Environmental Economics

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By depriving my son of something on his Santa list, I'm teaching him to make environmentally efficient choices*

Playing Madden NFL 11, the popular EA Sports video game, consumes roughly six times more electricity on the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360 than on the Nintendo Wii, according to engineers at the institute’s lab in Knoxville, Tenn. The Wii drew an average of 13.7 watts vs. 84.8 watts for the PlayStation and 87.9 for the Xbox. (The figures do not count the TV screens that the boxes must be connected to.)

via green.blogs.nytimes.com

*Not really. We just don't want to have to buy all the games that go along with a new gaming system when we already have a Wii, a PS2, an iMac, 4 iPods, an iPad, a PC, and 4 cell phones in the house.

My top ten albums of 2010

As submitted to WNCW's Top 100 Contest a few hours before the noon deadline:

1. Drive-By Truckers, The Big To-Do
2. Old 97's, The Grand Theatre Volume One
3. Peter Wolf, Midnight Souveniers
4. Tift Merritt, See You on the Moon
5. Shelby Lynne, Tears, Lies and Alibis
6. Mary Gauthier, The Foundling
7. Patty Griffin, Downtown Church
8. Shelby Lynne, Merry Christmas
9. Mic Harrison and the High Score, Great Commotion
10. J Shogren, Bird Bones and Muscle

As always, my top 10 is based on revealed preference (actual CD purchases and listens) with two caveats: I've listened to 9 and 10 on-line but bought them just now (that's why I felt they needed to go at 9 and 10).

The second is a big CRAP! I FORGOT ONE! Grace Potter and the Nocturnals (Grace Potter and the Nocturnals) would have been ranked at 3, pushing everyone down (and J Shogren to 11, sorry J). It wasn't on WNCW's list, I don't think, and I forgot to write it in. Peter Wolf and the Shelby Lynne Christmas album were my other write in votes. Another honorable mention is Rocksteady by Big Head Todd and the Monsters,

It seems like I had a down music year, what did I miss out on?

Daily demand and supply

I worked in tobacco fields twice, setting and chopping (is that what they called it?). It was hard work:

For generations of farm families, tobacco money put kids through college, covered farm payments, bought new trucks and made for bountiful Christmases. Now, some in tobacco-producing country worry the tradition may be at its breaking point because of abundant worldwide burley supplies, lower smoking rates and a drought-stressed crop going to market.

via www.courier-journal.com

Q: Why are tobacco prices low?

a) increased foreign supply
b) decreased demand
c) lower quality
d) all of the above

And here is a short answer question for the exit condition:

Lower prices are part of a double whammy endured by some tobacco growers. Many had their production volumes cut in contracts offered by companies, while others couldn't get a contract, said UK's Snell.

Simmering dissatisfaction could lead to another withdrawal from tobacco farming, which has seen its numbers dwindle since the end of the federal price supports six years ago.

Q: Illustrate this situation graphically.

*I was just helping out for a day so don't accuse me of quitting like a quitter.

 

Apparently I'm an environmental grinch

More evidence that John is greener than me* **:

In the most definitive study of the perennial real vs. fake question, an environmental consulting firm in Montreal found that an artificial tree would have to be reused for more than 20 years to be greener than buying a fresh-cut tree annually. The calculations included greenhouse gas emissions, use of resources and human health impacts.

“The natural tree is a better option,” said Jean-Sebastien Trudel, founder of the firm, Ellipsos, that released the independent study last year.

The annual carbon emissions associated with using a real tree every year were just one-third of those created by an artificial tree over a typical six-year lifespan. Most fake trees also contain polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, which produces carcinogens during manufacturing and disposal.

*In my defense, my son has asthma.  Real pine means hours of coughing.

**And those lights are LEDs.

Housing prices in NYC are higher too

Here is a lesson in holding all things constant when making comparisons (and how those facing competition might cherry pick the numbers):

Pitino said he did not oppose the idea of a NBA team moving to Louisville. But he said NBA prices were too high for a city like Louisville.

"If you lived in New York City, four tickets will run you about $500," he said. "Louisville can't afford that. ... There are very few (people) in this town with that type of money.

On the other hand, ticket prices in Oklahoma City, where median income is about the same as Louisville, can be found in the $30 - $70 range as well as the $500 range for a family of four.

Here is a comparison from the NBA:

The sports business outlet Team Marketing Report said Wednesday the average price of a nonpremium seat dropped 2.5 percent to $48. That followed a 2.8 percent decrease last season.

The Los Angeles Lakers have the highest average at $95 following a 2.1 percent rise. The NBA champions are followed by New York at $89, Boston at $69 and Chicago at $64.

Memphis is last at $23 after a 3.9 percent drop, and Washington is at $25 after a 9.9 percent decrease.

Detroit dropped prices 10 percent to $43.

Weird how ticket prices can vary by NBA city. Weird.

Joe Romm vs Matt Kahn

Don't miss it:

Joe Romm is a smart angry man.  He throws some new punches at my Climatopolis.

After ripping Matt for not reading the climate science literature, Romm states:

I suppose I’ll have to do a separate post on this, but global warming will almost certainly become the hugest imaginable deal for the North Atlantic economies within a quarter century.  Indeed, the way it’s looking now, by the 2030s, if not sooner, all of the major economies of the world will be focusing all of their economic policy desperately on adaptation and mitigation.

Almost certainly? Within 25 years? All of their economic policy? My opinion is if your major criticism is for someone to read the climate science literature then you should base your forecasts in more scientific language, recognizing uncertainties, caveats and etc.

I'm in general agreement with Matt that market economies will reduce the costs of adaption (Matt's tone is that people living in cities will adapt so much that the adaptation costs are very low ["cities will thrive"]-- I disagree but that must wait until ...). And that, I think, is his major point (... my official review; I fell asleep last night with 4 more pages to read). Romm seems to get too caught up in, what I think Matt would agree are, Matt's logical speculations, not "almost certainly" forecasts, about what might happen 25 to 100 years from now.

One quibble with Matt:

Recently, Joe Romm censored a comment I posted on his blog. That impressed me! The Internet isn't supposed to be the Soviet Union.

The criticism would carry more weight if your blog allowed comments.

Steven Horowitz: A Short Rant about "Dissertations"

Call me ancient but I agree:

Yes, I understand the institutional pressures to get students out and yes I understand that articles are where the payoff is, but I can still lament the loss of sustained attention to a single argument that used to characterize a much higher proportion of Economics dissertations.  And a title such as "Essays on the Macroeconomics of Trade Flows" is singularly uninformative in helping me understand what this person might be writing about.

Yes, I sound like an old fart, but so be it.  "Three Essays in Search of a Staple" has won out in the "competitive" process, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

via www.coordinationproblem.org

In the old days you learned how to do in-depth research first and, once that was mastered, learned how to get it published. The almost unconnected essays are the most frustrating and not just for grumpy reasons. You sometimes might wonder if the 3 essays breeds a lack of patience, a hesitation to fight through a difficult problem and an unwillingness embrace the minutiae. All of which makes for sloppy research (I should know, mid-career time constraints [sometimes*] force me into that situation). Experience allows you to learn where you can take shortcuts and where you can't (but maybe PhD programs work on teaching that these days?).

Before you know it I'll be saying that I prefer courier font, mainframe SAS and photcopies from print journals.

*My referees can be the judge about the magnitude of "sometimes."

Hat tip: The Door.

Happy Holidays

Holiday mistake #21: Here is the stack of papers I asked my 27 students to produce for me during finals week. Luckily for me, my kids were home from school all week (9 snow days total so far) and were able to distract me from my task at least once every 15 minutes.

LIST Haiku 1

From the inbox:

Invisible hand—
Chicago’s List searches for—
Experiment finds.

Baseball cards are sold—
A.E.R.s and J.P.Es
Publishing machine

The Wyoming’s snow—
Blows through Chicago’s mean streets:
Econometrica!

By the Dancing Carpenter