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Showing posts from September, 2013

Desperate times bring desperate measures

Update : Edwardo Porter makes the same point, only he does a much better job of it. A bit off topic, but the impending government shutdown has me thinking in simple game theoretic terms. Some on the left (and right) seem to think that Congressional actions are "crazy" as government shutdown is likely to hurt the Republican party.  After all, that's what happened the last time when Newt Gingrich shut down the government in 1995, which led to his demise and helped Clinton win reelection against Dole in 1996. It's probably fair to guess that, while this time is different (isn't every time, at least a little?), the shutdown will likely hurt the Republican party.  So why are they doing it?  Are they really crazy?  Has the radical fringe taken over and leading us over the cliff to disaster? Well maybe. But maybe their actions, even if potentially disastrous, are rational and not surprising given the circumstances.  It seems to me the Republican party is in a de

Climate Change and Resource Rents

With the next IPCC report coming out, there's been more reporting on climate change issues.  Brad Plumer over a Wonkblog has  nice summary  that helps to illustrate how much climate change is already "baked in" so to speak. I'd like to comment one point.  Brad writes "Humans can only burn about one-sixth of their fossil fuel reserves if they want to keep global warming below  2ÂșC ." I'd guess some might quibble with the measurement a bit, since viable reserves depends on price and technology, plus many unknowns about much fossil fuel there really is down there.  But this is probably in the ballpark, and possibly conservative. Now imagine you own a lot of oil, coal and/or natural gas, you're reading Brad Plumber, and wondering what might happen to climate policy in the coming years.  Maybe not next year or even in the next five or ten years, but you might expect that eventually governments will start doing a lot more to curb fossil fuel u

I've been touched by genius

Awesome news.  My colleague David Lobell just won the MacArthur grant. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/september/macarthur-fellowship-awards-092513.html Seriously, David is a fantastic colleague and very deserving of this award.  Also, I think we have some great new research in the pipeline and with any luck this might help bring some exposure to it.

GGG is among the top 200 most influential economics blogs (just barely)

I just stumbled upon this ranking via Econobrowser , which is number 10, and one of the blogs I really like to visit. Greed, Green and Grains is number 199. Well, I guess that's not a crown jewel, but I'll take it, especially given how my little niche isn't one of the biggest fields of economics and how little time I have to dedicate to this thing.  I realize posting is thin.  I will try to post when I can, but my commitments are just too many to post much these days.   G-FEED , which is steadily growing in influence, will have more posts because there a number of us contributing, some of whom are rapidly becoming the rock stars of science, with some major publications and media attention.