Environmental Economics

I'm pretty sure Freakonomics just snubbed John (a very famous sports economist)

There is a good section in the book Soccernomics about the economic impact studies that cities and countries sponsor when they are hoping to host a huge sporting event like the World Cup or the Olympics. The gist of it is that you can make an economic impact study say pretty much whatever you want, since it’s an exercise in speculation, and that the economists hired by bid committees make sure the numbers say yes.

The truth, however, is that most such events don’t provide much economic stimulus, and often turn out to be money losers. This isn’t to say that cities or countries shouldn’t try to host these events — but, as the Soccernomics authors argue, they should at least realize that what they’re doing is paying for the right to host a big party. The same is generally true for public funding of new sports arenas, as the economist Dennis Coates made clear not long ago.

via freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com

A fine point

Just how much will BP pay in fines to the U.S. government? In a worst case scenario, they could top $18 billion.

BP (BP) has already announced a $20 billion fund to compensate disaster victims. But it will also owe a huge amount in fines for violating the Clean Water Act: Up to $4,300 per barrel of oil released if it's found the company was negligent in causing the disaster, according to a Justice Department spokesman.

via money.cnn.com

Another odd inferior good

Running:

Running is booming in the United States as more people seek inexpensive ways to manage stress amid economic uncertainty.

Nationally, the number of marathon finishers rose nearly 10 percent between 2008 and 2009 to a record 467,000, according to Running USA, a nonprofit group. The growth of half-marathon finishers was even more impressive, jumping 24 percent from 900,000 in 2008 to 1.1 million in 2009.

U.S. GDP (aka, income) fell 2.4% from 2008 to 2009. The income elasticity of marathon finishing is about -4. The income elasticity of finishing a half-marathon is -10.

Out of context comparisons are particularly not useful

Posted by Alex Tabarrok on July 19, 2010 at 09:45 AM (Number of birds killed):

Number of birds killed by the BP oil spill: at least 2,188 and counting.

Number of birds killed by wind farms: 10,000-40,000 annually.

Number of birds killed by cars: 80 million annually.

Number of birds killed by cats: Hundreds of millions to 1 billion annually.

Don't worry there is some good news.  

Number of birds killed by fisheries: tens to hundreds of thousands annually (fortunately for the birds, some of these fisheries are now shut down).

A couple of the comments:

Justin: I think this post really does a lot to help explain why some people hate economists.

Luis Enrique: ... It's possible Alex does mean "... and so the BP spill is no big deal!", in which case fire away... Alex can you confirm: are you the idiot the above commentators take you to be?

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get

From the inbox:

[Wed 7/14/2010 2:51 PM] This is a reminder from [journal #1] that your review of "[title #1]" by [authors] is due on July 20, 2010. ...

[Sat 7/17/2010 3:02 AM] It has been one week since your scores were due for the manuscript entitled  [title #2].  How is it going?  We are looking forward to hearing from you. ...

[Sat 7/17/2010 4:11 AM] On June  4, 2010 I sent you "[title #3] " to review for the [journal #3]. I requested that you send me your evaluation by July 16, 2010. ...

We're #2!

China, powered by years of rapid economic growth, is now the world's biggest energy consumer, knocking the U.S. off a perch it held for more than a century, according to new data from the International Energy Agency.

...

The figures reflect, in part, how the global recession hit the U.S. more severely than China and hurt American industrial activity and energy use. Still, China's total energy consumption has clocked annual double-digit growth rates for many years, driven by the country's big industrial base. Highlighting how quickly its energy demand has increased, China's total energy consumption was just half the size of the U.S. 10 years ago.

via online.wsj.com

Quality of Life vs Quality of Life

Those who want the windmills say they produce electricity without pollution, fit in with farming because crops can be planted around them and cattle can graze underneath, and will bring jobs to the county. But neither the McConnells nor Johnson believe that the quality of life in the Urbana area will be enhanced.

“Eighty percent of the revenue for those turbines will go overseas and will not benefit our economy at all,” Johnson said. EverPower Wind Holdings, the company developing the wind farm, is owned by Terra Firma, a British private-equity firm.

“It is not about energy. It is about money,” Johnson said.

via www.dispatch.com

PhD Comics: Incentives

via www.phdcomics.com

IPCC "gag order" is lifted

An update from Andy Revkin at Dot Earth: the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has retreated from his request that participating scientists keep a distance from the media.

via green.blogs.nytimes.com

Tim deserves needs a raise

Phil Miller:

Rivals has collected football season ticket prices and minimum donations at the 120 FBS schools for the 2010 season.  The donations work like NFL personal seat licenses.  Programs realize there is “money on the table” since some fans place a higher value on attendance at home games than what it costs to get season tickets.  So schools charge a fee to capture some of that value in order to generate maximum revenue.

There’s not a lot of surprising things in there, at least to this economist.  Ohio State tops the list with a minimum donation of $1,500 – you could get a nice, new Fender Strat for that – and a ticket price of $606 for a minimum total of $2,107.

via thesportseconomist.com