Environmental Economics

We've been back for a week and we're already influencing the news!

John kindly pointed out that the scumbags (technical term) at this high quality (sarcasm) 'news' aggregation site  stole my post from last week with no attribution. Funnily enough when I just went to the site to find the url, the lead story is John's post from three hours ago! 

AND...if you go to their News page, almost all of the content is from me and John.

So I sent a message to their general enquiries email address ([email protected]):

    "Please stop copying our content without attribution. If this continues you are going to make me mad. And you wouldn’t like me when I’m mad."

                                                                                                                                                                                            --David Banner (The Hulk)

Feel free to spam them yourself.

Will this be the biggest year for the stock market EVER? (Alt Title: Percentages matter)

I seem to be on an explaining basic principles kick the last few days.

I saw this story on CNBC this morning:

The Dow Jones industrial average just did something it has never done in its 121-year history.

The 30-stock average is now up more than 5,000 points in a year, marking its biggest annual-points gain ever. This following a 140-point rally Monday which sent it to an all-time high.

Sounds impressive.  And it is.  But let's take a look at two time periods:

According to MacroTrends.net, from January 2017-November 2017, the DJIA (that's the acronym for the Dow Jones Industrial Average for those of us in the know...), rose from 20,181.82 to 24,272.35.  That's an increase of 4,090.43 points. 

Cool.  But what does 4,090.43 points really mean?  I have no idea.  It's some sort of an index based on the value of 30 stocks, defined by some group who like to do those sorts of things. 

But is 4,090.43 a big increase?

Take another randomly chosen time period, say, January 2009-November 2009.  In that randomly chosen period, the DJIA increased from 9,345.00 to 11,793.12.  That's an increase of 2,448.12 arbitrary points.  

It looks like 2017 beats 2009, right?  

Not quite. 

Because the starting point in January, 2009 was much smaller than the starting point in January 2017, if we convert the changes to percentage terms, in the first 11 months of 2009, the DJIA increased by 26.2%.  In 2017, the comparable percentage was 20.3%.

Given the choice would you rather earn 26% on your investments or 20%?  

Both are good.

But you would draw the wrong conclusion if you just looked at the absolute point change, rather than percentages.

 

   

 

Correlation vs Causation Example of the Day

I was an assistant professor at East Carolina University from 1995-2000.  I have been on the faculty at Ohio State since 2000.  In 2017, they are the #2 and #4 party schools in the country. 

Coincidence?

Word of the Day: *%#@!!!!!

No point to this post (like most of my posts) but I just found this amusing, and it's summer, and I like to use profanity, and I think Chris Christie embodies everything wrong with politics right now, and he doesn't care so why should I?

Gov. Chris Christie’s trip to a closed state beach during the state government shutdown didn't go over well, according to a Monmouth University poll released Monday.

Almost all respondents — 86 percent — saw the pictures. When asked to describe it, the most popular word New Jerseyans used was "disgusted," at 7 percent, with "anger" and "disbelief" a close second. Other popular words: "Selfish," "hypocrite" and "arrogant." Less than 10 percent either said something positive or that they weren't bothered by it.

And then there was this: "Another 6% of those polled simply used some form of profanity to express their sentiments about Christie's beach day," said the news release circulated with the poll.

 

My new autoresponse to appstate.edu emails

Hello,

John Whitehead is happy to report that he is no longer a part-time academic administrator (i.e., Economics Department Chair). If your email is regarding department business, please redirect it to our new chair Todd Cherry at cherrytl at appstate.edu.

John Whitehead is also happy to report that he is on Off-Campus Scholarly Assignment (i.e., sabbatical) in Fall 2017 and back to teaching, research and service in Spring 2018. If your email is about non-department business, he'll reply ASAP (or maybe not).

Thanks,

John Whitehead

P.S. For the remainder of his academic career, John Whitehead will refer to himself in the third person.

A couple of things to try to wrap your head around

From the Moment of Happiness Daily Quotation:

“Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness, which is always founded upon a peculiar relish for all the little pleasures which common occurrences afford.”

-- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

All of the little pleasures ... for example, I think I just saw a video of an economist, dressed as Justin Trudeau, singing Rush. 

An endorsement (or two)

From the inbox:

I just read your article in REEP with the survey of environmental economists. I look forward to using it in my class next term – I usually start class off with a survey of the students, and it will be fun now to compare their answers to those of the profession.

Thanks for the article! ...

And I really need to remember to check your blog more often…  I always mean to do that, and then just somehow it gets away from me…  but that’s a great resource too!

Right now the article is free and at the top of the "most read" list here: https://academic.oup.com/reep. 

I knew I should've put money on it

While sitting at home recovering from my recent neck surgery I had plenty of time to watch the NCAA Basketball Tournament (AKA March Madness, AKA Crap Shoot).  To occupy some of my time I entered some of the big (free, non-gambling, for entertainment purposes only) online bracket challenges.  The ESPN Mike and Mike tournament challenge had roughly 500,000 entrants (actual number unknown because it stops counting at 400,000+).  Here are my results:

RANK		R64	R32	S16	E8	F4	NCG	CHAMPION	TOTAL	PCT
2,281		260	180	200	160	320	320	UNC	1440	99.5

Just sayin'.

My conservative market-based case for how to fix health insurance

I know this isn't environmental, but it's policy related, and I find the health insurance policy debate interesting, and I think market-based policy can go a long way toward solving environmental issues and health care, and just because it's not environmental hasn't stopped us from posting about it before, and it's my blog and I'll blog if I want to.

Let me start by reminding everyone that despite the current administration's hard push to make me liberal, I really want to be conservative (at least economically conservative). For the most part that means I want to let markets do their thing, because I think markets do a lot better job of allocating scarce resources than any person, or government or agency can.  

But that doesn't mean there is no role for government in a conservative economist's world.  Just as the role of a mechanic is to fix an engine when it isn't running properly, a role of the government is to fix a market when it isn't running properly.  So how should the government fix health insurance?

Read on:

Quote of my lifetime: We need a "That was some weird sh*t" category

I'm not sure why we haven't thought of this before, but we need a category for just plain odd statements from politicians/policy makers.  Thankfully, George W. Bush** has given us the perfect title for the category:

Former President George W. Bush reportedly thought President Trump's inauguration speech "was some weird shit."

Bush attended Trump's inauguration, sitting near former President Clinton and Hillary Clinton as well as former President Obama and Michelle Obama.

According to a new report by New York magazine, three people present at the event say they heard Bush say "That was some weird shit" after the swearing in ceremony concluded.

An example:

Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is facing criticism over his decision not to ban a controversial farm pesticide. Pruitt insists his move is based on “sound science,” but it overrides his own agency’s research showing chlorpyrifos pose a health risk to children and farm workers, possibly inhibiting brain development.

That was some weird shit.

Another?

In case you needed reminding, it’s a bad time to be a scientist in the US. If you work for a federal research group, you’ve been muzzled, had your funding cut to historically low levels, and been told by a committee of anti-intellectual parrots that you’re constantly lying.

Earlier this month, the word “science” was removed from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) mission statement under the auspices of a man who doesn’t think carbon dioxide warms the planet. Now, it seems that the Department of Energy’s (DoE) climate change research office has banned the use of the phrase “climate change”.

As reported by Politico, a supervisor at the DoE’s Office of International Climate and Clean Energy told the staff in no uncertain terms that the phrases “climate change”, “emissions reduction”, and “Paris agreement” are not to be used in written memos, briefings, or any form of communication.

That was some weird shit.

I have a feeling this could quickly become our most populated category of post.

*Does anyone else find it funny when legitimate journalists have to write titles with words like 'shit' in them, and thy choose to just use an asterisk 'sh*t'?  I know that they are supposed to write at a 3rd grade level, but I'm pretty sure even a 3rd grader can figure out what the word is supposed to be.

**I love the irony in the same man who once said ""And so the fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place." and "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country," and so many others, says Donald Trump's inauguration was weird shit.  I guess weird shit knows weird shit.