to live somewhere. If specific areas such as Norfolk Virginia are at increased risk of flooding, what areas on “higher ground” will experience increased demand to live there? Could real estate developers help the […]
Matthew Kahn
Matthew Kahn is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles's Institute of the Environment. He specializes in the environmental consequences of urban growth and related quality-of-life issues.
Posted inPolitics
A Good Christmas Present?
On December 25th and 26th, Amazon will be giving away free e-book copies of my Fundamentals of Environmental Economics. This is not your typical textbook. This book presents many new ideas and examples as it discusses articles from the NY Times and from the frontier of environmental and urban economics. After teaching my 116 student […]
Posted inPolitics
Attracting and Retaining the Skilled
UC Berkeley’s Enrico Moretti has published an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal. “Since 1980, data show that the economic success of a city has been increasingly defined by its number of highly educated workers. Cities with many college-educated workers and innovative employers started attracting more of the same, and cities with a less […]
Posted inPolitics
What the New ‘Nimble Economy’ Really Needs
I am in Singapore working at NUS but I continue to read the New York Times. David Autor and David Dorn have written an important piece about the role that computers have played in hollowing out middle class jobs. They end on an optimistic note; There will be job opportunities in middle-skill jobs, but not […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
What’s Wrong With Undergraduate Teaching?
This post builds on Michael O’Hare’s recent post about what Janet Napolitano should do at the University of California I focus on two changes to the incentive system. Al Roth shared the 2012 Nobel Prize (with my colleague Lloyd Shapley) for his work on mechanism design. This subfield offers some clues for how to achieve […]
Posted inPolitics
Do Solar Power Subsidies Mainly Benefit Rich People?
The NY Times tells a story about a “green death spiral” for the subset of electric utilities who pay solar households retail rates per unit of power the solar households sell back to the grid. The utilities are concerned that as more households sign up for solar panels and generate their own power and then […]
Posted inPolitics
Prepare for Inflation
Paul Krugman provides Dr. Janet Yellen with an endorsement to be our next head of the Federal Reserve. If selected and confirmed, I predict that she will attempt to introduce 4% annual inflation as a “Goldilocks” means of reducing our deficit while seeking to reduce stubborn unemployment. For the empiricists who read the RBC, keep […]
Posted inPolitics
The Electricity Grid’s Big Climate Change Problem
In the NY Times, John Broder has written a good piece where he notes that climate stress could lead to both supply and demand shocks for electricity that threaten the reliability of the grid. For a full copy of the DOE report click here. We need consistent access to electricity so how do we adapt? […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
The Exit Problem: Why School Choice Doesn’t Fix Schools
Malcolm Gladwell has written a very good piece for the New Yorker about Jeremy Adelman’s biography of Albert O. Hirschman. Below, I provide a thought provoking quote and contrast how a Chicago economist thinks versus how Dr. Hirschman approaches the same question. “The closest Hirschman ever came to explaining his motives was in his most […]
Posted inPolitics
Phoenix Figures Out How to Reduce Water Demand During Ongoing Drought
The New York Times reports that Phoenix is figuring out how to reduce the demand for water during a time when it isn’t raining. For economists who read the RBC, note that the words “water prices” are not mentioned in the article. Instead, conservation is achieved through rebates and on the supply side water is […]
