Environmental Economics

Greg Mankiw: I am no longer a Republican @whitehouseCEA

Greg Mankiw (former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors):

I just came back from city hall, where I switched my voter registration from Republican to unenrolled (aka independent). Two reasons:

First, the Republican Party has largely become the Party of Trump. Too many Republicans in Congress are willing, in the interest of protecting their jobs, to overlook Trump's misdeeds (just as too many Democrats did for Clinton during his impeachment). I have no interest in associating myself with that behavior. Maybe someday, the party will return to having honorable leaders like Bush, McCain, and Romney. Until then, count me out.

Second, in Massachusetts, unenrolled voters can vote in either primary. The Democratic Party is at a crossroads, where it has to choose either a center-left candidate (Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Yang) or a far-left populist (Warren, Sanders) as their nominee for president. I intend to help them choose the former. The latter propose to move the country too far in the direction of heavy-handed state control. And in doing so, they tempt those in the center and center-right to hold their noses and vote for Trump's reelection.

via gregmankiw.blogspot.com

He must've seen the CEA's twitter post today:

Under @POTUS, monthly opioid-involved overdose deaths stopped their steep upward growth. Compared to the previous trend, CEA estimates that almost 30,000 lives and $326 billion have been saved pic.twitter.com/0BJMnLG6Dj

— CEA (@WhiteHouseCEA) October 28, 2019

I replied with three tweets (and feel really silly saying that):

• So, if it leveled off in January 2017 what did @potus do before the inauguration to cause the change in opioid deaths?
• Given that something positive happened in 2016, it seems like the @WhiteHouseCEA is inferring causality from a Trump administration policy when the cause might be something else.
• Is there a background document with some analysis that we could look at?

Here is what the CEA says in their report that can be found at the bottom of a blog post (that was referred to in a subsequent CEA tweet) :

The Trump Administration has taken swift action to address the opioid crisis. It has limited high-dose opioid prescriptions, promoted better information about the risks of opioid misuse, undertaken measures to cut the supply of illicit drugs including fentanyl, and invested in treatment and life-saving drugs for those currently suffering from substance use disorder. There are signs that these measures may be paying off. After an increasing trend in the number of opioid overdose deaths, preliminary estimates show the growth in deaths involving opioids stopped rising in 2017.

According to the White House the Trump Administration starting doing something after October 2017 (in October 2018). 

In October 2017, President Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. Ever since, the Trump Administration has applied an all-of-Government approach to the epidemic, taking an extraordinary range of actions that reflect the President’s commitment to stopping the crisis in its tracks. ...

Among the historic actions taken:

As of October 2018, the Trump Administration had secured $6 billion in new funding over a two-year window to fight opioid abuse. To curb over-prescription, the President implemented a Safer Prescribing Plan that will cut opioid prescription fills by one-third within three years. President Trump is fighting to keep dangerous drugs out of the United States by securing land borders, ports of entry, and waterways against smuggling. In 2018, President Trump worked with Congress to pass the SUPPORT Act, the single largest legislative package addressing a single drug crisis in history.

These are all good things, I think. I'm not criticizing these policies. I am criticizing the Council of Economic Advisors which is shilling for the President, assigning credit for the decline in opioid deaths that began early in 2017 to a set of policies that were announced in October 2018. The CEA is suggesting that opioid deaths magically declined after the inauguration. 

What am I missing?

Nature is hiring an environmental economics editor

I'm looking forward to hearing who gets hired for this job:

Nature, the international weekly journal of science, seeks to appoint an editor specializing in Environmental/Energy Economics to further our aim to publish the world’s best original research linking social sciences – including economics – to the physical and biological processes important to society. Central to this role will be determining how economics-based research is represented in our pages, particularly as it applies in the spheres of environmental, climate, ecological and energy sciences. This will be achieved through the solicitation, selection and preparation of manuscripts for publication, and by interacting closely with the relevant research communities. This is a demanding and intellectually stimulating position, and calls for a keen interest in the practice and communication of science.

via www.nature.com

Note: not that I'll ever submit a paper to Nature.

A quick comment about opt-in panels

Here is a comment I received on a referendum repeated contingent valuation (aka, discrete choice experiment) survey:

I seriously dont think this is a realistic way to make decisions regarding such a complex situation. I hope my answers arent used to help anyone. I truly breezed through and became bored by the end. Much too complex for a lighthearted survey.

The respondent was from the SurveyMonkey (SM) Audience Panel which is more expensive and more problematic (the respondents voiced complaints to SM about my survey) than either respondents from the Research Now/SSI (and now they have a new name) or Qualtrics panels. 

The good news is they answered the stated attribute non-attendance question consistent with this comment so sensitivity analysis will account for considering this as a "lighthearted survey" (at $8 per complete I don't consider it lighthearted).

"MARINE RESOURCE ECONOMICS ANNOUNCES NEW CASE STUDIES SECTION"

I'm shouting because the journal is shouting:

Marine Resource Economics is now accepting submissions for a new section of the journal titled Case Studies, which is intended to provide an outlet for rigorous, theoretically grounded analyses of the governance of individual fisheries and/or aquaculture systems. The new section will be edited by Tracy Yandle of Emory University, and the editors expect the first Case Study to be published in the forthcoming volume of the journal.

“Case studies play a valuable role in the development of our understanding of effective marine resource governance, yet they are underrepresented in the economics literature. This new section presents a unique opportunity for researchers to apply an economic perspective to rigorous case studies—whether comparative case studies, or single case studies focused at a range of scales," said section editor Tracy Yandle. "I look forward to continuing the strong intellectual tradition of Marine  Resource Economics, while expanding its coverage to a broader range of settings and research methods.”

The Case Studies section joins four sections currently published in Marine Resource Economics: Articles, Perspectives, Systematic Reviews, and Book Reviews. Its published pieces will provide description and analysis of a particular regionally defined fishery, aquaculture system, marine resource, or comparisons of two or more cases, with an emphasis on an economic analytical perspective and focus on historic and/or current issues of marine or coastal zone policy and governance.

"I'm very excited for the potential of this new section to expand the reach of the journal to a wider range of scholars and resource management practitioners," said Joshua K. Abbott, Marine Resource Economics editor.

The editors encourage submissions focusing on small-scale fisheries and aquaculture in developing nations. Case studies drawing upon quantitative evidence are preferred, though qualitative analyses are also encouraged—particularly in data-poor settings. All submissions to the Case Studies section are subject to a single-blind peer review process. For more information, please review Marine Resource Economics Instructions for Authors webpage.

This is sure to be the home for many studies that haven't been able to find one in the past.