M. Nolan Grey has a great breakdown of California's SB 79, the bill signed last Friday to upzone neighborhoods and add housing near transit. mnolangray.substack.com/p/everything...

Increased immigration to the United States since 1965 may have increased innovation and wages by 5 percent. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Good infographic:

I don't like it but HIGH FREQUENCY, IN-PERSON assessments are the only way college students are going to learn anything this semester www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...

Impossible for me to see this study, which values trade-offs in urban green space and car space, and not think about the congestion pricing experience in New York. Ex-ante people were protective of car space, but ex-post everyone seems to like congestion pricing...

Developing a new method to answer whether environmental markets actually improve allocative efficiency. California's RECLAIM program improved allocative efficiency, but the US's NOx Budget Trading Program did not, from Kyle C. Meng and Vincent Thivierge https://www.nber.org/papers/w34111

I was not aware that a major driver of Indonesian deforestation is... American RV demand www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/w...

I didn’t appreciate that a downtown MAX tunnel in Portland would speed up *the whole system* by alleviating the main choke point. Cool video about it: youtu.be/OF2-lnj8vEQ

What prompts interest in climate change? Batzer et al. explore Google search data to answer. • Heatwaves drive interest more than wildfires or hurricanes. • Climate change interest is seasonal. • Search interest jumps temporarily after extreme weather events.

Top states by EV or plug-in electric hybrid share (as of 2023): CA: 4.5% DC: 3.8% HI: 3.0% WA: 2.8% OR: 2.4% NJ: 2.4%

Rent freezes are a major part of Zohran Mamdani's platform for NYC mayor. A nice review of the literature on the effects of rent control is Kholodilin (2024, J. Hous. Econ.) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🚨New @nber.org WP🚨 We use data on 42,000 households in #India to study how the agricultural sector copes w/ labour loss. As #farmers move to cities for higher wages, their left-behind families *don't* substitute with increased capital -- they downsize their farms. (1/2)

Oregon’s cap and trade would be modeled after Washington’s. Unlikely with only 5 weeks in the session, but would mean the whole West Coast under cap and trade.

First Street Foundation projected unhealthy air days over the next 15 years:

One consequence of restrictive development in urban cores: Most of the employment growth in the western US since 1990 has taken place in high wildfire hazard areas. Via Joiner, Walls, Wibbenmeyer 2025. media.rff.org/documents/Re...

RIP. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/c...

This paper was making the rounds, but did you notice it has a key contradiction? They divide cities into two groups (high and low housing supply constraints), and estimate the supply elasticity—how much quantities change in response to prices. Result: no difference! 1/

People have very low willingness to privately and voluntarily reduce their carbon footprint. Via Dechezleprêtre et al. (2025), "Fighting Climate Change: International Attitudes toward Climate Policies" www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

What’s the longest footnote you have ever read

When I got my current job one of my committee members, Olivier Deschênes, said to me: "In the winter Alaska is very dark, so there won't be much to do besides work. And in the summer, the sun is out all day -- which is great for working."

The funny thing about the logged x-axis is it shows that utility is concave in wealth

This is so odd to me. CoreLogic was a much better name.

Political Ideology and US EV adoption, by Davis, Li, Springel. Over 2012-23, EV adoption was driven by left-leaning areas, suggesting challenges in wider adoption. Will be interesting to see how Elon Musk might drive apolitical and right-wing consumers to adopt EVs. www.nber.org/papers/w33591

Earth's orbit is an open access resource. Satellites debris creates congestion and, unchecked, could render regions of orbit unusable ("Kessler syndrome"). @akhilrao.bsky.social and Rondina (2025) characterize the conditions under which this could occur. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

New NBER paper shows dramatic effects of NYC's congestion pricing in contrast with a set of control cities: A large reduction in travel times on roadways—average speeds increased by 15%—combined with a substantial reduction in vehicular emissions. www.nber.org/system/files...

Cool results by @reidtaylor.bsky.social, Erich Muehlegger. "The Effects of Competition in the Retail Gasoline Industry" • Entry of gas stations lowers nearby prices. • Effects are persistent. • Effects decline w/ distance. • No effect following nearby exits. www.nber.org/papers/w33569

An article with a long and detailed discussion of the utility wildfire risk issue in California today. Worth reading if you are interested in these issues and the broader one of how to socialize these growing costs. www.utilitydive.com/news/insuran...

Has anyone looked at whether duplex/quadplex infill laws in Oregon and Washington have resulted in more housing? I wasn't aware of the barriers ("poison pills") that existed in California's previous attempt.

Check out this VoxDev writeup of my recently accepted paper on infrastructure, institutions, and biodiversity conservation! @voxdev.bsky.social

Excited to announce I am joining Oregon State University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Economics starting Fall 2025. Thank you to my colleagues, coauthors, and friends across UAA, the UC system, and RFF. Looking forward to the rain and trees in the PNW.

The Trump Admin is attempting to overturn California's scheduled ban of gas-powered vehicles by 2035. States that planned to follow California's phase-out: DE, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, OR, PA, RI, VT, WA. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/c...

Should get an update on Friday, 21 Feb. about "The California Wildfire Public Model Act," which would establish a public catastrophe model for wildfires. This could help alleviate asymmetric info about catastrophe risk in homeowners insurance markets. www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/01...

Thinning and prescribed burns mitigate the severity of future wildfires. But we have lacked great cost estimates, which are important for prioritization of operations. New paper from D. Wear, M. Wibbenmeyer, and Y. Zhu quantifies these costs throughout California. media.rff.org/documents/WP...

First Street Foundation estimates that "unrestricted risk-based insurance pricing would drive a 29.4% increase in average premiums by 2055 -- comprising an 18.4% correction for current underpricing and an 11% increase from growing climate risks." assets.riskfactor.com/media/The%20...

What are the economic effects of wildfire smoke? Matt Wibbenmeyer and I recently reviewed the impacts on health, mortality, labor markets, and measures of general well-being. Just published in Review of Environmental Economics and Policy (REEP): www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Hottest! 2024 was the hottest year and the first above 1.5 degrees centigrade. "The planet's average temperature in 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period." Every month in 2024 was the warmest or 2nd warmest. #energysky www.reuters.com/business/env...

Preventive management, prescribed burns, vegetation treatment, buffers around communities, building codes, and not building in high risk areas to begin with...

Palisades fire: - 30,000 residents evacuated - 13,000 structures under threat - 28,300 households without power - Power preemptively shut off for 15,000 more utility customers in SoCal apnews.com/article/wild...

The business school at UAA is hiring and they are open to economists, especially data science types. It's one floor up from the Econ Department, which is a strong group of research-oriented faculty. Plus Alaska is a great place to live. careers.alaska.edu/jobs/assista...

Lots of takes on new Trump tariffs. Here's a quick general equilibrium analysis. Grabbed an off-the-self quantitative trade model (multisector armington) calibrated to '22 global trade flows. Fed in 25% MEX, 25% CAN, and 10% PRC tariffs across sectors. What happens to U.S. consumer prices? 1/3

Estimating that *twenty-one* percent of people are trans is crazy for an *average* poll response.

"The Value of Statistical Life for Seniors" by Ketcham, Kuminoff, and Saha (posted today) derives new VSLs that are specific to age, health, income, education. Immediately relevant for any paper estimating mortality from e.g. Medicare data. nber.org/papers/w33165

So the week after the election Hochul brought back congestion pricing. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/n...

> Used to manually code delta method > Realized there are probably packages that do it > Find a stack exchange comment from two years ago mentioning a package > Realize the package function is already deprecated > Go back to coding delta method manually

It turns out people would rather get a $2000 check than have their taxes reduced by $2000.

Project 2025 describes NOAA as a primary component "of the climate change alarm industry" and said it "should be broken up and downsized." It calls for "commercializing forecast operations." www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

Plans are gaining speed! ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/211...

Prior to Helene, the median hurricane this century caused 28 deaths and $8.7 billion in property damages. DHS says Helene may have up to 600 deaths and AccuWeather is estimating damages at $145 to $160 billion.

1. The US is producing more oil than any country in history. 2. These y-axes are at very different scales.