Environmental Economics

Knife or banana? Part two

Matt Kahn:

My publisher has notified me that I can purchase hard copies of my Climatopolis book for $2.26 each.   This isn't good news in terms of my expected future royalties but demand curves do slope down. I am purchasing 200 copies and giving them away for free to my UCLA students.  So, this should provide you with a lower bound on how much I care about my students!  The only good news here is that Climatopolis continues to be talked about in unusual places such as the National Review and random Chinese blogs.

On the broad topic of climate change adaptation, I plan to do two things;

1.  I will be writing a historical migration paper with Leah Boustan and Paul Rhode on how U.S migrants responded to past disasters.

2.  I plan to write a short overview paper listing the open micro economic research agenda (both in terms of reduced form slop and fancier structural work) on how to pin down the costs of climate adaptation.  

A few comments:

• Dang. I paid full price for Climatopolis.
• Reduced form slop? Yikes, a rare elitist slip.
• Happy birthday eve Matt!

Intervention

Matt Kahn:

My Chicago teachers were wrong about one key point.  You can get work done in the sunshine.  I work harder here than I did when I was a graduate student in Chicago, or when I worked in New York City or when I worked in "glamorous" Cambridge.  The state's budget crisis will end, UCLA will become "self-sufficient" (i.e privatize) and order will be restored to the Star Wars galaxy.  This is paradise.  Life is too short to be miserable 9 months of the year (we did like Boston's May, September and October).

via greeneconomics.blogspot.com

Matt,

We get it. UCLA is awesome and you are glad you made the move. That's cool. But, now it is time to move past the mantra and simply live the dream. The folks back in Chicago, New York and Boston who (apparently) give you a hard time about not being serious anymore (you moved to California, you blog, you write books) are likely jealous that you have broken the chains and are now soarly freely. Try to ignore their jabs and don't look back.

Sincerely,

John W.

Ask KAAAAHHHNNNNN (on Freakonomics)

Freakonomics is falling for Kahn's publicity hounding:

There are plenty of dire predictions about what will happen to our cities if the worst predictions about global warming were to come true: flooding, droughts, famine, chaos and massive death. But Matthew Kahn, an economist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, sees a different future. He tells that story in his new book Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future...

Kahn has agreed to answer your questions about this topic and his new book, so fire away in the comments section below. As always, we’ll post his answers in good time.

Hmmmm...I wonder if Freakonomics would be open to a Q&A from other reknowned Environmental Economists with upcoming books?

Probably not.

Paul Chambers* will be reviewing my book**

Matt Kahn***:

Like the mailman, Ed Glaeser always delivers. In this review of my new book, he quickly reveals his "conflict of interest" (we were classmates, we are friends and co-authors) and then gets to work presenting the core thesis of my book and then offering some constructive criticism.

via greeneconomics.blogspot.com

Matt: you call those softballs criticisms? Ha!

*Classmate, friend, co-author.

**Have we mentioned a book?

***Check out the new category.