Environmental Economics

Price discrimination and the costs of academic books

Riding on John's long coattails, I just wanted to add my two cents on the cost of textbooks.  Really this is just a little insight into the process of writing a book and what the publisher and authors get out of it.

NYTimes Leonhardt on climate change policy

Earth's climate needs the help of incentives:

The discussion about climate change can be mind-numbingly complex, filled as it often is with economic and scientific jargon. But I think there are three broad principles that help sort out the substantive attempts at change from the others.

The costs of textbooks

I'm not teaching environmental econ next fall, and with a new hire in that field I doubt that I'll be teaching it again for some time. The good news is that I'll be teaching benefit cost analysis: an opportunity to bore students straight with a couple weeks of nonmarket valuation.

I chose my book, Boardman, et al., at a cost of $140 per book. What will the students pay, you ask? I have no idea and they don't either. You see, AppState is on a rental system. The student fee for the system is about $150 each semester and students just love it. Most faculty hate it since it limits choice. This past year the faculty tried to get rid of the semester ... no dice. Me? Yawn. Except ...

California Climate Policy Webcast

The California Climate Policy Forum webcast of March 19 can be found here.

Summer beach camping, a natural experiment idea and a publication story

My head is swirling at the thought of summer beach camping. I tried this once on a sea turtle nesting trip with The Nature Conservancy. It was hot (go figure), sandy (go figure), and the raccoons got into our food. I didn't see any sea turtles and the car wouldn't start after the ferry ride back. Yuck.

And yet, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore campgrounds will open next week for the touron season:

News from Home

From the city I call home, Dublin, Ohio:

The city of Dublin is about to begin an effort which will see the removal of 5,000 ash trees within 10 years.

The trees will be removed in an effort to ward off the expected arrival of the emerald ash borer.

[...]

The borer is a parasitic beetle that kills ash trees by eating wood from beneath the bark.

That sounds expensive.

Reading econ blogs is a good use of your time while watching 65 or so (some grandmothers died yesterday) 19-year-olds take a micro exam

From Heavy Lifting:

Certain graphs tell the tale so well that descriptions are not necessary. From the Dallas Fed is this graph showing Texas Rig Counts versus Oil Prices. If the number of oil rigs on line is an indication of supply, then the yellow line is a great example of the law of supply: as the price increases, the quantity supplied increases.

I'm an idiot, a complete idiot

I'm in the middle of proctoring an introductory economics exam and a student asks me about a bonus question (discussed in class after the mini-black-day-of-the-week-when-the-stock-market-fell-3%):

Bonus: What can cause the stock market to fall?

a. an increase in demand
b. an increase in supply
c. a decrease in demand
d. both b and d
e. a decrease in supply

Did you catch the mistake? In an effort to differentiate exams for a large class I scrambled the answers for version B. Of course, you can only scramble a-d if answer e considers more than one of the above answers. I thought I checked and obviously didn't check close enough.

The kicker is out of 25-some students, only 2 asked me if the question was worded correctly.

Quote of the Day

"There's nothing that can be done that can reduce the curb of growth of imported oil, and actually turn it down, like using E85."

General Motors Corp. chairman and chief executive Rick Wagoner

NOAA's Carbon Tracker

From the Daily Grist:

NOAA scientists unveil online emissions-tracking tool

The U.S. might not be ready to cut its carbon emissions, but it's ready to measure them. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has unveiled a nifty new online tool that tracks carbon dioxide levels around the world. And guess what it's called? CarbonTracker. We're in love! "This is a pretty exciting opportunity," deadpanned NOAA's head of research, Richard Spinrad, adding that the tool "will provide a fundamental ground truth about climate." While NOAA is still working out kinks and gathering data, the agency's long-term hope is that the tracker will reflect data from thousands of global sampling stations and give accurate carbon counts down to the city level. Researchers are also working on a way to differentiate carbon generated naturally from the kind spewed when fossil fuels burn. "If [NOAA] can do this, the effects would be remarkable," said John Drexhage of the International Institute for Sustainable Development. "At least it means we can have an honest discussion."

Here is NOAA's Carbon Tracker. Jeez, I just checked out the Flux Maps and found a spike coming from central Ohio.