Environmental Economics

5 out of 7 continents isn't bad, right?

We're working on PhD recruitment this week (if you applied to OSU AEDE and were accepted, join us, we're FUN!).  I put together a Google map with our PhD placements since 2007.  A bit scary that I might be influencing thinking for this many people and this wide an area.   

 

Always look on the bright side of life...

Quite possibly the most depressing introduction to a pseudo-academic workshop I have seen: 

How can we best live at this moment of severe environmental degradation? How can we work and teach on behalf of environmental wellbeing without becoming overwhelmed, embittered, or burned out? Is there a way to thrive in our environmental commitments?

If that gets you excited, then sign up for the Contemplative Environmental Workshop!

This workshop brings together professors and activists to develop more skillful ways of confronting environmental challenges.  Specifically, it explores the role of contemplative practice in our pedagogical and activist efforts.  Through daily meditation, journal writing, nature walks, and other reflective exercises as well as scholarly discussion, we will probe the depths of the environmental crisis and develop resources to work and teach on behalf of global sustainability.  

Environmental issues are not simply political, technological, or economic dilemmas but also existential challenges that require us to reflect upon the meaning of our individual and collective lives.  Furthermore, the scale and pace of environmental degradation call on us to enhance our skills as educators, activists, and ordinary citizens like never before.  This workshop offers the opportunity to deepen such efforts by facilitating meaningful dialogue between activists and professors, probing the interface between our personal and professional lives, and introducing contemplative practices tailored specifically for use in the classroom and in political organizing.  

Part seminar and part retreat, the workshop provides the chance to step back from our frenetic lives and, in the midst of stunning beauty and a supportive community, integrate our deepest spiritual yearnings with our professional and personal commitments to protect the earth.  

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."

I have no idea if the title has anything to do with what follows, but I was trying to tie together the death of one America's wittiest baseball players (Yogi Berra) with the visit of the non-economist environmental Pope to the U.S.   Why would I want to tie these two things together?  No clue. ANyway...

The pope claims that the environment cannot be “safeguarded or promoted by market forces.” Confronting the climate crisis will require a deeper, spiritual transformation of society, replacing “consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing.”

I find nothing objectionable about the pope’s moralizing tone and language of “sin.” But his skepticism about market-based solutions to climate change is rooted in a misunderstanding. A market-based approach to controlling greenhouse-gas emissions — through carbon taxes or tradable emissions permits — does, in fact, reflect moral conviction. The pope gets carried away condemning the “efficiency-driven paradigm of technocracy,” overlooking the fact that efficiency, in this context, is a moral principle.

The central idea in all of these programs — from the Emissions Trading System in Europe to the carbon tax adopted in the Canadian province of British Columbia — is to put a price on carbon, so that all businesses and consumers are held accountable and charged for the environmental consequences of their actions.

via www.nytimes.com

Daily demand and supply: bee-pocalypse and higher prices for fruits and nuts

This is good news but if we're not living through the great tribulation then I don't know what to say: 

You've heard the news about honeybees. "Beepocalypse," they've called it. Beemageddon. America's honeybees are dying, putting honey production and $15 billion worth of pollinated food crops in jeopardy. ...

The trouble all began in 2006 or so, when beekeepers first began noticing mysterious die-offs. It was soon christened "colony collapse disorder," and has been responsible for the loss of 20 to 40 percent of managed honeybee colonies each winter over the past decade.

The math says that if you lose 30 percent of your bee colonies every year for a few years, you rapidly end up with close to 0 colonies left. But get a load of this data on the number of active bee colonies in the U.S. since 1987. ...

... the number of honeybee colonies has actually risen since 2006, from 2.4 million to 2.7 million in 2014, according to data tracked by the USDA. The 2014 numbers, which came out earlier this year, show that the number of managed colonies -- that is, commercial honey-producing bee colonies managed by human beekeepers -- is now the highest it's been in 20 years.

So if CCD is wiping out close to a third of all honeybee colonies a year, how are their numbers rising? One word: Beekeepers.

A 2012 working paper by Randal R. Tucker and Walter N. Thurman, a pair of agricultural economists, explains that seasonal die-offs have always been a part of beekeeping: they report that before CCD, American beekeepers would typically lose 14 percent of their colonies a year, on average.

So beekeepers have devised two main ways to replenish their stock. The first method involves splitting one healthy colony into two separate colonies: put half the bees into a new beehive, order them a new queen online (retail price: $25 or so), and voila: two healthy hives.

The other method involves simply buying a bunch of bees to replace the ones you lost. You can buy 3 pounds of "packaged" bees, plus a queen, for about $100 or so. ...

The price of some of that extra work will get passed on to the consumer. The average retail price of honey has roughly doubled since 2006, for instance. And Kim Kaplan, a researcher with the USDA, points out that pollination fees -- the amount beekeepers charge to cart their bees around to farms and pollinate fruit and nut trees -- has approximately doubled over the same period.

"It's not the honey bees that are in danger of going extinct," Kaplan wrote in an email, "it is the beekeepers providing pollination services because of the growing economic and management pressures. The alternative is that pollination contracts per colony have to continue to climb to make it economically sustainable for beekeepers to stay in business and provide pollination to the country’s fruit, vegetable, nut and berry crops." We have also been importing more honey from overseas lately.

But rising prices for fruit and nuts hardly constitute the "beepocalypse" that we've all been worried about. Tucker and Thurman, the economists, call this a victory for the free market: "Not only was there not a failure of bee-related markets," they conclude in their paper, "but they adapted quickly and effectively to the changes induced by the appearance of Colony Collapse Disorder."

via www.washingtonpost.com

I though I had missed the rapture but I might still have a chance.

Hat tip: Pearl

Bravo young man

“We don’t just deny evolution,” [19-year old science activist Zack Koplin] says, “We are denying climate change and vaccines and other mainstream science. I’m calling for a Second Giant Leap to change the perception of science in the world.”

To that end, Kopplin would like to see $1 trillion of new science funding and an end to denialist science legislation. He wants to see the American public become more aware and better educated about science.

“My generation is going to have to face major challenges to our way of living — and the way to overcome them is through rapid scientific advancement,” he says. “But as as of right now, America has a science problem.”

via io9.com

That is what I get for thinking

Whatever happened to Milton Friedman? I thought the late Professor was the one who economists read to be inspired about free markets:

In what is being called one of the most stunning primary-election upsets in Congressional history, an economics professor with Tea Party backing but little name recognition and only $200,000 in his campaign coffers soundly defeated the U.S. House of Representatives’ majority leader, Rep. Eric I. Cantor of Virginia, in voting on Tuesday for the Republican nomination.

The professor, David A. Brat, a former chairman of the department of economics and business at Randolph-Macon College, told supporters at a victory celebration on Tuesday night that “the reason we won this campaign is dollars don’t vote—you do.”

Mr. Brat, who joined the faculty at Randolph-Macon in 1996, holds a Ph.D. in economics from American University and a master’s from the Princeton Theological Seminary. He is director of the college’s BB&T Ethics Program, which receives support from the BB&T Charitable Foundation.

According to a CV on Randolph-Macon’s website, apparently last updated in 2012, his most recent book project was titled “Ethics as Leading Economic Indicator? What Went Wrong? Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition and Human Reason.”

Other publication titles listed there include “God and Advanced Mammon—Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?,” published in April 2011 in Interpretation: a Journal of Bible and Theology, and “An Analysis of the Moral Foundations in Ayn Rand,” presented at a conference in South Carolina in 2010.

Mr. Brat told the National Review, in an article published in January, that while he is not a Randian, “he has been influenced by Atlas Shrugged and appreciates Rand’s case for human freedom and free markets.” ...

Mr. Brat, who called his defeat of Mr. Cantor “a miracle from God,” told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the coming campaign would be about “returning the country to constitutional principles, returning the country to Judeo-Christian principles, and returning the country to free-market principles.”

via chronicle.com

In other words, I thought it was only non-economists who romanced capitalism after reading Ayn Rand.

Runnin' with the Devil

Here's a story that combines three of John's favorite topics: Sports, Kentucky and an odd obsession with the mark of the beast:

In one of the strangest cases of purported religious beliefs intersecting with athletic performance, a Kentucky junior cross country runner voluntarily walked away from a chance to qualify for the state meet to avoid running with the bib number "666", which she said conflicted with her Christian beliefs.

via sports.yahoo.com

An economist reviews Dan Brown's 'Inferno'

Warning: Spoiler Alert below the jump.  If you haven't read 'Inferno' yet, don;t read below the jump, I'm going to give away the plot and ending.

I recently finished reading Dan Brown's (author of The Da Vinci Code) newest book 'Inferno.' As a casual reader of the book, I found it entertaining.  Brown does his typical job of keeping the action moving, mixing in some interesting conspiracy theories, making me want to visit some cities I've never been to, and making it seem like being a college professor might be cool (although I have my doubts).  I didn't enjoy it as much as The Da Vinci Code, which I didn't enjoy as much Angels and Demons, but still a good read (and I refuse to accept that The Lost Symbol was written). 

But, as an economist, I found the book to be complete nonsense. 

Why?  Read below the jump (SPOILER ALERT AGAIN).

I'm not in the business of giving any financial advice either ...

... but don't give away all your stuff before 10/21:

Harold Camping said it had "dawned" on him that God would spare humanity "hell on Earth for five months" and the apocalypse would happen on 21 October.

Mr Camping said he felt "terrible" about his mistake.

But he said he could not give financial advice to those who spent their life savings in the belief the end was nigh. ...

Asked if he had any advice to offer those who had given away their material wealth in the belief the world was about to end, Mr Camping said they would cope.

"We just had a great recession. There's lots of people who lost their jobs, lots of people who lost their houses... and somehow they all survived," he said.

"We're not in the business of giving any financial advice," he added.

via www.bbc.co.uk

i.e., deal with it.

 

More "advice on how to publish in economics journals"

Tyler Cowen:

Via Development Impact, here is the link (pdf).  I agree with most of the recommendations, which come from editors including Robert Moffitt.

via marginalrevolution.com

Each piece in the CSWEP newsletter is a great read especially if you are (1) new at publishing in economics or (2) a veteran researcher, but you gave up research for the rapture, and you didn't get raptured so that now you need a refresher. In addition, I would reiterate #1 and #2 (with a couple of extras) and offer #3 in contrast to the advice you usually get:

1. Don't write a long paper (20-30 pages is usually sufficient). My immediate reaction as a referee is to groan and procrastinate reading it. Then when I do get around to reading it I'm not happy about what the author and editor is asking me to do. Do you want your referees in that frame of mind? Write up all of your robustness checks and sensitivity analyses as appendices and either (a) post it as an online working paper and put it in your references or (b) refer to the "available upon request" results in a footnote.
2. If you get a rejection at one journal, follow at least some of the advice of the referees before you resubmit to another journal. Editors at each of the journals you submit to choose referees from your reference list, papers that are missing from your reference list, the Google Scholar, Scopus or other similar means. It is quite surprising how often the same names pop up. I've refereed the same paper at different journals more than once (when you try to avoid the task by telling the editor that you have refereed it before they almost always ask you to go ahead and review it again). The easiest referee report to write is the one that you already wrote.
3. Don't overshoot with your journal choice. I've never understood the typical advice that if the journal you first submit your paper to results in a revise and resubmit then you didn't shoot high enough. Typically, even when you don't aim at the highest journal level your first submission is a rejection. So let's say you aim even higher (AER, QJE etc.), then your first two submissions will be rejections and you are on your third journal, the clock is ticking, and you have other papers you would rather work on. 

That said, there are exceptions to each of these rules:

1. You are the most important economist in the world and your work deserves its own special issue at a major journal.
2. Your referee is an idiot.
3. You really think the paper has a chance, you are actually a top economist, you are a mid-level economist and have never experienced the thrill of getting rejected at a top journal, ...