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Monday Research

  1. Electricity “deregulation” was more about rent shifting. No surprise there.  What do you think the authors say about efforts to promote distributed generation, (i.e. rooftop solar)? “We argue that a similar dynamic underpins the current political momentum behind distributed generation (primarily rooftop solar PV) which remains costly from a societal viewpoint, but privately economic due to the rent transfers it enables
  2. Gender inequality in mortality resistance.
  3. Shale gas estimated to generate $50 billion in welfare benefits per year between 2007 to 2013. Note that we want to see lots more replication studies, not just of this, but all empirical work. Question, even if you worry about the current environmental impacts, do you expect them to get more or less serious over time?
  4. Is there an optimal temperature for human physiology and economic activity? To cast the usual skeptical point here, note that the IPCC reports I have read and the summaries thereof tell us that the most extreme warming is supposed to occur at night time and in colder places, I do not think that the deserts are supposed to get much hotter during the day.
  5. Do “star scientists” move in response to state taxes? The authors are asserting causality.
  6. Another paper on the economic impacts of immigration: “Using US Census data from 1980 to 2000, we find considerable evidence for these effects:  Each immigrant creates 1.2 local jobs for local workers, most of them going to native workers, and 62% of these jobs are in non-traded services.  Immigrants appear to raise local non-tradables sector wages and to attract native-born workers from elsewhere in the country.  Overall, it appears that local workers benefit from the arrival of more immigrants.

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