Environmental Economics

Santa Barbara, CA...Columbus, OH...same diff.

From the inbox:

I'm applying for grad school this fall (to start next year) and I wanted to ask you about UCSB's PhD in (Environmental) Economics program. Their web page says it's number 3 in the country, the program looks good, and Santa Barbara would be an awesome place to live in – but what do you think? Is it really a good program, or would you recommend any others? Love your blog, and thanks in advance for any advice.

My reply:

I think you might want to compare UCSB's program with that of Ohio State:

1. Unlike UCSB's self-proclaimed #3 ranking, OSU is the externally and objectively validated #1 ranked PhD program in Agricultural and Resource Economics.
2. Like UCSB, OSU is waterfront (Oh, sure, their's is the Pacific Ocean and we have the Olentangy River, but really, you're going to be inside studying all the time anyway, so does the water body really matter?)
3. Both have sunny days (maybe not the same number of sunny days, but again, see the qualifier on #2).
4. OSU's new department chair (effective 12:00 AM tomorrow) is the taller co-author of THE ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS BLOG.  That's gotta count for something right?
5. Students can actually afford to live in Columbus, OH.
6. Did I mention we're the #1 PhD program.

Seriously, both are very good programs.  Good luck in your decision.

Add before you ask, yes, I actually sent that.  It's my new recruiting strategy.

Since it's a new century I guess there can be a new flood of the century

Life-threatening flash flooding is occurring in the Cape Fear region of southeastern North Carolina.

Wilmington, North Carolina, set an all-time 3-day rainfall total today, according to the National Weather Service. With additional rain in the forecast, September 2010 could become the wettest September on record in Wilmington. Records in Wilmington, North Carolina date back to 1871.

The 3-day, all-time record (recorded since Monday) is 19.66 inches. That shatters the old record of 19.06 inches set from September 14 through September 16, 1999, during Hurricane Floyd.

Currently, 20.43 inches of rain have been recorded in Wilmington, North Carolina this month, making it the 2nd wettest September on record in Wilmington. The old record of 23.41 inches set in September of 1999 is in jeopardy.

via news.blogs.cnn.com

John and I were living in eastern North Carolina in September 1999 (not together...not that there's anything wrong with that).  Eastern North Carolina flooded.  They called it the Flood of the Century because the waters of the Tar/Pamlico river rose above the 100 year flood line.  There's a picture on the right.  I really have no point here.  Jeff will now probably stop reading our blog again.

Spreading happiness throughout the world one potential referee at a time

I put this one in my sent box about a minute ago:

Dear [potential reviewer]:

You were recently invited to review the above manuscript. Thank you for considering our request and replying so succinctly (i.e. "STOP SENDING ME THESE"). I assure you that you will receive no further communication from this Associate Editor regarding this manuscript.

I guess s/he had received too many automatic reminders!

 

 

Is going green worth it?

The majority of executives and consumers polled in a survey in July do not think the majority of businesses are committed to “going green.” Only 29 percent of executives and 16 percent of consumers polled think that the majority of businesses are committed to “going green.” Almost half (45 percent) of executives and 48 percent of consumers think that only “some” are businesses committed to sustainability.

...

Ron Loch, Senior Vice-President for Greentech& Sustainability at Gibbs & Soell said, “While surveys consistently show consumers have a preference, and even a willingness to pay a premium, for green products, the question is often asked without the full context of performance and convenience.”

...

The majority (78 percent) of executives cited an insufficient return on investment as an obstacle to “going green,” and 71 percent cite consumers’ unwillingness to pay a premium for green products or services. More than two in five executives (45 percent) cited a difficulty in evaluating sustainability across the entire life cycle of a product as an obstacle.

via www.triplepundit.com

Eeery foreshadowing.  On Monday, October 18, at the Heartland Environmental and Resource Economics at Illinois, a team of researchers* from The university with The top (or 4th or 10th) ranked department of agricultural and resource economics in the U.S. will be presenting groundbreaking (hyperbole) research entitled: “Integration of life cycle impact assessment and choice analysis for comprehensive motor vehicle fuel evaluation in the United States.”

Here's the abstract:

We develop a framework for modeling the technological, economic, environmental, and social impacts of the life cycle of six transportation fuels (Gasoline, E10, E85, Diesel, Biodiesel20, and Biodiesel100), by linking engineering based  life cycle analysis of transportation fuels with choice analysis techniques for eliciting and understanding the social preferences for multi-attribute consumption vectors.  The use of life-cycle data allows us to account for a broad range of environmental, natural resource, and health effects over the entire production and consumption life cycle of each transportation fuel.  Combining these life cycle and stated choice analyses allows for social preferences to be established for the externalities resulting from the use of the different transportation fuels.  This results in a unique physical-economic feedback model allowing for improved design and evaluation of transportation policy.  In the extreme case of complete conversion to each of the five alternative fuels popularized as environmentally and health friendly alternatives to gasoline, environmental and human health benefits actually decline. Natural resource conservation improves for all of the fuels except diesel, but overall social welfare declines significantly for all five of the alternatives.  Thus, after accounting for life cycle costs, many popular “alternative” fuel options offer little apparent environmental and health benefits, calling into question policies encouraging their adoption as “green” fuels.  For policies with the intent of reducing foreign oil dependency and encouraging resource conservation, these same fuels may have merit.  Our results indicate that significant trade-offs between environmental damage, human health risks and resource depletion rates will have to be made in any attempt to implement alternative fuel policy at a national level.

The paper will be available as soon as i get off my lazy @$$ and finish editing section 2.

*Matthew Winden, Nathan Cruz, Tim Haab, and Bhavik Bakshi (Ohio State U.). 

And I can help!

From the Raleigh "paper":

Hans Paerl, a professor at the UNC Institute of Marine Science, is leading an effort to learn the value of the Pamlico Sound and other coastal waters in absorbing greenhouse gases. Data gathered about the Pamlico will be stored for scientists worldwide who want to see how the sound responds.

In the Pamlico, life thrives in the mix of saltwater and freshwater. The sound is rich in tiny plants that soak up carbon dioxide, a gas that in excess contributes to warming of Earth's atmosphere, scientists say. Waterborne plants release greenhouse gases when they decompose.

In addition to loving, just loving, North Carolina ferry rides, I know that the social cost of carbon (SCC*) is about $21 (rising to $45 by 2050 ... just ask Frank Ackerman). Once those folks at UNC add up the carbon dioxide (CO2) stored by the Pamlico Sound, I could then be brought in to find the economic value (EV). I'd use this formula: EV = SCC x CO2/ton (with MS Excel, of course). And I'd only use point estimates.

*The present value of avoiding the damages of climate change per ton of carbon dioxide.

More on Rankings of PhD programs in Agricultural and Resource Economics

From the inbox:

Here is another view of the NRC overall rankings in Ag & Resource Economics.  While the first thing we notice is the rather different rankings of Ohio State, that is hardly the only problem.  The R and S rankings lists...include...a total of 10 universities ranked in the top-10 in one list but not the other.  If we add the rankings in both lists for each university to get a total score, and rank-order them (like golf, lower is better) we get:

1. California- Berkeley
2. California-Davis
3. Maryland
4. Ohio State
5. Wisconsin

This list looks entirely credible to me.

I still prefer the R-ranking.

 

An unhappy customer (i.e., that free pizza sucks and I'm going to tell someone about it!)

From the comments section:

Jeff: This is Environmental Economics not sports. I will no longer be visitting your page.

I'm sorry that you feel that way, "Jeff", but I agree that it is best if you try to find an environmental economics blog with more disciplined bloggers. In addition to sports-related posts, every now and then we also post something personal, something goofy, something macro and a bunch of other stuff we might find interesting. My guess is that the percentage of strictly environmental economics posts is about 75%. If you can't handle that other 25% you should definitely take the time to register your complaint as if you were a paying customer and find a higher quality substitute.

An updated ranking of academic journals in (environmental) economics

From an update* to the Journal of the European Economic Association's journal ranking paper** comes more evidence that JEEM is slipping (here is a post on the prior evidence and some quarter-baked theories on why). Here is a list of the top 5 journals (the usual suspects) and then the rankings of the journals that (U.S.) environmental economists might be most interested in (I've included the U.S. based aggie journals but not the international aggie journals):

1. American Economic Review

2. Quarterly Journal of Economics

3. Econometrica

4. Journal of Political Economy

5. Review of Economic Studies

...

59. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management

78. American Journal of Agricultural Economics

85. Environmental and Resource Economics

86. Ecological Economics

87. Energy Journal

92. Land Economics

105. Energy Economics

111. Resource and Energy Economics

145. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics

*Pantelis Kalaitzidakis, Theofanis P. Manuneas and Stengos, An Updated Ranking of Academic Journals in Economics, The Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis, WP 10-15, April 2010, http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rim:rimwps:15_10.

**Kalaitzidakis, P., Mamuneas,. T. and Stengos, T. 2003, Rankings of Academic Journals and Institutions in Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, 1, 1346-1366, http://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/jeurec/v1y2003i6p1346-1366.html.

Oil spill federalism

From USAToday (States tally oil spill toll to send BP their bills):

While the strategies differ, every state bordering the Gulf of Mexico is calculating the damage caused by an estimated 5 million barrels of oil spilled in the Gulf and the chemicals used to clean it up, and preparing to present BP with a bill. All of the states say they can back up their claims with a lawsuit if BP won't pay.

...

Mississippi's state agencies and economists at its universities are calculating the state's economic damages, including sales tax revenue, Hood says. Another state agency is tallying the environmental toll. Once the state has solid numbers, he says it will seek quarterly or annual payments from BP.

Economic Principals on Climatopolis

Cities are on my mind because I have been reading Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future, by Matthew Kahn. It is a short, accessible, engaging book of a sort that can be either good or bad, depending on the knowledgeability of the author. Climatopolis, as it happens, is very good. Kahn, an economist at the University of California at Los Angeles and a protégé of Gary Becker (of the University of Chicago), has extensive experience in carbon policy and a solid grounding in climate science.

There’s not the slightest doubt in Kahn’s mind that global warming is underway and that it is essentially irreversible. On the expected response to it, he distinguishes between the views of behavioral and neoclassical economists.  Behavioral economists, he says, “have a fundamentally pessimistic view of humans as lazy and myopic and unwilling to sacrifice for their long-term good.” In contrast, he says, “neoclassical economists view people as forward-looking and willing to make choices today in response to anticipated threats.”

I’m not certain that the distinction is nearly as simple as that.  And I doubt that Kahn is entirely correct when he writes, “We’re not all on board one big ship that we can save through one big collective decision. Instead we’ll be ‘saved’ by a multitude of self-interested people armed only with their wits and access to capitalist markets.”  I have a hunch that social choice and collective action are going to turn out to be pretty important, too. (He doesn’t mention, for example, the 1987 Montreal Protocol aimed at limiting substances that deplete the ozone layer.)

via www.economicprincipals.com

I've almost finished reading Mistress of the Art of Death [I was up 'til 12:30 am last night when things got good] and next up is Climatopolis. Stayed tuned for a chapter by chapter evisceration (kid-ding!).