This is the WordPress version of the Environmental Economics blog, previously hosted by Typepad from 2005 to 2025. The blog was most active from 2005 to 2017. At that point a number of factors led to the decline of economics blogging and we slowed down our posting significantly. Typepad shut down in September 2025 (with…

I know what you are thinking, these rich people are getting unfair benefits because they are, well, rich. But, hear me out, I see it as caring about the university so much that you want them to get the top students. And, coincidentally, you happen to have a personal relationship with those students (Are UNC…

Let's say I have contingent valuation data for a recreation trip where the dependent variable is y=0 if they would take the trip and y=1 otherwise. The independent variables are the added cost of the trip, a risk factor and whether the respondent takes a day or overnight trip. The logit generates a constant, a<0,…

American Economic Review Vol. 113, Issue 7 — July 2023: The authors mention stated preference research in environmental economics (where it all began, right?) a couple of times. First, we get the obligatory CVM critics pat-on-the-back on page 2010: The advantages of the stated-preference approach come at potential costs, in particular the concern that actual…

I participated in a survey conducted by Clemson this week. I was eligible because I had published a paper using opt-in panel data at some point. I posted the image to the right to twitter and proceeded to provide a brief review of what I thought about each of the panels I've used. I've been…

Here is the link and story: Partha Dasgupta is a Cambridge University economist who in 2021 prepared a more than 600-page report for the British government about the financial value of nature. Not your average bedtime reading. But believe us when we say his report, the culmination of decades of scholarship, is incredibly important. Or…

Saw this tweet this morning with 2.3M views: Just eyeballing it, from 1995-2000, boy suicide rates fell from about 18 to around 9, a 50% drop. Girl suicide rates fell from about 4 to about 2 per 100K, a 50% decline. Correspondingly, the overall suicide rates fell from around 11 to about 5.5 per 100K, a…

Coral Davenport in the NYTimes (E.P.A. Tells Dozens of States to Clean Up Their Smokestacks): The Biden administration on Wednesday finalized a rule forcing factories and power plants in 23 Western and Midwestern states to sharply cut smog-causing pollution that is released from their smokestacks and fouls the air in Eastern states. Known as the…

Here are some Elvis lyrics*: Wise men sayOnly fools rush inBut I can't help falling in love with you Your kisses lift me higherLike the sweet song of a choirYou light my morning skyWith burning love Well, please, don't ask me what's upon my mindI'm a little mixed up, but I feel fineWhen I'm near…

Here is the link: https://aere.memberclicks.net/conference—sea. The deadline is the end of February.  For the first time since 2006 I'm not chairing the committee that is organizing these sessions. Please forgive me, but I'm going to take a victory lap*.  These sessions began with a meeting called by Jim Kahn in the 1990s at the Southern…