Fenner School Seminar: 12th November

I'm giving a seminar at the Fenner School on November 12th. It will be an expanded version of the presentation I'm giving at ANZSEE in Darwin. Here is the abstract:Modelling Global Trends in Energy EfficiencyThis seminar reports on ongoing research in the CERF Environmental Economics Research Hub funded project: “Modelling the Global Diffusion of Energy Efficiency and Low-Carbon Technology”. The

Drew Jones' TED Talk

Cool graphics (via Climate Progress) showing the relation between various emissions scenarios and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases: The results of my poll said that emissions would be the same in 2050 as today. You can see the results of continuing that until 2100 at around 9:20 in the video - 600ppm in 2100. Certainly better than supposed business as usual but still way too high.

Energy Use per Capita

Yesterday I showed you a chart of energy intensity vs. GDP per capita. There didn't seem to be much relationship in that data. Today we have energy use per capita and GDP per capita:Here there is a clear relationship. Unfortunately, for environmental Kuznets curve advocates it is pretty linear. Energy use is a first order proxy for environmental impact. For example, solar energy might be cleaner

Energy Intensity

Now I've put my database together we can have a first look at the data:Energy intensity is energy in terms of kilogrammes of oil equivalent per dollar of GDP using purchasing power parity adjusted exchange rates in 2005 prices. There are 3663 data points. There certainly doesn't seem to be any simple relationship between the level of income and energy intensity. On the other hand we can see some

UN vs. World Bank Data

I've finally put together the main database for my Environmental Economics Research Hub project on energy efficiency and carbon emissions. I have full data on energy use (by fuel), structure of the economy, GDP, investment, schooling, climate, emissions etc. for 99 countries for the period 1971 to 2007. For my 2002 paper on explaining sulfur emissions I only managed to put together data for 64

IEA Data at the National Library of Australia

International Energy Agency data is essential for serious global energy research but is very expensive. The full database costs E1400 ($A2,400) per year. If you only need a small amount of data you can purchase a "datacard" but it's still expensive. In my previous position at RPI I purchased data when necessary using research grants. But Paul Burke told me that the National Library of Australia

Gilles Saint‑Paul

Gives a somewhat more modest response to the British internal critics of mainstream economics than John Cochrane did to Paul Krugman. Maybe that's because he is a European? :)

Ranking Economists by Blog Popularity

The Eastern Economic Journal is publishing a paper about ranking economists by blog popularity. That's not something I want to catch on too fast! :) Reasonably popular blogs like Environmental Economics, Core Economics, and John Quiggin rank between 400,000 and 900,000 in Alexa rank. I have a long way to go.

Response to Paul Krugman

Via John Quiggin, a response to Paul Krugman.

ANU's 21 Future Fellows

ANU won 21 ARC Future Fellowships, second only to the University of Melbourne which won 25. ANU has now published http://news.anu.edu.au/?p=1629">the list of the future fellows and their research topics. I am surprised that all but one of them (Thomas Huber) is already a member of the academic staff of ANU. I would have expected to see more people who wanted to use the fellowship to come to work

EERH Research Reports Join RePEc

Everything is now complete and debugged and the Environmental Economics Research Hub Reports are now included in the RePEc database. The papers will be included in the IDEAS and EconPapers search engines and other RePEc services.This will provide much greater visibility for our working paper series in the worldwide economics community. RePEc has around 21,000 registered members and even more

Penn World Table vs. World Development Indicators

Today, we had a presentation from Prasada Rao of University of Queensland on the theory of constructing international comparisons of income. He also covered some more practical aspects concerning the recent new international price comparison benchmark - ICP 2005. As everyone knows, the prices of identical goods vary across countries as exemplified by the Big Mac Index. But actually constructing

The Garnaut Review One Year On

Ross Garnaut gave a presentation to a totally full theatre at Manning Clark Centre at ANU yesterday evening, reviewing his Review and the responses to it in the last year. From what he said he pretty much anticipated what would happen especially regarding the lobbying by business for free permit allocations (after all he's chairman of a mining company himself). Still he said that the government's

ARC Future Fellowships

The results were announced of the first round of the ARC (Australian Research Council) Future Fellowships. These are fellowships tenable for 4 years at an Australian institution for "mid-career" researchers. 200 fellowships were awarded out of 975 proposals submitted. ANU got 21 of the fellowships, though its success rate of 26% was not a lot higher than average. Universities such as Deakin and

Krugman in the NYT Magazine

In case you haven't seen it yet, here is Paul Krugman's article on the state of macroeconomics from the New York Times Magazine.

Progress on "Hub" Project

My research project funded by the Environmental Economics Research Hub is about the international diffusion of energy efficiency technology at the macro-economic level. The project has two main stages. In the first stage I estimate a function that explains energy intensity (=the amount of energy used in the economy/GDP) in terms of the level of inputs like capital, labor, and the various types of

British Wages in the Early Modern Period

An interesting article about the welfare gains from the introduction of commodities like coffee and sugar in early modern Britain. The authors also argue that these gains lead to underestimation of the increase in wages in early modern Britain. I think they are right about the rising wages in Britain but a bit surprised that they think that that finding is new as Robert Allen makes the high wages