Environmental Economics

When is a tree not a tree?

Apparently when it's not big enough for invasive insects to prey on it.  Last week, the Ohio Department of Agriculture Forest Service announced that the state's 3.9 billion (yes with a 'b') Ash trees were endangered from the voracious Emerald Ash Borer.  That number was too big by about 3.6 billion.  The real number of endangered trees is about 254 Million (with an M).  The difference?  The 3.9 billion number counted seedlings--which apparently there are a lot of.  The Ash Borer typically only invades trees greater than 1 inch in diameter.  That's the 253 million.

Torn between two lovers

Gulf region gains help ...

State and local governments in Gulf Coast areas devastated by the 2005 hurricanes will no longer be required to pay 10 percent of the cost of repairing their roads, schools and other public works, under a provision of the emergency war spending bill approved by Congress on Thursday night.

Louisiana officials had said that the need to cover some of the repair costs themselves, instead of having the federal government assume all costs, was significantly slowing their recovery efforts. They praised Congress for making the change, which they estimated would save the state and its affected communities at least $775 million.

What to say? My equity (i.e., good) side says I'm hoping the Katrina damaged part of the U.S. comes back as soon as possible. My efficiency (i.e., bad) side says that I know this will increase the damages due to natural disasters in the future. As U.S. citizens see that the federal government will always bail out ill-advised behavior, they'll live in floodplains, on beaches, and other risky areas.

AERE Workshop: Valuation and Incentives for Ecosystem Services

2007 AERE Workshop

Valuation and Incentives for Ecosystem Services
Mystic, Connecticut
June 7-9, 2007

... [T]he Workshop will focus both on methods and applications that evaluate the services provided by nature and on incentives and institutions that modify behavior and lead to enhanced provision of amenities including biodiver­sity, carbon sequestration, preservation of wildlife, etc. The papers address diverse resource manage­ment and environmental policy problems and apply a variety of theoretical, experimental, econometric, and numerical methods.

The papers have recently been posted on the AERE website.

Review of Environmental Economics and Policy

My hard copy of REEP arrived in my campus mail box today!

Oxford Journals and the Association for Environmental and Resource Economists will be launching an exciting new journal in 2007. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy aims to fill the gap between traditional academic journals and the general interest press by providing a widely accessible yet scholarly source for the latest thinking on environmental economics and related policy. The Review will publish a range of material including symposia, articles, and regular features.

Thumbing through, the articles look interesting and easy to read (duh, that's the point) ... which I intend to do. Stay tuned has I offer some assanine commentary of Volume 1, Number 1 over the coming months.

By the way, when did the 2002 World Congress cypress tree icon become the official icon of AERE? The d'Arge tree icon is still on the AERE website and JEEM but I think I keep seeing the cypress tree more and more. I don't have anything against it, I just wonder how these decisions are made.

We do macro too ...

... at least when a local environmental economist is quoted in the paper:

The Triad’s unemployment rate reached a six-month low of 4.5 percent in April, the N.C. Employment Security Commission reported yesterday.

But local economists and employment officials said they don’t believe that the rate will fall much lower in the near future. The March unemployment rate was 4.6 percent.

...

Considering the economy actually has been a little more sluggish, I would have thought that the rate would have gone up,” said Todd Cherry, an economics professor at Appalachian State University.

"It appears that in the current economy, we’re not likely to get much below 4 percent in the unemployment rate. Many employers are still uncertain about the key fundamentals that tell them when it’s right to add staff.”

Note: the Triad is the closest MSA to Boone, NC. It consists of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point.

It ought to be illegal

Selling tilapia instead of grouper, that is. Recently sitting at a dockside restaurant eating dolphin sandwiches with a bunch of fish-socioeconomics-types I heard how some Tampa-St. Pete area restaurants were serving non-grouper as grouper and at grouper prices. I was shocked and outraged that a business firm would do something like that! I've also heard that your scallops might be shark, etc. Bottom line: if your fish fried it might be the mystery meat.

The NYTimes covers the story yesterday (That grouper on the menu ...). I find much of the story incredible (these are numbered comments below, as usual, some are half-serious, the other comments are half-not-serious).

A rejection story ... on a Sunday?

I submitted a paper on Friday and hoped not to hear back from the journal for quite some time, so that I could turn my attention to other projects. Today, a Sunday (a day of rest for Christians), I get a rejection email with the following reviewer comments:

While we have read your paper with interest, I regret that it has not been found possible to accept it for publication in [journal name].  I am sure that you will appreciate that we receive a heavy volume of manuscripts and have to be very selective in deciding which can be accepted for publication.  In that context, it was felt that your paper would be of interest to a very limited sector of our readership.

[Journal name] is most definitely a bogus journal, un-Christian (perhaps satanic), and unworthy of my future research efforts. And I guarantee that now that I'm in their computer system I'll get a paper to referee within the next three months! 

Gas prices: 1920-2007, etc

Hat tip: The Big Picture
Source: Rising Prices at the Pump

Department rankings

Check out the departmental rankings at econphd.net:

The econphd.net rankings are among the most substantial in scope (covering 63 journals over roughly ten years, 1993-2003) and they are unique in detail (the only consistent rankings at the subdiscipline level). Detail is very important: I cannot think of anyone other than a dean or head of department who should really care about a department's overall ranking. It is hoped that these rankings are particularly useful to prospective PhD applicants. They should also help publicize specialized expertise at smaller departments. Journal selection and quality-adjustment are based on the citation analysis by Kalaitzidakis et al.

According to the "network analysis," my preferred ranking, The Ohio State University is ranked 10th in the world and The Appalachian State University is ranked 80th (out of 192) in resource and agricultural economics. Thank goodness for our productive co-authors.

Picture of the day

Mt. Charleston area (click on the thumbnail)