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Category Archive for 'Development'

It is obviously extremely hard to pin down a solid figure for how many people are going to be displaced due to the challenges posed by a warming planet. But virtually every publication I have read on the challenges of global warming rank the issue of “climate refugees” as both a serious political and economic […]

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What Do We Do When We Get There?

The problems of nation-building on Earth sound pretty similar to the challenges of settling space: The authors are blind to the vision of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the prophet who started thinking seriously about space 150 years ago. Tsiolkovsky saw the future of space as a problem of biology rather than as a problem of engineering. He […]

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In revisiting my class discussions on the economics of public goods, I came across a paper from the OECD that incredibly I had never been aware of. One of the major results in the paper is shocking. Now the sample size, as with all cross-country analyses, is small, and there are the usual caveats about […]

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Seen in Dubai

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Swamps of Despair

From a speech given by Normal Borlaug many years ago: The most conservative man in traditional agriculture is the scientist, and sometimes I am not proud to be one of them. This is most discouraging. The scientist is a privileged person, the man who should lead us out of the wilderness of the static, underproductive […]

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It turns out that Californians have successfully made their lives less comfortable by banning plastic bags. As you surely know this is yet another feel good policy that will accomplish almost nothing in the way of real environmental benefits.  Now, I have no problem with people making poor choices especially with their own funds, and […]

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Should you be reading someone that claims “this is what economists think,” particularly if said person is not an economist, you may either want to head for the intellectual exits or you might want to politely send a note to the author/speaker asking them for evidence that ALL economists think that. Even better, you can […]

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My grandparents and their parents clawed their way to New York approximately 100 years ago. The girls, too, worked. The men were stone cutters and worked in the garment district. We came from the bottom of the boot, literally and figuratively, in Italy – from Bari, Calabria, Naples and Sicily.   I’ve studied the history […]

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Sunday Ponderance

Kuchi Chicken, development and electricity:   A former student of ours shares a story on chickens and development featuring his parents in Kenya. Enjoy, sans comments from me.

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We’re staying at a condo right now here in the People’s Republic of the Berkshires. It occurs to me that the rich folks who built second homes here might be environmental Heros rather than demons, at least a little. How? These condos use a lot of lumber that was grown for the purpose of building […]

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