As most of you know, on Monday and Tuesday, I was in Washington, D.C. at the Resources for the Future Frontiers of Environmental Economics Conference. I had planned to offer a running diary of the proceedings, but for a number of reasons (excuses) I didn't. Instead, I'm going to give you my thoughts on the conference and the state of environmental economics in general. Some of these will be boring, some may be offensive, others just honest but need to be said. Anyway, here goes...
I'll start by complementing the organizers. The conference was extremely well-run by academic standards and especially considering the ridiculous travel problems that nearly everyone had Sunday afternoon and evening. A winter storm in Chicago and the D.C. area meant that three of the busiest airports in the country were closed for part of Sunday. Oddly enough, the snow and ice that hit Chicago and the east cost, failed to hit Columbus or Baltimore (which was my flight route). Anyway, the weather screwed up travel for anyone coming from west and it meant that the schedule for the conference was thrown into disarray from the beginning. RFF did an outstanding job of rearranging the presentations without skipping a beat. Nice work.
Now I will complain. There seemed to be a differences in the way different organizers viewed the intent of the conference. The conference was originally advertised as an academic conference and presenters were told "Your presentation and paper should be standard technical, academic work, such as what would be presented at the NBER Summer Institute, the AERE Summer Workshop, or an academic seminar series."Less than a week before the conference, presenters received a message that said "Not all these people will be academics (although there will be a large number of top academics in the audience). In fact, many will be from the government, industry, consulting firms, and even environmental groups. "I think the latter does a good job of describing the audience, but the former does a good job of describing the papers and presentations.
The reason I bring up the inconsistency is to explain one of the undertones that ran through the conference: We are economists, do we really need to be this complicated? Or as an unnamed commenter said "We don't need to be perfect, just good enough." The first day was repeatedly punctuated with comments from the audience along these lines. Brian Roe and I had the privilege (or uncomfortable position, depending on your perspective) of presenting first. Our work looks at the usefulness of insights from neurology at explaining economic behavior. In particular, we try to ask the question: Do the assumptions we make as economists about individual decision making match with what recent advances in neurology and genetics tell us about how people make decisions? The intent was not to question or undermine or invalidate classical economic theory. Instead, to introduce a new set of tools for understanding whether the assumptions of individual behavior are founded in science. I personally hope they are, because as I said at the conference "I'm lazy and I don't want to have to invent a new model for economic decision making."
Unfortunately, I think some in the audience misinterpreted our intent and the discussion that followed (and in response to other presenters) took on a defensive tone. Similar comments arose throughout the presentations on the first day. At one point during the day, Paul Portney--former head of RFF and the original impetus behind the conference--stood up and almost chastised the audience...encouraging them to keep an open mind to new ideas and keep in mind that 20 years ago, the same types of defensiveness lead to reluctance to accept experimental economics as a field of inquiry. Today, insights from experimental economics are regularly incorporated into mainstream economic models.
Don't get me wrong. The conference was impressive. I was simply frustrated by repeated claims that either 1) This was known 20 years ago, or 2) This is too complicated to matter. The papers were well thought out and many were insightful and potentially groundbreaking. But I don't think any of the authors would claim that for themselves. Time and history will be the judge as to which--if any--of these papers revolutionize environmental economics.
Now that my rant is over, some shorter comments:
- Academics are weird. I'm an academic. Therefore....
- Most academic presentations are boring with a capital B (I guess that would make it Boring?). Every once in a while a speaker is passionate. Antonio Rangel (from Cal Tech) is one of those speakers. His presentation was outstanding. I don't agree with everything he said, but he commanded attention and entertained.
- Academics are self-centered. I'm an academic. Therefore....
- There were only a couple of times when things became heated. That's unfortunate--not that it became heated, but that it only happened a couple of times. Heated debates are fun to watch...unless I'm involved.
- I have trouble thinking on my feet. That's one reason I like to write...it gives me time to think and develop an argument. When I am forced to respond on the spot I usually end up regretting my answer or thinking of a better response after the fact. Not all academics suffer from this problem...or at least many are better at spontaneous bullshit than I am.
- Academics are fashion-challenged. I'm an academic. Therefore...
I'll have more on the content of the conference tomorrow, but I'll end/foreshadow with this. In my opinion, environmental economists are among the most forward thinking economists. It is difficult to find a sub-field of economics so concerned with making their research matter outside the circles of academics (that is, to the non-dorks).
Why do I get the feeling my writing sounds like Peter King today?
