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David Zetland
Amsterdam
Water economist and professor
Recent Activity
Reality bites, but Texans have a weak response to pain.
My Ten Cents - Fly on the Wall Heard in Houston - Harvey, Help, Hurricanes, Hydrology, Honduras & Humanity
Late yesterday I started my journey to San Pedro Sula, Honduras - by some measures the world’s most dangerous city (Caracas gets my vote) in the world’s most dangerous country, but I don’t believe it - to help dedicate a water project funded by my foundation and see good friend Rolando Lopez ...
I'm an economist and here's my response to this post, which does NOT incline me to read this book. First, economists do not have power per se, as that's held by politicians. Second, the Keynesians were/are interventionists; many free market economists would have told governments to leave the market alone (but DO take care of people via political mechanisms). Third -- and I heard this on day one of grad school -- there is ALWAYS someone asking economists what to do. Not surprisingly, some economists like answering, whether or not they are right.
This post (the book?) therefore misses the forest (how economics helps us think about choices, etc) for its focus on a few trees (the economists who promise outcomes).
I work "just across the road" from the Author, so it may be good to have a chat about what some OTHER economists think :)
David Zetland
Assistant professor of economics
Leiden University College
The Sway of Economists in Public Policy
How have economic experts come to wield so much influence in policy making? by JOHAN CHRISTENSEN Public domain via Pixabay. During the Brexit campaign, the British politician Michael Gove famously stated, “I think people in this country have had enough of experts […] saying that they know wha...
Don't forget that the EXISTENCE of such a tax may remind consumers to rethink their demand (and thus shift it in), which may mean you're imputing too much elasticity to price.
Daily Demand and Supply: Calculating an elasticity of demand for sugary drinks
From FiveThirtyEight.com: Philadelphia supermarkets and distributors say beverage sales have dropped 30 percent to 50 percent after the city instituted a 1.5-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary and diet drinks. On one hand, these are the same people who want to get the tax repealed, and we don’t have ...
Damn that sucks...
"Why did Beall's List of potential predatory publishers go dark?"
I've used this list a number of times on this blog (most recently here with, I must say, a nice comment on the economics of the industry): Jeffrey Beall, the University of Colorado, Denver, librarian who has since 2008 chronicled “potential, possible, or probable” predatory publishers, has — at...
What a disaster. It's like saying "rights" without adding "obligations"
I will use this for my Enviro Econ CBA discussion...
"House conservatives' sweeping plan for Trump's first 100 days, explained"
All regulations have zero benefits: Thursday morning, the House Freedom Caucus, the main group representing the far right of House Republicans, released an ambitious regulatory — or, really, deregulatory — agenda for the Trump administration to pursue. It consists of a detailed, agency-by-agenc...
Congrats!
WaterWired Celebrates Its Tenth Anniversary!
Never thought this day would arrive, but it did, after 3,756 posts and over 1.1M page views. My initial worry was that I would not have enough material to post, but I found plenty with a lot left. I'm no longer concerned about running out. Here was my first post on 7January 2007: Thanks for...
I had an email chat with him...
http://www.aguanomics.com/2016/11/trumped-up-polices.html
...and we're off.
Well, that didn't take long: It’s been reported that Trump had chosen Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, to lead his Environmental Protection Agency transition team. Ebell has called the Clean Power Plan “illegal”...
Arg! Using this baptists and bootleggers example: http://www.aguanomics.com/2016/10/dark-age-ahead-review.html
Loose lips sink ships follow-up
I didn't realize how bad this quote is playing among Democrats, environmentalists and others. From Fuse Washington: However, recent comments by Bauman compelled us to publicly endorse the Alliance and voice our opposition to I-732. Bauman's remarks were both offensive on their face and shined ...
Someone's gonna pay for that stadium and it's NOT going to be the team owners!
The Wealth of Nations and the Price of Baseball Tickets
I was cleaning off some bookshelves this afternoon and I came across a copy of The Wealth of Nations that I borrowed from a local library my senior year as an undergraduate (and never returned, but that's not part of the story)--in 1991. Sticking out of the book was a ticket to an Orioles/A's m...
As I write to Tracy in an email, this book (and his support for its pro-suburban argument) is biased by American car culture and distaste for neighborhoods and communities. Here in Amsterdam (and the NL in general), it's easy to have a dense neighborhood that's friendly to families, where it's not necessary to have a car. (You should see mommies with 2 kids on the bike.)
G. Tracy Mehan III's Ten Cents - Book Review: 'The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us'
G. Tracy Mehan III, whose prose simultaneously annoys and pleases me because it's so much better than mine, is back with another review written for The Environmental Forum. He reviews 'uber-geographer' Joel Kotkin's The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us, which he describes as a "contra...
(1) There are some false positives on Beall's list
(2) Aren't economists *supposed* to be good at cost minimization? From what I've read in emails, these guys can get you in print -- peer reviewed! -- in less than a week :-\
A new paper on predatory journals in economics #RePEc
Here is the abstract: Economists Behaving Badly: Publications in Predatory Journals Frederick H. Wallace and Tim Perri No 16-08, Working Papers from Department of Economics, Appalachian State University Abstract: The extent of publishing in predatory journals in economics is examined in this pa...
Statistically significant (1000/1 million!) but not relevant. How about comparing "sexy" to "boring"?
And economics gets the bronze!
Profs most likely to be "boring" | via @conradhackett pic.twitter.com/xIGk9bSQye — Shit Academics Say (@AcademicsSay) August 20, 2016
(1) I agree with Paul
(2) This will be "solved" by the shit hitting the fan and people "saving" themselves. Those who wait for subsidized moving trucks (or ships) are going to drown -- assuming they'd rather stay to save the sofa and flat screen rather than getting out.
(3) Never believe an extrapolation to the population from a marginal statistic
Some more costs of climate change adaptation
More evidence that adaptation is no panacea: Residents of a small Alaskan village voted this week to relocate their entire community from a barrier island that has been steadily disappearing because of erosion and flooding attributed to climate change. In the unofficial results of an election ...
I'm no scientist but this is not a surprise when you consider fossil fuels as the start of GHG emissions...
How could something that isn't happening have been happening for longer than we thought?
Humans are not good for the planet. But humans are the only ones capable of judging good from bad...as far as we know right now. So if humans didn't exist, would the planet be better off or worse off? Who would judge? I'm confused. And all of that is irrelevant to this: A new paper is chal...
Sounds like USACE *still* needs to understand cost/benefit, i.e., what to do FIRST!
GAO Report: 'Levee Safety - USACE and FEMA Have Made Little Progress in Carrying Out Required Activities'
Yesterday - CISA for flood risk management; today - levees. This one doesn't sound real good. From the Government Accountability Office (GAO): Levee Safety: Army Corps and FEMA Have Made Little Progress in Carrying Out Required Activities. Download GAO_Levee_Highlights Download GAO_Levee_F...
I'll take 'em on! Permanent contract and no chance of publishing a water-related piece in AER-anything! ;)
Does the AER have a hit squad?
In response to the dust up at the AER I received this from Harvey Dent (aka "Two-Face") via twitter (cc'd to media/blog economics types): @johnwhitehead81 deserves praise. Only academic economist to voice opinion My response: Really? I guess I have nothing to lose. As Nicholas Bourbaki says ...
We're all equal on a log scale :)
EnvEcon is the cream of the chaff...or something like that?
The Intelligent Economist (oxymoron?) lists the 100 best economics blogs for 2016: If you’re looking for practical, insightful and educational economics blogs, you’ve come to the right place. Here are the 100 best economics blogs online, listed in no particular order. Today, as you know, there’...
ResearchGate is the Watergate of research. A disgrace.
I'm now looking forward to the spam inviting me to join
From Wikipedia: ResearchGate has been criticized for emailing unsolicited invitations to the coauthors of its users. These emails are written as if they were personally sent by the user, but they are sent automatically unless the user opts out, which causes some researchers to boycott the ser...
Bravo!
How Bernie Sanders is making my job more difficult
An anonymous comment from an anonymous student about an anonymous professor* in an anonymous class dealing with food economics at an anonymous institution of higher education: I found it annoying how this class approached the topic of food strictly from an economics standpoint. The professor ta...
Yep. Proven quality! (That said, you've seen the studies where published -- heavily cited -- papers are rejected by similar journals... so there's a problem with consistency)
"Ever been asked to review your own paper? This economist was"
I was asked to review my own paper by a top field (i.e., JEEM) once, but this is different: Eerily familiar”: That’s how Serdar Sayan of TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Turkey says it felt to read a submission to the Scandinavian Journal of Economics, after the journal asked him ...
Did I miss the part where "user pays" (or repays debt) ?
There are only three ways to fund infra: taxes, transfers or tariffs. The debt structure hardly matters compared to repayment method!
CRS Report: 'Legislative Options in the 114th Congress for Financing Water Infrastructure' (Updated: 30 December 2016)
Another exceptional water-related report from the Congressional Research Service folks: Legislative Options in the 114th Congress for Financing Water Infrastructure, by Claudia Copeland, Steven Maguire, and William J. Mallett. [Updated: 30 December 2016.] Download CRS_Water_Infrastructure_30D...
Yes, they both had widespread impacts... that weakened and reversed community (him) and sustainability (her) for future generations that are STILL paying for that path dependency.
Don't forget that the likes of Jacobs and Ostrom argued the opposite. A pity the roles weren't reversed!
Mulling 'Moses' Mulroy: Of Water Buffaloes & Czars, the Law of the River & Other Anachronisms
What with the Colorado River Basin (CRB) facing more difficult water times ahead with a water-saving deal in the works, I found it a fascinating coincidence that Ken Reid sent me a PDF of an article about former SNWA head Pat Mulroy that Matt Jenkins wrote in the High Country News about 14 mont...
Yes on #1.
#3: LOTS of places that are now quite nice (temp, precip, sea) will be uninhabitable (or less so) with CC, and the resulting land use mess is NOT going to be easy to clear up via markets (since gov't plays a big role in zoning, property rights, infra, etc.)
More on the costs of climate adaptation
Matt Kahn: The key question is how much utility does this household lose when Mother Nature nudges it to make a new locational choice? The NY Times implicitly says that these people are passive victims who will greatly suffer. I doubt this, the U.S has many nice places to move to that will all...
I'm all for VSL if we can use it to get rid of Daylight savings (cost $275million in dead people)
https://twitter.com/aguanomics/status/714828708352303104
"Behind The Numbers: VSL in Cost-Benefit Analyses"
For all you political candidates who are promising to make sure the government does benefit-cost analysis for new regulations, congratulations! you've already made good on a campaign promise! Jo Craven McGinty in a Behind the Numbers WSJ blog post: Government agencies are required to conduct a ...
Skimmed the paper, which is even more silly with physical models than I expcted. Sadly, it seems that the author missed the role of storage in smoothing scarcity? Groundwater anyone?
Happy Valentine's Day! Paper: 'Four Billion People Facing Severe Water Scarcity'
Happy Valentine's Day! Hope your valentine is like mine - Mary Frances! Back to Earth now... More good news that will no doubt give further fuel to the notion of a global water crisis. 'Four Billion People Facing Severe Water Scarcity', by Mesfin M. Mekonnen and Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Science Adv...
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