Environmental Economics

Years from now, this will be remembered along with "Do you believe in miracles?' as great moments sports media

For those who don't follow sports, there is currently a trial underway in which a former UCLA athlete (Ed O'Bannon) is suing the NCAA for using his likeness without compensation.  Essentially the question is whether college athletes should get paid.  Today in the trial, Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman took the stand.  Below is a screen capture of how ESPN tweeted Heckman's testimony (read bottom up):

I must be a layman.

Classroom Coase Example of the Day

Brian Gardner saw the pointy green shoots sneaking into his yard from the neighbor’s.

He’ll take care of them when he returns from Florida, he told himself.

Two weeks later, he came home to Park Boulevard in Worthington to find a stand of bamboo 10 feet high on his side of the fence.

“It grows a foot a day,” Gardner said. “You can actually watch it grow.”

The shoots came from next door, where bamboo canes 15 feet tall take up a third of Tena and Tom Singley’s backyard on Loveman Avenue. The canes send out rhizomes, stems that travel horizontally for several feet just below the surface and send up shoots that sometimes appear as conelike nubs.

They’re also sprouting neighborhood discord.

“I told her to contain it but was ignored,” said Gardner, who lives behind the Singleys in the Colonial Hills neighborhood. He took his complaint to the Worthington City Council, which is researching an ordinance requiring homeowners to contain running bamboo to their side of the fence.

“There’s no desire to ban it but to produce some regulation to encourage people to maintain it,” said City Manager Matt Greeson. City Law Director Pamela Fox told the council that her department has not found another community in Ohio that has passed a law regulating bamboo. Worthington might become the first in the state.

Connecticut passed a law this year requiring people to plant running bamboo within thick plastic barriers sunk 2 to 3 feet into the ground. Running bamboo cannot be planted within 40 feet of a neighbor’s property. Violators face a $100 daily fine.

Mrs. Singley said she and her husband lived in Hawaii and California, where they developed a liking for bamboo. Tom Singley, who has multiple sclerosis, said he enjoys watching the waving of the bamboo from his bedroom window.

“It would cost $100 to dig down and put a block in,” Mrs. Singley said. “I don’t want to spend my money for them,” she said, referring to her neighbors.

Neighbor Chuck Riddle doesn’t believe he should pay to install a barrier to keep out her bamboo.

via www.dispatch.com

Questions:

Who has the property rights in this case?

WWCS? (What would Coase Say?)

How deep does a property line go?

Anyone else think there are long term issues here ('I don't want to spend my money for them.'?!?!)

Proof by counterexample

This begs the question from the Exxon Valdez era "does existence value exist?"

In an effort to protect diverse habitats of coral reefs, whales, dolphins, sharks, sea turtles and numerous fish species from commercial fishing and other activities, President Obama announced Tuesday that he intended to use his executive authority to create the world’s largest marine protected area in the south-central Pacific Ocean. ...

Representative Doc Hastings, Republican of Washington and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement: “Oceans, like our federal lands, are intended to be multiple-use and open for a wide range of economic activities that includes fishing, recreation, conservation and energy production. It appears this administration will use whatever authorities — real or made up — to close our ocean and coastal areas with blatant disregard for possible economic consequences.”

via www.nytimes.com

Ahem, I'm no expert in law and public policy, but I think that wilderness areas are federal lands that aren't open to energy production.

 

No more budget nonsense

Hopefully this is the last NC education lottery post for awhile:

Outlining two major differences, the Senate voted unanimously Monday to reject the House budget proposal.

Sen. Harry Brown, a lead budget writer, said the House budget doesn’t provide enough money to pay for Medicaid costs and “bets on lottery proceeds to pay for teacher pay.”

In an interview later, Brown expressed concern about using additional lottery sales to balance the budget. He raised questions about the House overestimating the money it may receive from increased lottery advertising. The News & Observer reported Saturday that the lottery commission believes the $106 million estimate the House used is inflated by $47 million.

via www.newsobserver.com

But what if there's oil in them there parts?

President Obama on Tuesday will announce his intent to make a broad swath of the central Pacific Ocean off-limits to fishing, energy exploration and other activities, according to senior White House officials.

The proposal, slated to go into effect later this year after a comment period, could create the world’s largest marine sanctuary and double the area of ocean globally that is fully protected.

The announcement — details of which were provided to The Washington Post — is part of a broader push on maritime issues by an administration that has generally favored other environmental priorities. The oceans effort, led by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and White House counselor John D. Podesta, is likely to spark a new political battle with Republicans over the scope of Obama’s executive powers.

via www.washingtonpost.com

Huh? Name that artist

While 'working' I usually have Pandora playing in the background.  My musical tastes are eclectic.  Here's a list of my Pandora Channels (in no particular order--noting that my kids have access to my Pandora account which explains the Miley Cyrus channel--at least that's my story):

Bon Jovi Radio, Billy Joel Radio, Weezer Radio, Paramore Radio, Pharell Radio, Country Rock Radio, Today's Christmas Radio, Family Christmas Radio, Indie Holidays Radio, Motley Crue Radio, Summer Hits of the 90s Radio, Bruno Mars Radio, Nikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov Radio, Maurice Ravel Radio, Bruce Springsteen Radio, Blake Shelton Radio, Johnny Cash Radio, J Shogren Radio, Summer Hits of the 2000s Radio, Blurred Lines Radio, Eagles Radio, Jimmy Buffett Radio, Bob Sima Radio, Today's Country Radio, Van Morrison Radio, Little River Band Radio, Joe Cocker Radio, Icona Pop Radio, Jazz Radio, Today's Hits Radio, O.A.R. Radio, Gustav Holst Radio, Mumford & Sons Radio, Bob Marley Radio, Joe Walsh Radio, Fun. Radio, Gotye Radio, Adele Radio, Rock Lobster Radio, Zac Brown Band Radio, Greg Kihn Radio, Elvis Presley Radio, Sergey Rachmaninov Radio, Crack The Sky Radio, Meat Loaf Radio, Falling Slowly Radio, Cliffs Of Dover Radio, Miley Cyrus Radio, Sting Radio, Boston Radio, Bohemian Rhapsody Radio, Jacques Offenbach Radio, Leonard Bernstein Radio, Major Tom (Coming Home) Radio, AC/DC Radio, Son Volt Radio, Aaron Copland Radio, Pearl Jam Radio, Jeff Buckley Radio, Brandi Carlile Radio, The Killers Radio, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Radio, Phil Collins Radio, Nickelback Radio, Genesis Radio, Queen Radio, Alternative Pop/Rock radio, KT Tunstall Radio

Anyway, during breaks from 'working' I like to read the Pandora artist profiles.  Here's a recent favorite:

Subject only to the whims of his own muse, his recordings cover extraordinary stylistic ground yet retain a consistency and purity virtually unmatched among his contemporaries, connected by the mythic power of his singular musical vision and his incendiary vocal delivery: spiraling repetitions of wails and whispers that bypass the confines of language to articulate emotional truths far beyond the scope of literal meaning.

via www.pandora.com

Um...yeah. 

For fun (and no Googling), name that artist. 

Hint: It's not Miley.

This newspaper needs to take business and economic statistics II

Every Appstate business graduate could figure this one out:

A consultant to the state lottery said in a recent report that spending on ads is “highly related” to sales. Recent figures in North Carolina don’t bear that out. For example, ad spending jumped by 17 percent from the 2009-10 fiscal year to the next. But sales increased only 2.8 percent. The next year, ad sales increased by a more modest 6.5 percent, but gross sales jumped by nearly 9 percent.

Here are the most recent numbers at a glance:

Fiscal year	Ad spending	Ad spending change	Sales	Sales change
2007-08	$8.6 million	–	$1.07 billion	–
2008-09	$11.2 million	30.2%	$1.29 billion	20.6%
2009-10	$11.8 million	5.4%	$1.42 billion	10%
2010-11	$13.8 million	16.9%	$1.46 billion	2.8%
2011-12	$14.7 million	6.5%	$1.59 billion	8.9%
2012-13	$15.3 million	4.1%	$1.69 billion	6.3%

Source: N.C. Education Lottery, Delehanty Consulting LLC

via www.charlotteobserver.com

The regression of sales on ad spending has a R-squared of 0.96 (n=6, my guess is that the consultant used more data than this):

Given this model, a doubling of ad spending (from $15.3 million to $30.6 million) would lead to an increase of $1.31 billion in sales. About 28% of this is $385 million. This is about twice enough to pay for a 5% increase in teacher salaries (95,000 teachers earn about $41,000 annually [pdf]).

The problem, however, is that this is a way out-of-sample forecast. It is based on a huge increase in advertising. Someone should keep that in mind. And, even with the larger sample probably used by the consultant, it is still very small with a lot of other variables floating around that should be considered. 

I just ordered the paperback from Amazon

From the RESECON listserv:

We are pleased to announce that the third Edition of "The Measurement of Environmental and Resource Values: Theory and Methods" by A. Myrick Freeman III, Joseph A. Herriges, and Catherine L. Kliong has now been published.  For details, see:

    http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415501583/

Rick, Joe, and Cathy

Imagine what he would do with NOAA's hurricane forecasts*

Don't you hate it when the weatherman gets it wrong? Apparently, so does Kim Jong Un.

According to state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun, the North Korean leader has been touring meteorological facilities in his country complaining that there are "too many incorrect" weather forecasts.

As further proof of the supreme leader's extreme displeasure, the Rodong Sinmun report includes photos of a red-faced Kim chastising what appear to be sheepish meteorological personnel.

The wording of the report is a little unclear at times, but it claims Kim's concerns about the weather relate to its potential impact on the economy.

Blaming outdated equipment and scientific method, the young leader stressed a need for accurate forecasts to protect people's lives and property from "abnormal climatic phenomenon" (sic) and to safeguard industries like agriculture and fisheries from natural disasters in a timely manner, according to Rodong Sinmun.

via www.cnn.com

*Click here.

From the Mrs. Obvious Files

Ohio is leading a group of drilling states working with seismology experts at energy companies, government agencies and universities across the U.S. on how best to detect and regulate human-induced earthquakes.

How do you regulate an earthquake?

The initiative follows Ohio's discovery in April of a probable link between the drilling practice called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and five small tremors in eastern Ohio, a first in the Northeast. In 2012, Gov. John Kasich (KAY'-sik) halted disposal of fracking wastewater surrounding a well site nearby after a series of earthquakes later tied to a deep-injection well.

Wise decision.

Ohio Oil & Gas Chief Rick Simmers tells The Associated Press state regulators seek up-to-date information in developing appropriate detection procedures and regulatory practices.

How about stand nearby and if the ground starts shaking, well, you've detected an earthquake.

One environmentalist, Teresa Mills, says ending fracking is the most effective way to halt the quakes.

Gee, ya think?

via news.yahoo.com