Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Environment, Price System on Jun 12th, 2012
Mike Munger, who will be visiting us in Rochester in November, asks the right question: if recycling saves money and resources, then the first people to recycle would be relatively poor A nice research project for a student would be to answer it. Munger makes a first, quick, pass at it: He knows a thing […]
Posted in Environment, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jan 12th, 2011
Land in cities like New York is extremely valuable. Thus it probably makes a great deal of sense to dedicate very little of that land to waste disposal uses like landfills. Using scarce Manhattan land comes at the cost of not using that land for the myriad awesome uses it might otherwise be put to, […]
Posted in Environment on Dec 29th, 2010
I have recently done a few posts on recycling and I plan to end the year with a short series on ideas pertaining to “recycling.” These are largely observations of mine based on reading hundreds of papers students have written for me on recycling over the past few years. Let’s start with the simplest of […]
Posted in Environment, incentives on Dec 6th, 2010
In Friday’s post we discussed one problem with measuring the success of recycling programs by showing people how much material was collected. Today, let’s think about another related problem. Good principles of economics students understand the law of supply – which tells us that if producers are able to secure a higher price for a […]
Posted in Environment on Oct 6th, 2008
No, I am not talking about this or this. I just finished sorting through my trash for recycling … cardboard boxes in one bin, plastic bottles in another, plastic containers in another, glass bottles in another, and what can’t be recycled out in the trash can.
