Environmental Economics

The End of a Free Ride

Two economists walk into an AERE happy hour in New Orleans.

One says, “Hey, are you and Economist 3 done providing that awesome public good?”

Two says, “Ya know, we’ve been thinking about providing it again!”

One says, “DO IT! It’s so useful to the world! I love free riding!”

Two sips beer. One sips beer.

Days pass, then… the provision of the public good begins again! Economist One is excited and tweets:

Then… Economist Two pounces:

…damn. 

I am Justin Roush, Assistant Professor of Economics at Xavier University, and I am no longer a free rider. Husband, dad of two wrecking balls (two boys), enjoyer of craft beer, triathlete. I research firm pollution. I enjoy thinking about emissions policy and have a growing interest in environmental nudges (I also research behavioral economics). My employer puts a great deal of value on teaching, so I publish in pedagogical outlets as well.

I’ll be dropping in from time to time to contribute. Thanks John and Tim for taxing me for the use of this public good inviting me to write!

The climes they are a-changin'

I was talking to my parents last night and they were bemoaning the amount of rain they have had the past month.  These are the same parents who can best be described as climate change skeptics. 

Really they pay little attention to things like climate change other than my father making an off-hand remark on a bad weather day, like a warm day in January, or snowy in May, 'Must be that climate change thing you're always talking about.'

I never talk about climate change around my dad.

Anyways, I decided to take a look at the precipitation totals at BWI airport for a few reasons:

1. To see if there's a noticeable trend.
2. To see if I could use data to make a case to my parents that climate change might just be something worth talking about.  It's always good to try to change a 75 year old's mind, right?

Why BWI to ask?  Well, I grew up, and my parents still live, two miles from BWI as the planes fly (if you draw a straight line from one of the runways, south eastward, you go right through my parents backyard).  Here's proof:

OK, that's not really proof, but you'll just have to trust me, planes fly over that house all day, and all night...all year...nonstop. I blocked out the address to prevent the paparazzi from hounding my parents when the brilliance of this post leaks out.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, definitive proof of climate change so I can stick it to my parents. 

Here's a graph of official annual precipitation readings at BWI from 1951-2017. Here's a link to the data.  The blue dots are rainfall in inches.  The black line is a simple linear regression line to show the trend (we all like simple linear regressions, right)?

There you have it.  Definitive proof that...well..proof of something.  Take that mom and dad!

I'm not an expert at statistics or anything (ok, maybe I am), but that looks like rainfall totals have been trending upward at BWI since 1951.  

"But wait!," you say, "it looks like 1999 was screwy and couldn't that be pulling the slope of that fake regression line upward?"

That's mighty astute of you.  Yes it could.  And not only that, this graph doesn't control for month-to-month variations that may affect annual totals.  I'll bet you didn't think of that, oh-astute-reader, did you? 

So let's look at the year-over-year monthly trend in rainfall at BWI from 1951-2017:

A couple of observations:

1. The screwy 1999 number seems to be driven by a weird observation in October of 1999--Did BWI really get over 40 inches of rain in October of 1999?  I'll look into that for you.
2. 75% of the months (9 out of 12) show an upward trend in rainfall totals from 1951-2017.  Three do not (February, March and November).  February isn't a real month so we can throw that out (how do you count an extra day once every 4 years?).  The trends in March and November look pretty flat.

So there you have it.

Conclusive proof that my parents need to stop telling their friends that I "Still believe in that climate change hoax."  

 

 

I drove to Charleston, SC today and listened to R.E.M. the whole dang way

I'm here:

February 6 & 7, 2018

Socio-Economic Panel
Crowne Plaza Hotel
4381 Tanger Outlet Boulevard
North Charleston, SC  29418

Briefing Book 

Webinar Registration 

February 6, 2017, 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM 

February 7, 2017, 8:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Public Comment

Click here to submit public comment on SEP agenda items

Click here to read what others have already said

Note: I listened to Spotify's "This is R.E.M." playlist for about 4 hours. Once that ran out of songs I listened to Radio Free Europe and, my favorite album, Reckoning (1984) to further remind me of my college and grad school days. 

I've been taking my OCSA (i.e., "sabbatical") very seriously

I've even taken a sabbatical from this blog. I think that the dog walk has become a substitute (guilty pleasure when I'm working at home*) for the blog post (guilty pleasure when I'm in the office). Whatever is going on, I have too much to say about the way the world works to let this go on much longer. 

*"Working at home" ... hahahahahahahaha!

 

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.

I always use gmail when I have something interesting to say to Tim

Jonathan Rees:

Earlier this year, word broke that the University of California system secretly established a way by which it could monitor and read faculty emails. It defies belief that the UC system is the only one to do so. As is the case with any employer these days, your college or university can read your .edu email because it wants to target you for some reason. It can also read your work email for kicks. ...

Using a private email account is not really private when you’re conducting what the state deems to be public business. “As Hillary Clinton has learned the hard way, using your personal email account when doing government work doesn't make the content of those emails exempt from public records laws,” noted a 2015 story about former University of Illinois Phyllis M. Wise. She used private emails to get around public records requests from Steven G. Salaita’s legal team, and resigned from her post after those emails were released.

The same dynamic applies to faculty — as William Cronon, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found out when the state Republican party filed the equivalent of a Freedom of Information Act request for his university emails. Cronon could have corresponded through private email. With no lawsuit over the matter, those emails might never have been subpoenaed. But had there been a lawsuit, they could have been subpoenaed, as the Wise example suggests.

It’s impossible for faculty to get total protection from having our email observed. But we can make it a little harder to have our email quite so easily monitored by our employer. Here’s how:

• If you don’t have a personal email account, get one.
• If you do have a personal email account, don’t be afraid to use it more often.
• Make a conscious, intellectually defensible decision about what your employer and the public has a right to know about your job and what they don’t.
• Then divide your email activity accordingly. Yes, you should still worry that whatever you write could be accessed by people whose interests are far different from your own, but you shouldn’t make it easier for them to see your electronic correspondence just because you think your Gmail account seems unprofessional.

Most faculty may never have to worry about these issues. However being cautious will greatly increase the chances that you will be able to maintain at least a modicum of privacy in the course of doing your job.

Source: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1535-nobody-cares-about-your-edu-anymore. 

I always assume that someone is reading every email I send from appstate.edu. And I have those twisted gut feelings for days afterwards when I write something that I shouldn't. I make fun of env-econ readers with Tim via gmail and I thought it was safe. Now I guess it will be mostly via text or musical.ly.

Taco Tuesday

Here is my recipe for the meat:

Brown 1 lb of grass-fed ground beef*

Mix the taco seasoning** (adapted from food renegade):

• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon salt

Drain the fat from the beef, add 1/2 cup of water and the seasoning. 

Stir.

*This is preferably purchased from a vendor at the farmers' market. Make sure to wear some sort of hippy accessory (I always wear a tie dyed tank top) and ask the farmer if it is "grass-finished." 

**This is way more fun than buying a packet at the store (you can boast about your secret recipe). Also, if you are cooking for the gluten/dairy free you have no idea what is in the packets. 

Tell it to the complaint department

My iPhone 5c (which I've learned is a notoriously crappy phone) stopped telling time accurately back before Christmas. The clock is slow, very slow. Like, when I took this screenshot it was not 12:42 pm. When it first started my alarm wouldn't go off and I'd oversleep in the morning. I send time-sensitive text messages and they get logged as 2-3 days old. It is a real problem. And please don't tell me to reset the date and time. I've done this countless times.

I never managed to try to take care of it until after the one-year warranty ran out in February (I know, my fault). I've taken it to the Apple Juice store and they tried everything they know and can't get it to work (and they didn't charge me a penny). I went to Verizon today to buy a new phone (it turns out I can basically trade it in for a Motorola at little cost) but they advised me to call Apple Support to exhaust my options before I gave up on the iPhone. After 18 minutes waiting for a real person, the real person (after getting my IMEI # and realizing I had a crappy 5c) said they could certainly help me and it would only cost $29 to be transferred to a technician. Huh? $29?

I'm heading back to the Verizon store tomorrow. So long iPhone!

 

 

What is the optimal number of time slots on a Doodle Poll?

I don't know the answer, but I do know that 64 is too many.

"My favorite things Kentucky"

Tyler Cowen:

1. Popular music: The Everly Brothers, I recommend this song.  There is also Loretta Lynn and Dwight Yoakum and Merle Travis, I like this video.  In jazz there is Lionel Hampton.

2. Visual artist: Edgar Tolson, that image is not fully safe for work.  John James Audobon worked in the state quite a bit.

3. Movie, set in: Goldfinger, though of course immobilizing that stock would not affect the world price of gold very much.  And keep in mind the nominal price of gold was pegged back then under Bretton Woods — should we really have expected a lot of goods and services deflation, just because some nutcase set off a bomb?  I don’t think so.

4. Monk: Thomas Merton.  He was an excellent writer, as a monk I cannot judge.

5. Author: Hmm…I don’t really like either Robert Penn Warren or Hunter S. Thompson.  So Thomas Merton wins a second category, try The Seven Storey Mountain.

6. NBA player: The incandescent Rex Chapman, recently arrested for shoplifting.  I liked Pervis Ellison too, believe it or not.

7. Movie director: I believe John Carpenter grew up there, he has several excellent films, including The Thing, Starman, Dark Star, and Escape from New York.  I don’t actually enjoy the D.W. Griffith movies.

8. Poet and impresario: Muhammad Ali.

For some inexplicable reason Victor Mature was one of my father’s favorite actors.  There is also Johnny Depp and George Clooney.  Economist Milton Kafoglis passed away not long ago.  How about the Kentucky Colonels?

via marginalrevolution.com

Not surprisingly, the list is a bit highbrow for me. I'd go like this:

1. Popular music: My Morning Jacket, Kentucky Headhunters

2. Visual artist: Stephen Powell, according to his bio he estabalished Centre College's glass program the year I graduated. 

3. Movie, set in: Goldfinger is a good one but how about Coal Miner's Daughter? or the Hatfields and McCoys miniseries? Those accents are Kentucky.

4. Monk: Who could quibble with Thomas Merton?

5. Author: Sue Grafton

6. NBA player: Darrell Griffith (I was never a fan of King Rex). I was in high school when UofL, led by “Dr. Dunkenstein,” won their first NCAA championship. The next year they had one of their scrimmages at our high school gym. 

7. Movie director: According to Wikipedia John Carpenter was born in Bowling Green and went to WKU. But should this even be a category? I would have made it movie stars and gone with Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss Everdeen! Duh). Even inflation adjusted, she is the highest grossing action heroine. 

8. Poet and impresario: I also can't quibble with Muhammad Ali. 

The list was annoying (no mention of KFC, horses or bourbon) until we got to "How about the Kentucky Colonels?" I remember listening to Colonels games on the radio: Louie Dampier, Dan Issel, Wil Jones and Artis Gilmore. And with WKU's Jim McDaniel they had two (2!) 7 footers. I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-Colonels-American-Basketball-Association/dp/1935001825 (Note: I'm not sure about Tyler Cowen's Colonels link).