Environmental Economics

2017 Eclipse Telescope Feed [App State in Sylva, NC]

Telescope link: https://cas.appstate.edu/solar-eclipse-2017/live-streaming

Here is a link to the live commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggMtpqcrjek

My "off-campus scholarly assignment" (i.e., sabbatical) begins today

And the first thing I'll miss on-campus are the on-campus solar eclipse festivities. From the inbox:

As you are making plans for eclipse viewing today, please remember the College of Arts & Sciences has a number of safe viewing opportunities, including live streaming of the eclipse.  Festivities begin at 1pm on Sanford Mall, weather permitting.  You can see the full list of events and activities at https://cas.appstate.edu/solar-eclipse-2017.

I plan on following the live stream while I wonder if there really be life after the great tribulation (Mark 13:24).

 

Quote of the Day: Both sides win from trade...sheesh

That moment you realize the Chinese administration understands economics better than the U.S. administration...

From the Steve Bannon interview story:

"In reality, China and the United States' long term cooperation has brought about real benefits for both countries' peoples, any unbiased person will clearly see this fact," [Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying] told a daily news briefing in Beijing.

"We have also said before, a trade war has no future. A trade war does not serve the interests of any party, as fighting a trade war will not produce a winner. We hope that relevant parties can stop viewing issues of the 21st century with a 19th- or 20th-century mentality."

 Hua's quote is in reaction to Steve Bannon's claim that the U.S. is losing the trade war with China:

"It's in all their literature. They're not shy about saying what they're doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it's gonna be them if we go down this path," he was quoted as saying.

"If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, 10 years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover."

I need a facepalm emoji.

Walking the walk

From the inbox:

Thank you for your contribution of $8 on 8/15/2017 to the Carbon Neutral Commuter program.
100% of your contribution will be used to purchase carbon offsets.
For complete information about the program and how contributions are being spent, please visit Carbon Neutral Commuter!

It was the least I could do. No seriously, it was the very least I could do.

AERE sessions at the Midwest Economics Association

via Lea-Rachel Kosnick:

Abstract submissions for the AERE sponsored sessions at the MEA meetings are due in just two weeks, onSeptember 1, 2017.  This year, we have a fancy new submission portal through the AERE website, so you don’t have to bother with remembering my personal email any longer. 

Submit your abstract here:  http://www.aere.org/aere-mea

Meeting Details:  The 2018 MEA meetings will be held in Evanston, Illinois, from March 23-March 25 and, as in years past, submission through an AERE organized session is free.  Additionally, if you participate in an AERE sponsored session you will be included in all planned AERE networking activities that will take place during the MEA meetings – last year this included not just a dinner, but a cocktail hour as well with drinks sponsored by AERE. 

Please consider submitting an abstract – we had such an amazing program last year, let’s do it again!  Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me personally at [email protected].  Also, please pass along this email to any colleague you think would be interested.

I violated "proper decorum" for 8 (long) years

Matt Kahn's blog just got boring:

My term as the Chair of USC Economics starts this week.  Proper decorum suggests that I should no longer be blogging.   I've decided on a compromise path.  I will no longer write about current events or politics or my humor.   I will write about my own research and about activity at USC Economics. Of course, I will be a cheerleader for USC and readers are free to filter my slanted messages.

via greeneconomics.blogspot.com

Tim hasn't violated "proper decorum" for quite as long but he isn't a former department chair/head yet so he is currently violating it.

I have to say, the professional penalties for violating "proper decorum" have been rather severe. For example, I've been blacklisted from publishing in the top 5 journals for the past 8 years. I'm not sure if the blacklist will be lifted now that I'm a former chair. I guess the only way to find out is to take my most recent and/or best paper, reduce the font, add a 30 page appendix of redundant robustness checks and submit it to the AER. 

When you want environmental benefits to be zero just make them zero

Is "environmental benefit denier" a term (Scott Pruitt Is Carrying Out His E.P.A. Agenda in Secret, Critics Say)?

Mr. Pruitt’s efforts to undo a major water protection rule are one example of his moves to quickly and stealthily dismantle regulations.

The rule, known as Waters of the United States, and enacted by the Obama administration, was designed to take existing federal protections on large water bodies such as the Chesapeake Bay and Mississippi River and expand them to include the wetlands and small tributaries that flow into those larger waters.

It was fiercely opposed by farmers, rural landowners and real estate developers.

The original estimate concluded that the water protections would indeed come at an economic cost to those groups — between $236 million and $465 million annually.

But it also concluded, in an 87-page analysis, that the economic benefits of preventing water pollution would be greater: between $555 million and $572 million.

E.P.A. employees say that in mid-June, as Mr. Pruitt prepared a proposal to reverse the rule, they were told by his deputies to produce a new analysis of the rule — one that stripped away the half-billion-dollar economic benefits associated with protecting wetlands.

“On June 13, my economists were verbally told to produce a new study that changed the wetlands benefit,” said Elizabeth Southerland, who retired last month from a 30-year career at the E.P.A., most recently as a senior official in the agency’s water office.

“On June 16, they did what they were told,” Ms. Southerland said. “They produced a new cost-benefit analysis that showed no quantifiable benefit to preserving wetlands.”

Ms. Southerland and other experts in federal rule-making said such a sudden shift was highly unusual — particularly since studies that estimate the economic impact of regulations can take months or even years to produce, and are often accompanied by reams of paperwork documenting the process.

“Typically there are huge written records, weighing in on the scientific facts, the technology facts and the economic facts,” she said. “Everything’s in writing. This repeal process is political staff giving verbal directions to get the outcome they want, essentially overnight.”

 

The only positive thing is that this is going to be a great case study for teaching. 

Nope, I can't think of a worse [economic] idea

Alan Krupnick:

Can there possibly be a worse idea than to have the federal government give every ton of eastern coal burned a $15 subsidy—as was proposed by West Virginia Governor Jim Justice. To put this in perspective, the current price of coal from West Virginia ranges from $45 to $52 per ton, so this subsidy is very large relative to the price. Or, using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ estimate of coal jobs in the East (here defined as Appalachia) of 38,000, $4.5 billion translates to about $120,000 per miner per year.

The ostensible reason for the subsidy is to improve national security. ... If anything, coal should be taxed for its environmental damages relative to other electricity fuels to internalize its many negative externalities into its price—from mountain top removal and acid mine drainage to carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide emissions when burned. A better plan for the $4.5 billion a year would be to support new efforts to build an enduring, modern economy in eastern coal country along with bolstering health care and job assistance programs.

via www.rff.org

I deleted the argument against subsidizing eastern coal as a national security issue. I understand why those at RFF need to act like they are taking it seriously but I don't, do I?

 

Daily Demand and Supply: Sacre Bleu!*

What happens when the people of China decide that butter is yummy?

A sharp increase in global demand has caused the wholesale price of butter to nearly double in Europe. Consumers are paying more too: retail prices jumped nearly 20% in June over the previous year, according to data from Euromonitor.

Federation des Entrepreneurs de la Boulangerie, an industry group that represents French bakers, has described the situation as a "major crisis." It is warning of a sharp increase in the price of croissants, tarts and brioches.

"The price of butter, while certainly volatile, has never reached such a level before," the group said in a statement. "Butter shortages appear to be a real threat by the end of the year."

I'm not a butter policy expert, but I wonder whether this is the correct use of 'shortage?' A shortage occurs when the quantity demanded exceeds the quantity supplied persistently because prices can't rise to alleviate the shortage--usually due to some price policy that prevents prices from rising.  But it appears that butter prices in Europe are rising, so what is being classified as a potential shortage might just be an uncomfortable reality that prices are going to keep rising to prevent a shortage.

 

So why are butter prices rising?

Global butter consumption is rebounding after years of declines, when consumers ditched butter for margarine and other substitutes.

Raphael Moreau, food analyst at Euromonitor, said that consumers are increasingly opting for ingredients seen as natural and less processed, including butter.

The average European ate 8.4 pounds of butter in 2015, the most recent year available, compared to 7.9 pounds in 2010. The average American consumed 5.6 pounds of butter in 2015, up from 4.9 pounds in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

At the same time, Chinese demand for foreign milk products is booming. The USDA predicts that Chinese milk imports are expected to jump by 38% this year, with almost all of it coming from the EU and New Zealand.

USDA predicts that global butter consumption will grow an additional 3% this year.

Demand increases cause price increases.

 

And here's some more on the potential shortage:

The next worry is a shortage of butter in Europe.

Butter production slumped 5% in the year to May 2017. Meanwhile, butter stockpiles have plunged 98% in a year, according to the European Commission's Milk Observatory.

"While supplies remain tight and demand has increased, there has been a shortage of butter in the EU, causing prices to soar...

So far no 'shortage,' just market adjustments.

...as buyers try to lock into contracts to obtain stocks," said Michael Liberty, dairy market analyst at Mintec.

Unfulfilled futures contracts might be called a 'shortage.' 

Peder Tuborgh, CEO of U.K. dairy giant Arla, warned the BBC last month that there might not be enough milk and cream to go around at Christmas.

There will be plenty to go around if prices are high enough.

 

*Urban Dictionary: "sacré bleu: A stereotypical french curse that is actually never used by real french people."

I'm not a real french person.

Remember BEPress? The suite of journals that was going to publish AER quality papers in their top journal?

Berkeley Electronic Press (BEPress) was founded as a response to the for-profit journal industry. The folks who started it weren't going to make any money until they sold it to DeGruyter (and I can't say whether they made any money off the sale). Well (Elsevier acquires bepress): 

Today, Elsevier announces its acquisition of bepress. In a move entirely consistent with its strategy to pivot beyond content licensing to preprints, analytics, workflow, and decision-support, Elsevier is now a major if not the foremost single player in the institutional repository landscape. If successful, and there are some risks, this acquisition will position Elsevier as an increasingly dominant player in preprints, continuing its march to adopt and coopt open access.

The acquisition target is a company with an interesting history and product portfolio. Like SSRN, Elsevier’s last major acquisition of a standalone company, bepress was founded by academics who saw opportunities to transform scholarly communications. In both cases, they have profited richly from their vision.  

Originally started by scholars at Berkeley in the fields of law and economics as Berkeley Electronic Press, bepress was first established to publish journals with improved time to publication using an innovative incentive structure to reward peer reviewers. The journals portfolio grew to 67 titles and was sold in 2011 to DeGruyter.

Today, bepress is focused not on journal publishing but on the infrastructure of scholarly communication and showcasing scholarship. When I asked him yesterday to define the company, CEO Jean-Gabriel Bankier began by saying, “We build research showcases.”

If you use Digital Commons then it sounds like you are going to be using Elsevier.