Environmental Economics
The cromulent economics blog
recent posts
Category: Government Policy
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When there is an increase in demand a business firm will increase output. In the case of a park, you need more employees to make sure the quality of the product stays high. But, no: Handling throngs of visitors has long been a tough task for a dwindling number of Park Service employees. The task…
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From the local paper (Foothills Conservancy making progress to permanently protect iconic Blowing Rock view): Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina announced significant progress toward the purchase and permanent protection of a 332-acre parcel of land in Blowing Rock that contains the headwaters of the Johns River and is part of an iconic view seen from…
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I just finished reading Kirk Wallace Johnson's The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast. Here's my book review (from the view of an Environmental Economist of course). The Fishermen and the Dragon tells the true story of the evolution of the Texas Gulf Coast crab and…
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New York City will implement its first congestion charge program by the end of 2023… perhaps. The charge was passed in 2019 but has faced delays until present. Unsurprisingly, New Yorkers don't love it… but it will grow on them (if you'll forgive my out of sample prediction). The figure below reports percent of residents…
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The US government did not shut down in FY 2023. That is immensely unremarkable… But, I had a social media memory pop up about the most recent shutdown in the US, so I'm going to write about them. It was the longest shutdown in US history: 35 days (December 22nd 2018 to January 25th 2019)…
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While teaching emissions control policies this last week to my undergraduates, I revisited my signature of the Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends (now signed by over 3600 economists). It’s been four years since the origin of the statement, and despite it being the most agreed-upon policy statement in the history of economics, no federal greenhouse…
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Growing up on the east coast, and now living in the mid-west, water quantity has never been an issue for me or my work (water quality is an issue, but quantity, less so). APPARENTLY* water quantity is an issue in the western U.S. So how do you solve the common resource problem when the water…
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Thirty years ago, I proposed a dissertation topic to establish a set of national income accounts for Green National Income. It was rejected as too grand (and honestly, I had no idea what I was talking about at the time). Fast forward to news out of Davos yesterday: President Joe Biden’s administration will launch an…
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I recently read an article in the journal Economics and Philosophy, written by Lisa Herzog, which has nothing whatsoever to do with environmental economics but nonetheless I think has interesting implications for it and for Pigouvian pricing in particular. In case you are unfamiliar with it, the journal Economics and Philosophy is a scholarly journal…
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Last week Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insulted climate activist and Time Person of the Year Greta Thunberg by claiming that she shouldn't talk about climate policy before studying economics and college. When asked about her suggestion for public divestment from fossil fuel companies, Mnuchin said: Is she the chief economist, or who is she? I'm…
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