Sound Economics

Economists sure love their charts, as any student who survives Econ 170 has learned. Data visualization isn’t just the decorative frosting on lesson plans and published papers. It is an absolutely essential interface between people and data. Briefly consider this data on annual percent change in GDP in the United States from FRED: DATE VALUE 1955-01-01 7.125955765883840 1956-01-01 2.131213376900720 1957-01-01 2.102826706703490 1958-01-01 -0.731728665207882 1959-01-01 6.898619218085940 1960-01-01 2.566027153202800 1961-01-01 2.554101761976380 1962-01-01 6.114879435404820 1963-01-01 4.355504976980980 1964-01-01 5.767719183950940 1965-01-01 6.497636614399920 1966-01-01 6.595334041630260 1967-01-01 2.743014189834750 1968-01-01 4.909046030916900 1969-01-01 3.139619503066850 1970-01-01 0.202123088186139 1971-01-01 3.295743329097830 1972-01-01 5.262807206376060 1973-01-01 5.643390319077960 1974-01-01 -0.516677958914673 1975-01-01 -0.198293195948870 1976-01-01 5.386836510161830 1977-01-01 4.608445145318870 Continue reading Sonification!→

Farming in cities? What are you, MAD? Believe it or not, farming in cities is not only widespread, but has tons of benefit. Urban agriculture accounts for up to 15% of the world’s food. Japan, The Netherlands, and Chile have more urban than rural farms. Sydney, Australia produced a billion dollars worth of agricultural goods alone, some 12% of the state’s production. In 2014, Detroit produced enough to feed over 600 people for a year, and in 2008, Philadelphia produced 2 million pounds of vegetables. Urban agriculture doesn’t take one form. A good portion is in the style of community Continue reading Urban Farming→

Unfortunately I’m not talking about it being too hot to work on your thesis, or to do a problem set – I’m referring to economic productivity. Not only is climate change destroying our atmosphere, making our seasons more harsh and/or unpredictable, and killing polar bears – but its also impacting our economic productivity. A study recently published in Nature claims that “growing evidence demonstrates that climactic conditions can have a profound impact on the functioning of modern human societies”. Now this is what I call environmental economics (or ecological economics, I guess). The main conclusion of the study (called Global non-linear effect of temperature Continue reading Warmer Temperatures are Impacting Our Productivity→

This week I interviewed UPS Alumni Carl Larson, who currently works in energy services at Solar City! When did you graduate from UPS? May 2009. Can you tell me about your work at SolarCity? (What do you do? How did you end up there? Do you have an idea of where you want to go within/outside of SolarCity?) My work at SolarCity definitely builds on what I studied in Econ at UPS, which is great. SolarCity is the nation’s leader for rooftop solar energy, we’re sister companies with Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and majority-owned by Elon Musk. I’m in sales at SolarCity, even though I’m never Continue reading Interview with UPS Alumni Carl Larson!→

I, along with fellow writer Nicky Smit and Professor Lea Fortmann, had the incredible opportunity to attend the CANUSSEE (Canada & United States Societies for Ecological Economics) Conference two weekends ago in Vancouver B.C. For those of you who aren’t familiar with ecological economics, it is a growing interdisciplinary field that aims to reform basic economic theory and reverse the paradigm that monetary growth measures the success of a society. Ecological economists criticize the anthropocentric nature of neoclassical economists, and emphasize the fact that the economy is a subset of nature, rather than the other way around. Most importantly, they Continue reading Oh Say, CANUSSEE pt. 2→

Last week, I had a mild case of deja vu reading Lorraine’s post providing an economic analysis of Uber’s entry into the New York transportation market. I couldn’t quite place where I had heard the story before. Then, almost the very next item on my RSS feed was an infographic from the Onion comparing Uber and traditional taxi services. A few days later, I remembered where I had heard about taxi medallions: NPR’s Planet Money. In particular, they ran a show this summer entitled “Taxi King.” The episode features an interview with Gene Freidman, New York taxi fleet magnate, on Continue reading Taxi vs. Uber Follow-Up→

Last week I had the pleasure, nay, the honor, to attend the joint Canadian and United States Ecological Economics (CANUSSEE) Conference. Its host was the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada, and so it was a drive but worth every grueling second. I jest. My company was fellow Sound Economics writer Miranda Kraus and chauffeur/Professor Lea Fortmann, and for three days I ate, drank, and sneezed economics. Scholars spanning the states and provinces flew in and paid mega sums of money to give PowerPoint spiels, violently network, and occasionally yell “Bullshit!” during each other’s talks. With more than 70 Continue reading Oh Say CANUSSEE→