Sound Economics

As you may know, government officials around the world are currently deliberating in Paris in an attempt to create a legally binding agreement to combat climate change at COP21. Beginning on November 30th, and lasting until December 11th, the UN Paris Climate Talks are aiming to build a “Paris Climate Alliance” capable of keeping the average global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius that is universal, flexible, balanced, and dynamic. Policymakers have been working away at a draft text that went from a lengthy 34,678 words and 1,609 unresolved brackets, to a current 19,733 words and 361 unresolved brackets. Although Continue reading COP21 and 2 Degrees→

Economimist Martin Armstrong recently claimed that the monetary value taken in by police seizures exceeded the monetary value of damages due to burglary. In 2014, around $4.5 billion dollars were seized by the police while only $3.9 billion dollars were lost by burglaries. As Martin writes, “this means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.” Now, this is a somewhat arbitrary comparison; the fact that one value exceeds the other doesn’t hold any inherent meaning in particular. A large part of police seizures come from drug trafficking networks and other criminal syndicates not directly connected to Continue reading Police Seizures Balloon→

As the fall semester winds down, keep in mind that it’s never too early to start thinking about summer internships. Here is an research internship through the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, on the economic impact of offshore fishing tournaments. This opportunity might be right for you if you have an interest in natural resource or environmental economics. Application information is here: credentials must be submitted by May 1, 2016, and expected internship dates are from June to September.

I write about wealth inequality sometimes, it’s an important issue in the US (at least to me). The distribution of wealth is incredibly skewed. The US’ wealthiest people (400 of them) own more wealth than 61% of the country. I always wondered what would happen if some of them just gave up a bunch of their wealth to those less fortunate, and not in a controlled superficially-philanthropic way, but a massive Ebenezer Scrooge-ish dump of their assets. Mark Zuckerberg almost made my dream come true yesterday when he announced he was giving away 99% of his and his wife’s worth in Facebook stock, Continue reading Mark Zuckerberg’s Really, Really Impure Altruism→

Recent events in Brussels had me wondering: what is the impact of shutting down a city for a few days? In the wake of the Paris attacks, Brussels (the capital city of Belgium) was largely in the state of lockdown as authorities hunt down suspects and work to mitigate what they describe as an “imminent threat.” I was personally surprised that such a large city would be voluntarily shuttered for any significant amount of time, so I decided to poke around into the economic costs of making such a decision. The situation reminded me of the lockdown of Boston during the 2013 Continue reading The Cost of a Lockdown→

Two Black Friday tidbits as that wild celebration of American consumerism approaches… Black Friday is clearly an American tradition. However, it may surprise you that Black Friday seems to be adopting the hallmark of more traditional holidays: baubles that you pull out of the attic over and over. According to Chron, around 11 percent of all Black Thursday and Black Friday deals that you’ll be seeing this year were re-used from last year. How does that warm glow of nostalgia feel? Although Thanksgiving is a national holiday unique to the United States, Black Friday–even though it originally stems from being the day Continue reading Black Friday Approaches…→

On Monday, I had the privilege to interview the world’s first and only stand-up Economist, Yoram Bauman, Ph.D before he spoke about the second round of the Tacoma Climate Conversation right here at the University of Puget Sound. Not only is he an incredible speaker and comedian, but he is also the founder of CarbonWA, a grassroots initiative advocating for a carbon tax here in Washington. It was incredible being able to talk to an expert on “getting the price right” after writing many articles about the topic because it gave me a dimension of the conversation that is rarely written Continue reading Soundcast Episode 2: Interview with Yoram Bauman→

Inspired by Planet Money’s recent episode on the Trans Pacific Partnership, I decided to look through the text of the deal… from a Logger perspective. So, I brought up the “US Tariff Elimination-Schedule” and did a quick ctrl-f search for “axe.” I have put the Logger-relevant section of the table in the post below, but first here are the definitions of a few acronyms and codes that appear there: customs duties on originating goods provided for in the items in staging category EIF shall be eliminated entirely, and such goods shall be duty-free on the date of entry into force Continue reading TPP: A Logger Perspective→