Two New CCEP Papers

We have two new CCEP working papers on RePEc:Inequality, communication and the avoidance of disastrous climate change by Alessandro Tavoni et al.andCarbon Pricing that Builds Consensus and Reduces Australia's Emissions: Managing Uncertainties Using a Rising Fixed Price Evolving to Emissions Trading by Frank Jotzo.We've changed the numbering system from these two papers onwards. Now the numbers

ERA Consultation Part II

I previously submitted comments on the ARC's ranked journal list for the 2012 ERA research assessment exercise. You can also http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_2012/era_consultation_march11.htm">submit more general comments on the ERA process. I only submitted one comment, suggesting that economics should be evaluated using citation analysis. Psychology was the only social science evaluated using

New Journal: Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy

Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy (EEEP), is a new journal published by the International Association for Energy Economics, focusing on policy issues involving energy and environmental economics. The first issue will be published in January 2012 and a call for papers has been issued. The editors are Jean-Michel Glachant (European University Institute in Florence, Italy), Paul L. Joskow (

Japan Nuclear Crisis

Even the Chinese government has suspended it's nuclear power construction program to learn more about what has gone wrong in Japan, but George Monbiot argues that this shouldn't stop us from pursuing nuclear power with certain safeguards. However, the facts are that large earthquakes are possible perhaps anywhere though their probability within any timeframe is lower away from plate boundaries.

Global Trends in Carbon and Sulfur Emissions

I'm preparing a lecture on environmental economics for both my course "Economic Way of Thinking 1" at the Crawford School and as a guest lecture in an introductory economics course at the Treasury. I'm planning to open the lecture by presenting some global and regional trends, focusing on carbon and sulfur emissions. First the global trends using data from CDIAC and Steven Smith:and then data by

Jones and Romer's Stylized Facts

Actually this very readable article is titled: "The New Kaldor Facts: Ideas, Institutions, Population, and Human Capital". Kaldor proposed six "stylized facts" about the economic growth process. Jones and Romer propose six new ones. They are (in bold with my comments in plain text after them):1) Increases in the extent of the market. Increased flows of goods, ideas, finance, and people—via

A Small World or Not?

Academia often seems like a small world where everyone knows everyone else. But http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=hb_tab_pro_top">my experiences on LinkedIn suggest the opposite. Most of the people I am connected to on LinkedIn are only connected to perhaps 1-2 people that I am already connected to and when I browse their lists of connections there are normally only 1-2 other people that I

Director of LSE Resigns over Libya Connections

As an alumnus of LSE I got an e-mail this morning announcing that the Director had stepped down. Here is the full announcement. Here is more background of what must have forced him out.It's strange that it was fashionable in the last few years to be involved with Libya in Western circles and now again it isn't.

Australian Data Lacunae

I spent most of yesterday at a workshop sponsored by the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism on establishing an energy efficiency framework for Australia. The government has made improved energy efficiency a priority but now faces the challenge of being able to measure progress on that goal. My main impression from the meeting was the paucity of data available in Australia on many issues

Introducing BREE

In July 2010 ABARES was formed by the merger of ABARE (Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics) and BRS (Bureau of Rural Sciences) two Australian government research agencies. Now ABARES will be effectively dismantled by transferring the resource and energy economics parts of ABARES into the Department of Resources, Energy, and Tourism to form the new Bureau of Energy and

"Academic Age" of Authors of American Economic Review Articles

Torgler and Piatti have written a massive paper on the American Economic Review with heaps of tables, graphs, and regression analyses. This is what most caught my eye:Academic age is the number of years since an author got their PhD. The modal author of an AER article is about 4 years post PhD and there's quite a low probability of publication more than 20 years post-PhD. Maybe this is why people

How Does CSIRO Compare to Australian Universities?

The Australian government http://stochastictrend.blogspot.com/2011/02/era-report-released.html">recently released the ERA Report, which compared research at Australian universities to the rest of the world. But this report does not evaluate the performance of CSIRO Australia's system of natural laboratories.An article by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Batterham">Robin Batterham in the

Moved Office Again!

My new office is just across the corridor from my old one in Room 2.83 JGC (Crawford Buidling #132). My new phone number is 6125-3366. This is my 4th office since starting at ANU in April 2009!

Article on John List

Saw this article on John List linked at Marginal Revolution and decided to link from here too. List has contributed to both environmental and experimental economics and is famous among job candidates in economics for "publishing up" from his initial job at Central Florida U.