Excellent Advice for a Research Career

Shuang linked to this excellent advice on selecting research topics. I have tried to follow these rules in my career. I had no idea though that they had been written down by someone in this form. Occasionally though the need to get money and/or get published fast has over-ridden these guidelines, but as long-term criteria I think they are very good if you are really a serious/ambitious researcher

Famous Rejections

In a posthumously published paper, Clive Granger discusses the evolution of the idea of cointegration. It turns out that his famous 1987 paper with Engel in Econometrica was rejected twice (without an invitation to resubmit). The first version was sole authored. The second one was dual authored "but it was also rejected for not being sufficiently original"! That's one of the papers that won Engel

Inheritance and Economic Growth

I am reading an interesting paper by Thomas Piketty on inheritance and economic growth. It's a long paper with lots of stuff in it. But here is the key point. They construct time series for inheritance (both bequests and inter-vivos transfers) for France over almost 200 years. One source is French estate tax data and the other a model of demography, saving etc. The gap between the two series (

Seminar 26th October

I know this is a long time off, but I just agreed to do a seminar at 2pm on 26th October in Seminar Room B, Coombs Building, ANU. Title is: "The Role of Energy in Long-Run Economic Growth". I will report on my work in collaboration with Astrid Kander at University of Lund on energy and growth in Sweden over a couple of centuries. I also have started supervising a graduate student as part of an

NOAA State of the Climate 2009

I've been looking for a "state of the world" article for the class I will be teaching in Lund. Today, NOAA released their annual report on the state of the climate. That is an excellent example of the kind of thing I'm looking for. Now, if I could cover energy trends, pollutants, biodiversity etc. as well as the climate in one article that would be great. It's pretty easy to find reports on such

Strategic Behavior and the Environment

Another new journal in the environmental economics space. I've never heard of the publisher but the editor is Ariel Dinar (UC Riverside) and they have a bunch of well known people on the editorial board. It's not quite as star studded as the board of Climate Change Economics but still pretty impressive.

Suggest an Article for My Students

They'll only be my students for one guest lecture. They are students in a business masters who are taking an environmental economics class. The textbook for the class is undergrad level and a bit old (they cover the whole book in 3 weeks). I need an overview article about global trends in energy, pollution, climate change, biodiversity, the more the merrier over the last decade at least to

Gillard's Climate Initiative

The main feature of Gillard's climate policy announced today is to run a 150 person citizens' jury on the issue. Strangely most of the green activists quoted are against the idea but many of my colleagues in ecological economics would probably think this was a great idea in principle. Shuang's first reaction was though that: "it will be tough to handle 150 people".Gillard also said that under a

Global Map of Forest Canopy Height

NASA has produced a cool map of world forest heights. Woodlands and savannas are not included so the green areas are a very low end estimate of world forest cover.

IAmScientist

My wife passed on an invitation she got to join a new site called I Am Scientist. Seems to be yet another competitor with ResearchGate, Academia.edu, CoS, ResearcherID and for economists RePEc. This site mainly seems to have medical scientists signed up so far. No-one yet seems to have the momentum of Facebook or LinkedIn in the academic space.

Jobs Websites

VoxEU now has a jobs website. It has a lot of European jobs listed, which nicely complements the U.S. focus of JOE (JObs for Economists). For Australian jobs, UniJobs is pretty comprehensive. Just put the keywords you are interested in into their search engine.

Australian Federal Election Called

Joshua Gans is endorsing Labor. Not much of a surprise. Australian economists mostly seem to be left wing though he seems a bit less so than many. John Quiggin is endorsing the Greens. I just posted this on Quiggin's blog:"Well I expect Andrew Leigh will be my new member of parliament. I do favor voting Green as first preference * as a signal to the major parties. That’s what I usually do. The

China Update

Yesterday, I attended the China Update at ANU. One of the benefits of attending is getting a copy of the book produced for the conference which I am looking through at the moment. Not all chapters were presented at the conference and not all conference papers are in the book.I was most interested in three topics discussed at the update and in the conference book: Calls from China-based

New Office

I just moved office. I'm now in Room 4038 in the Coombs Building which is in the area occupied by Resource Management in the Asia Pacific though I'm still attached to the Arndt-Corden Division or Department. My phone number is 6125-1609. But the best way to contact me as usual is by e-mail. I like this office better than my old one actually. It's bigger, has a real wooden desk, and has much more

Call for References: The Role of Energy in Economic Growth

Back in April I did a series of posts on energy and economic growth which serialised a review paper I was editing on the topic. A couple of those have been among my post popular posts in the last few months. Now I am revising the paper again for the final version. The referees made a lot of comments but I am also reading some additional papers and seeing if they fit into the story. So if you

Climate Spectator

Business Spectator is an Australian financial news website that is today launching a new venture: Climate Spectator. Looks like it will be interesting.

Development and Environment Data

One of these was released last year and the other earlier this year but, I guess, better late than never!Free Data from the World BankThe World Bank now offers free access to more than 2,000 financial, business, health, economic and human development statistics that had mostly been previously available only to paying subscribers. The data can be accessed via the ">data catalog. This includes the

New Sulfur Dioxide Dataset

Steve Smith of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and his team have completed work on their dataset of sulfur emissions from 1850 to 2005 by country and year. The paper is available for discussion on Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics' website.I've known for a while that this dataset was under development, which is the main reason why I haven't updated my own estimates of global sulfur

Gittins Enters the Economics Consensus Debate

Ross Gittins agrees with Ken Henry that academic economists need to get behind "reforms". I don't understand this presumption that economists should all be in agreement about all policies that the government happens to come up with. I disagreed with the basic rationale for the RSPT as presented in the Henry Review. I see royalties as a charge by the resource owner not as a priori a "distorting

EERH Research Reports: June 2010

Downloads of EERH Research Reports crept up a bit more last month as we brought more papers online. We now have 64 papers in the series. Additions to RePEc in the last month include:EERH46: Testing construct validity of verbal versus numerical measures of preference uncertainty in contingent valuation, Sonia Akter and Jeff W Bennett.EERH55: Prerequisites and limits for economic modelling of

The RSPT is Dead Long Live the MRRT!

The Commonwealth Government * is announcing changes to the RSPT. The interest rate is 7% above the government long-term bond rate, the rate of the tax is 30% no refunds of losses and it only applies to iron ore and coal. It is being rebadged the "Minerals Resource Rent Tax". The existing Petroleum Resource Rent Tax will be extended to onshore coal seam gas production.These are changes which the