"Even without hurricanes, US disaster costs surpassed $100 billion last year."
"More than half of 2025 disaster costs, $61 billion, were tied to the wildfires that burned in Los Angeles last January."
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/c...
"Cheap Solar Is Transforming Lives and Economies Across Africa"
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/c...
Newer planes are also nicer to ride in.
See also Watson, Guettabi, Reimer (2020), "Universal Cash and Crime" in ReStat.
Prospective PhD student interested in environmental, agricultural, or development economics? Consider applying to Oregon State University.
Video explainer on our PhD program:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
These are huge effect sizes.
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...
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.
