An Even Sterner Review

A nice paper by Sterner and Persson points out that analyses like the Stern Review do not take into account the possibility that the prices of environmental goods will rise relative to those of anthropogenic goods and services as they become scarcer. They replace the standard utility function in Nordhaus' DICE model (which assumes infinite substitutability in consumption between environmental and

Economics: The Open Access, Open Assessment E-Journal

I'm probably late to the party here but have just been looking at the website of Economics: The Open Access, Open Assessment E-Journal. It is an effort to increase access and speed up the refereeing process, which is notoriously slow in economics. The journal has attracted a strong advisory and editorial board and is getting a good share of citations as measured by RePEc.

Only Six Days Left To Go

To vote in my climate change poll! The question is: "How much higher or lower than today do you expect global greenhouse gas emissions to be in 2050?" Note the "global" and that I want to know about "emissions" not "concentrations in the atmosphere". So far 25 people have voted and the distribution is bimodal - people seem to expect change in one direction or the other. Next week, I'll provide a

Bad Use of Citations

A paper in the British Medical Journal by Steven Greenberg examines the use of citations around a meme in the medical literature. The meme was that beta-amyloid protein "is produced by and injures skeletal muscle of patients with inclusion body myositis". Apparently this is false, but a huge number of papers state that it is true. From the abstract:"Design A complete citation network was

Climate Change Institute Open Day

Today, I attended the ANU's Climate Change Institute Open Day. There was a mix of natural and social science presentations ending with a 1 1/2 hour panel discussion featuring Tony McMichael, Warwick McKibbin, Kylie Catchpole, Andrew McIntosh, Brendan Mackey, and Ian Fry. I've found that seminars related to climate change often attract questions from climate change activists or deniers which

Why Most Published Research Results are False

A dramatic title to a paper published by John Ioannidis in PLOS Medicine. The arguments seem to be really a variant on the publication bias argument familiar in the economics meta-analysis literature. Imagine a field of study where there are no true relationships among the variables. For example, imagine that no drugs actually have an effect on a particular disease. Different researchers test the

Book Review: The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth

I have been reading The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth by Barry Naughton. It seems to be a nicely balanced objective survey of the Chinese economy covering both its evolution, especially since the key dates of 1949 (founding of the PRC) and 1978 (beginning of liberalization). As the author writes, most commentators seem to either over- or under- estimate China. And as other commenters on

ANZSEE Conference: Darwin, October 2009

I just submitted my abstract to the ANZSEE Conference in Darwin. Rich Howarth and Bob Costanza are supposed to be attending. The last ANZSEE conference I went to was at Griffith University in 1999. I was ANZSEE treasurer then. I've never been to the Northern Territory so that should be interesting too. And I'm hoping my wife will be able to present at the conference too.

What is Your Erdös Number?

Paul Erdös was a Hungarian Jewish mathematician who published a very large number of papers with a total of 511 collaborators. Those collaborators are assigned an Erdös number of one. Those who collaborated with them but not with Erdös have an Erdös number of two and so forth. Economics Nobel Prize winner Eric Maskin has an Erdös number of two and as a result Partha Dasgupta and Kenneth Arrow

Between Estimates of the Environmental Kuznets Curve

I submitted this paper to JEEM today. It follows up on a paper published earlier this year in the journal by Vollebergh et al. They argued that existing estimates of the environmental Kuznets curve are contingent on the treatment of the "time effects". Traditional panel data regression estimators assume that there is a different intercept for each country and often that there is a intercept for

Citations to Book Chapters

There are very few. At least that's what I've found so far in my career. Only around 1.5% of the citations I've received are to the book chapters I've published, though I've published something like 14 of them (including chapters in encyclopedias like the Encyclopedia of Energy) which is more than a third of the number of journal articles I've published. About 11% of my citations are to working

China and Japan Dominate Alternative Energy Innovation

This chart from a Thomson-Reuters report on patenting activity in alternative energy compares 1997-1999 with 2006-2008. EP is patents submitted to the European Patent Office. The most obvious trends are the amazing growth in Chinese activity (and to a lesser extent American, Korean, and British interest) and a swing towards wind energy innovation. The report also splits patenting among origins in

China Update 2009

Today I attended the 2009 China Update at ANU. It's a day of presentations by researchers from Australia, China, and the US on the latest economic situation in China. We received a book edited by Ross Garnaut, Ligang Song, and Wing Thye Woo containing most of the papers presented. However, the best two presentations of the day, in my opinion - the first and last presentations of the day, aren't

Presentation: Monday 13th July

I'm giving a presentation at the School of Economics, University of Queensland, tomorrow - Monday 13th July at 11:00am, Room 114 Colin Clark Building. The slides are here.

Vaclav Smil

I'm having a look at a recent book by Vaclav Smil: Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years . I'm very surprised to find that there is no Wikipedia article on Smil. I'm also a bit shocked by his criticism of other authors. On Jared Diamond's Collapse, he writes: "a derivative, unpersuasive, and simplistically deterministic book". Almost at in the same class as Taleb. The book is a

Presentation Slides

As promised, here are the slides for my presentation on Monday from the image above. It's not as long as it seems because several of the slides are duplicated to allow me to put bullet points one after the other onto the screen. But it still seems too long for my time (40 minutes + questions) so I may yet make some changes.

Economics Search Engine

Maybe a bit anti-interdisciplinary, but here is an economics search engine.Posting this reminded me of koogle - the ultraorthodox Jewish search portal (whose English search engine doesn't seem to work). But it certainly could be useful if you don't want to read about the NBA Commissioner :)

Job Talk Abstract

Here is the abstract for my upcoming presentation:Modelling Global Trends in Emissions and Energy EfficiencyAbstractThe environmental Kuznets curve has been a popular simple model of the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality. It is plagued, however, by significant econometric issues and explains relatively little about the differences in emissions between countries. In

Roger Pielke Jr.

I'd never heard of either Roger Pielke Sr or Roger Pielke Jr until I read very critical commentary on both of them on the Climate Progress blog. I've looked through a lot of Pielke Junior's blogposts, his paper in nature with Wigley, and slides from a recent presentation he gave. Most of what I read seemed entirely non-controversial from my perspective. In no way is the guy a "climate denier".

Another Climate Policy Poll

John Whitehead ran a survey on RESECON asking:"Considering two economic incentive-based environmental policies that couldbe used address climate change, which do you prefer?"Not so surprisingly, unlike the general public, the majority of respondents preferred a carbon tax:Dale Jorgenson also prefers a carbon tax:.

Designing a Job Talk

I just heard this afternoon that I have a job interview on Monday. The deadline was just last Friday! I've never seen an academic job search move this fast. Anyway, I now need to prepare a presentation for Monday. I'm somewhat dissatisified with the last two presentations I did as bases for this one. This post will be something of a stream of consciousness thing...One I did in March was on

Sensitivity Analysis of Climate Policy

Dale Jorgenson et al. did do a sensitivity analysis of their climate policy CGE model in 2000. They found that imposing zero substitutability between inputs had a big impact on the estimated costs of emissions reduction policies compared to their base case model. The impact depended on what they assumed the government did with the revenue from a carbon tax.When they assumed that the revenue from

What Do the Mitigation Policy Models Assume about Interfuel Substitution? And is it Important?

In my previous blogpost I commented that the elasticity of substitutions between fuels and between energy and capital were likely to be very important in estimates of the costs of emissions reduction policies. I've been trying to find support for, or evidence against, this hypothesis.Bhattacharya (1996) writes: "It is generally agreed that the elasticity values are the single most important

Interfuel Substitution and the Costs of Climate Change Policy

A meta-analysis is an analysis of existing empirical studies rather than another original primary study. The aim of a meta-analysis is to find out what is the average size of some parameter or effect in the existing literature - for example the average estimated damage from climate change or the elasticity of demand for gasoline - and what are the factors that cause there to be differences

Wordle

Wordle is a fun website which allows you to convert text into "word clouds". I used Wordle to create this graphic by pasting my entire PhD dissertation into the applet :)

The Public Prefers More Economic Pain

Of course they don't see it this way. A large majority of the US public support regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. Fewer support a cap and trade scheme and I'm sure even less support a carbon tax. A carbon tax with few exceptions and recycling of revenue by cutting existing distorting taxes is under the uncertainty of the real world the most economically efficient way to reduce carbon