Environmental Economics

Cleaning out my inbox

Grades have been turned in and I'm cleaning out my email. Here are links to items that I wanted to blog during the past couple of months but ran out of time:

• Offsetting "carbon footprints" is more complicated than you might think
• Are We Ready to Track Carbon Footprints?
• Budgetary effects of Lieberman-Warner climate bill
• Dams, Dam Removal, and River Restoration: A Hedonic Property Value Analysis
• No Problem: Environmental Defense Fund Says Capping Emissions Will Be Cheap
• Implications of a cap-and-trade program
• Emptying the breadbasket

Thanks to everyone who sent me these links, and sorry that I wasn't able to get around to reading them carefully.

Ah. That feels much better. Monday will be the official beginning of summer!

Banned in China

From comment #113470338:

John & Tim,

Congratulations! Your site appears to be blocked by the Chinese Internet police. From here in Suzhou I have been unable to get to your site except through a proxy switch.

Be proud. I have two websites blocked myself. I hear they have 50,000 people working full time to police the Internet. Ridiculous to try and compare the costs and benefits there.

I wonder what we did wrong ... could it be my offensive avatar?

Unprofessional behavior

From Environmental and Urban Economics:

I can't wear shorts to UCLA because I don't believe that my tenure covers that contingency.

I'm celebrating finals week by wearing short pants everyday!

Good luck to Mike!

From Mike's Economics Blog at Economics.about.com:

This is the week of truth.  For the seven days between May 1 and May 7, I need to have an average body fat percentage of under 18.23%.  If I fail, I must pay $100 each to the source of choice as chosen by the following three economics blogs:

• Environmental Economics
• Greg Mankiw
• Eclectecon

I think I will make it, thanks to a very strong first-half of the month, but time will tell. I have been coasting for the last two weeks, which has me worried for May. Have I plateaued?

Good luck to Mike!

Basking in reflected glory

From Real Time Economics:

The Concord Coalition, a bipartisan Washington nonprofit organization that lobbies for reducing the federal budget deficit, named Diane Lim Rogers to be its first chief economist. She has been chief economist of the House Budget Committee since January 2007, and previously worked for other congressional committees and the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the last year of the Clinton Administration and first 100 days of the Bush administration.

On May 11, Mother’s Day, Ms. Rogers will launch a blog called EconomistMom.com, where she will comment on a range of issues, with fiscal responsibility prominent among them, using her dual credentials as a Ph.D. economist and mother of four.

Congrats Diane!

Environmental economics blogs in REEP

From the inbox:

A new issue of Review of Environmental Economics and Policy has been made available:

Winter 2008; Vol. 2, No. 1
URL: http://reep.oxfordjournals.org/content/vol2/issue1/index.dtl?etoc

The first thing I always do is check out Kerry Smith's Reflections on the Literature column. Here are the opening lines:

Three "Reflections on the Literature" columns written in under a year—wow, I didn't know I had it in me! This was my first thought when I was reminded that a third column was due. I feel like a "virtual blogger." So in that spirit, I decided to look at the two environmental economics blogs that I ask my students to read to see how I might make this third column a little different.1

And here is footnote 1:

The blogs I am referring to are Tim Haab and John Whitehead's (www.env-econ.net) and Matt Kahn's Environmental and Urban Economics site (www.greeneconomics.blogspot.com).

Rock and roll! Yet, alas:

I found the inspiration I needed in Matt Kahn's postings in November 2006. He suggested in his environmental and urban economics blog that many of the most important questions in environmental economics are empirical; it is through the interaction of theory and what the data "tell us" that we make progress or begin to ask better questions. As a result of Matt's comment, I decided to present some new empirical work as part of my discussion.

The Honoring Tom Tietenberg blog

Check out the Honoring Tom Tietenberg blog:

After 31 years of teaching at Colby College, Tom Tietenberg is retiring! This site was created to collect messages from current and former students and colleagues. We plan to present this blog to Tom on April 15, following his last public lecture as a Colby professor, "Emissions Trading: From Economic Concept to Global Implementation", the Economics Department annual Grossman lecture. Please take a moment, write a message, and help us wish Tom well in his next chapter in life.

There are 265 comments.

Take the "Tech" out of Technorati

Technorati current lists our URL as http://env-econ.net and not http://www.env-econ.net. Since the former goes to a Network Solutions "under construction" page I sent an email asking if they could add the "www." Here is what I heard back:

Hello,

Please accept our apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We are currently experiencing a backlog in Support, but are working very hard to address everyone.

Unfortunately at this time it's not possible to change our system from env-econ.net to www.env-econ.net.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have other questions.

Thank you for using Technorati!

[name]
Customer Support Specialist
Technorati

Here is the link to our Technorati page: http://www.technorati.com/blogs/www.env-econ.net?reactions. I can't imagine this helps our ranking at 26econ.com.

Economics blog reader survey results

From Aaron Schiff at 26econ.com:

The survey that John Whitehead and I did of econ blog readers has finished and produced some interesting results. Thanks very much to everyone who took the time to do the survey. In total we got 387 responses. Here’s a summary of the basic responses to each question ...

In case you have nothing better to do ...

From Aaron Schiff at 26econ.com:

John Whitehead and I are conducting a brief survey of readers of economics blogs. I’d be really grateful if you could spend a few minutes answering the questions. The idea is to get some idea of the “demand side” of economics blogs. This will be a nice complement to my earlier survey of econ blog authors. We’ll publish the results when the survey is over.

Take the survey!