SELE - Tel Aviv

I'm off today to the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Society for Environmental Law and Economics (of which I am a co-founder) at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. Oren Perez is hosting the event this year, and we have a great set of presentations. This year, for the first time, we have presenters coming from South America (specially, Chile) and Japan. SELE is developing into a truly global, if still small and informal group, of legal scholars, economists, and political-economists.

I'll be presenting some preparatory (pre-writing) work from the "Program in Institutional Analysis of Social-Ecological Systems" (PIASES), which is an effort to improve and combine Lin Ostrom's two major diagnostic and analytical frameworks: The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework and the Social-Ecological Systems (SES) Framework. My presentation will focus on how an improved version of the SES Framework applies to Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons," and I'll give just a glimpse of the new PIASES Dynamic Framework.

After Tel Aviv, I head to London to spend a few days with my daughter, who is finishing up the school year at the University of Canterbury. And then on to Amsterdam for an international law conference, which I'll post about later.

Arsenal Make It Back to the Champions League

Arsene Wenger says it's like winning a trophy. Of course, it's not at all like winning a trophy, but it is worth a good deal of money, and it is a great mark of consistency that Arsenal have qualified for the Champions League (CL) for the 16 year running. And it was a run of consistency during the Premier League run-in that enabled the Gunners to capture the last CL place just ahead of arch-rival Tottenham.

As I've said before, I almost rather Arsenal had not qualified for the CL for next year. Almost. It would have put more pressure on Wenger and the bosses to change their ways. But, of course, I'm relived the Gunners have made it back into the top club competition in world football.

There is much work to do during the coming summer to improve the squad for next season, especially in defensive midfield, where Alex Song's position remains essentially unfilled, and up-front, where despite a decent return on investment from Olivier Giroud in his debut season with the Gunners, more scoring threats are needed. Overall, Arsenal need to improve their team speed (seems a strange thing to say with the likes of Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain) in the squad. But especially in the midfield, the Gunners are not especially fleet of foot.

We'll see what happens when "the Professor" goes shopping this summer. In the past, he has always focused on the bargain bins. Hopefully, this summer he'll have the funds and the incentive to spend  big bucks on of the really flash items in the shop windows.

Sunday Afternoon Ride

It's starting to get hot out there folks. 84 degrees (F) by the time Dr. Jim and I finished the Forest ride today. After yesterday's jaunt around Lake Monroe my legs were still tired, and the climb up Beanblossom today seemed twice as long as usual (and hot).

Anyway, 63 miles and over 3000 feet of climbing for the weekend isn't bad, and I'll have plenty (really, too much) time to rest my legs all day tomorrow flying to Tel Aviv for the annual meeting of the Society for Environmental Law & Economics.

Saturday Ride

Dr. Jim and I cycled the roads south of B-town today, making a nice circuit around Lake Monroe that featured several tough climbs (including "The Alps" and Ramp Creek Rd.). 38 miles, around 2000 total feet of climbing, at an average speed of 16.2 mph (would have been faster, but I slowed us up a bit on a few of the climbs).

I hope to get in another good ride tomorrow, which will be my last opportunity before 10 days of conference travel.

Ezra Klein Interviews Bill Gates

About the practical economics of health care in poor and rich countries. Here, at the Washington Post's WonkBlog. Really interesting.

JENS!!!!!

He created the decisive break in the peloton when the wind changed direction, then he bolted from the leading group with 5 km to go, just before the turn downhill into Avila Beach in the Tour of California. Just goes to show what a wise 41-year-old pro can do.

Monday Evening Recovery Ride

Local racer Chris Kroll has started a Monday evening recovery ride, which leaves from the tennis court parking area on Fee Lane (near the Bypass) at 6 pm. This evening was the first opportunity I had to join the ride. There were only five of us; last week, Chris said, there were a dozen, and he expects the group to get as large as 30 over the course of the summer.

The route was nice - a bit lumpy, but it's hard to avoid that around B-town. We rode up Hinkle past Griffy Lake to Bethel, over to Old 37, down Firehouse hill to Sample, up Sample hill and across 37, a quick jog down to Bottom Road, and back into down via Vernal Pike and 19th St. I struggled to keep up on the climb up Sample, but otherwise, felt pretty comfortable (heck, I'm surprised I was able to keep up on the two other big hills).

We rode 20 miles and averaged 15 mph. Of course, riding to and from the ride gave me a couple of extra climbs, once up either side of Griffy, and five extra miles. I totaled 1580 feet of climbing. Seems a bit much for a recovery ride, but that's what you get around here.

I highly recommend Chris' Monday evening recovery ride for all local cyclists, regardless of ability or fitness level. It's a no-drop ride, and (as I discovered this evening), they do regroup at the tops of climbs. Even if you think a 15-mph average is a bit much for you, come on out. On Mondays, everyone's happy to ride slow. If some (relative) novices or "older & wiser" riders join the group, the average speed will come down to suit them.

Tomorrow, I may ride into school, or just spin for a couple of hours on the training while watching the Arsenal match in the afternoon (or both). I need to get my miles in this week before heading to Israel next Monday for conferences in Tel Aviv and, the following week, in Amsterdam.

The Weekend in Cycling

I haven't had much time for riding this past week or this weekend because of a paper I have to finish for an upcoming conference. On Saturday, I just got out for a few late evening hill repeats up and down each side of Griffy Lake. Today, Dr. Jim and I rode out to the Morgan-Monroe State Forest and back. Temps were only in the low fifties, and winds were gusting to 23 or 24 mph out of the West. We rode plenty hard (for me), and averaged 17 mph.

In other news, we're a week into the Giro d'Italia, some of which I've managed to catch in the morning, while working away. I was very pleased to see Adam Hansen get a stage win off a great breakaway effort the other day. He's among my favorite riders in the pro Peloton, an often unrecognized hard man  - indeed, the only man to ride all three major tours last year. In addition to the Giro, the Tour of California started today, which'll give me something to watch while spinning on the trainer in the late afternoon this coming week.

Forget Solyndra and Benghazi; the IRS Scandal is the Real Deal

Say goodbye to hopes for sensible gun-control, Republican compromise in budget negotiations, or any broader hope for a return to moderation in the GOP. Any designs the Obama Administration had of getting anything done in a second term may just have gone out the window with the admission that the IRS was targeting conservative groups that were seeking tax-exempt status. 

Unlike the other so-called "scandals" the Republicans have tried to exploit since Obama became President, this one sounds very, very real. It smells positively Nixonian. And arguments that it was not politically motivated just don't wash. It's hard to imagine an outcome that does not permanently tarnish, and reduce the ability to govern, of the Obama White House. 

The IRS scandal is bound to dominate national politics at least through the midterm elections in Nov. 2014. Whoever authorized this boneheaded move has cost the White House dearly. For the rest of us, it's a reminder (not that we needed one) that the Republican Party does not have a monopoly on venality.

Wigan: Going Down in Style

Wigan may (or may not) be relegated from the Premier League this season, but if so, they're going down in style. Today, they won for the first time in club history the F.A. Cup, the world's oldest cup competition, beating one of the richest and most powerful clubs in the world, Manchester City. It's a great David-beats-Goliath story, and it couldn't have happened to a more beastly Goliath. Congrats to Wigan Athletic and all its fans.

By the way, I don't know why the telecast was delayed in the US until this evening, but I'm not happy about it.

Dani Rodrik's Sensible Take on the Furor Over the Rogoff-Reinhart Paper

Here, at Project Syndicate.

Skidelsky Cuts Through the Nonsense

In a brief essay in the Washington Post (here) Lord Skidelsky brilliantly explains Keynes' thinking about austerity v. stimulus and present jobs v. future jobs. In the process he not only debunks Niall Ferguson's pathetic and ignorant psycho-biographical explanation of Keynes' thinking (see here),* but also puts the anti-Keynesians austerity-hawks on the back foot.

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*It's hard to believe that he's the same Niall Ferguson who authored the magnificent two-volume history of the House of Rothschild and The Cash Nexus.

Finally, a 100-mile Week

Fortunately, the rain held off long enough this morning for me to get out for a recovery ride - or what passes in Bloomington for a recovery ride - after yesterday's endurance ride with Tim and Larry. I rode a short, relatively easy circuit (less than 1000 feet of climbing) down Old 37, up Robinson to Tunnel, 45 to Bethel, and back home. Only 14 miles, but, except for the long, hard slog up Robinson, it allowed me to spin out my legs, and it put my weekly mileage just over 100 for the week for the first time this year. I hope it's a sign of more to come.

Best (and Longest) Ride of the Year (So Far)

Thanks to Larry and Woz for coming down to ride with me today around the hills north of Bloomington. Despite the threatening forecast, it turned out to be an ideal afternoon for riding, with mild temps, thinly overcast skies, and (relatively) light winds. We rode about 44 miles including both shores of Lake Lemon, Shiloh Rd., and Beanblossom, before heading back up Old 37 to Bethel and home. Larry and Woz were kind enough to ride at my pace, which made it an easy day for them (Woz said it was a "good rest day"), though plenty tough for me, with a total of about 2200 feet of climbing.

Here's a photo of Larry and I finishing the climb up Beanblossom:

And here I am with super-climber Woz at the top:

Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations, 2003-2012

These estimates come from a new draft report to Congress from the President's Office of Management and Budget (see here, p. 19), an agency which many environmentalists and environmental law scholars believe possesses an anti-regulatory bias (see, e.g., here, p. 86, n. 165). Note that these figures are for all major federal agency rules, not just EPA's environmental regulations.

Table 1-3: Total Annual Benefits and Costs of Major Rules by Fiscal Year, (billions of 2001 dollars)

Fiscal Year	Number of Rules	Benefits	Costs
2003	6	$1.6 to $4.5	$1.9 to $2.0
2004	9	$8.8 to $69.7	$2.6 to $2.8
2005	12	$27.9 to $178.1	$3.8 to $6.1
2006	6	$2.5 to $5.0	$1.1 to $1.4
2007	12	$28.6 to $184.2	$9.4 to $10.7
2008	12	$8.6 to $39.4	$7.9 to $9.2
2009	15	$8.6 to 28.9	$3.7 to $9.5
2010	17	$18.6 to $85.9	$6.4 to $12.4
2011	12	$34.3 to $89.5	$5.0 to $10.1
2012	14	$53.2 to $114.6	$14.8 to $19.5

Broken down by agency, EPA issued 32 major rules between Oct. 1, 2002 and Sept. 30, 2012. The OMB estimated aggregate benefits of those regulations at $112 to $637.6 billion (2001 dollars). Estimated costs were $30.4 to $36.5 billion (2001 dollars). The benefit-cost ratios ranged from approximately 4:1 to more than 200:1.

For those who are unfamiliar with the process of benefit-cost analysis, it is common for estimates of benefits to have a much wider range than cost estimates mainly because nearly all costs of regulations arise in markets, which makes the process of cost estimation much easier. Many benefits of regulations arise outside of markets, which makes estimation a much less precise business. It should also be noted that in conducting benefit estimates, administrators typically focus only on relatively easy to measure categories, such as human health effects. Purely environmental benefits often are ignored. So, if anything, the OMB's calculations are likely to systematically under-estimate the extent to which social benefits of environmental regulations exceed social costs.

In any case, the OMB's draft report serves as a strong reminder that strong environmental protections are good for the economy (even if conventional measures of economic growth, such as GDP, fail to grasp them). Of course, so-called "Conservative" opponents of EPA and its environmental regulations will studiously ignore the actual data and continue to rant about "overly expensive" and "job-killing" regulations.

Ideology Matters for Energy Conservation

In a new article appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) (here), Dena M. Gromet, Howard Kunreuther, and Richard P. Larrick report on a very interesting, but also troubling, empirical finding that conservatives are actually less likely to buy energy-saving lightbulbs if they are marketed as environmentally friendly. Here is the abstract:

This research demonstrates how promoting the environment can negatively affect adoption of energy efficiency in the United States because of the political polarization surrounding environmental issues. Study 1 demonstrated that more politically conservative individuals were less in favor of investment in energy-efficient technology than were those who were more politically liberal. This finding was driven primarily by the lessened psychological value that more conservative individuals placed on reducing carbon emissions. Study 2 showed that this difference has consequences: In a real-choice context, more conservative individuals were less likely to purchase a more expensive energy-efficient light bulb when it was labeled with an environmental message than when it was unlabeled. These results highlight the importance of taking into account psychological value-based considerations in the individual adoption of energy-efficient technology in the United States and beyond.

I'm disturbed, but not particularly surprised, to learn that ideology can lead so-called "Conservatives" to waste resources simply in order to declare their opposition to policies they (wrongly, in this case) consider to be "Liberal."

Hirschman Biography

I have just finished reading Jeremy Adelman's wonderful biography of the great social scientist Albert Hirschman: Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman (Princeton 2013). It is among the most impressive biographies I have ever read, in large part because Hirschman led such an interesting and active life (especially for someone primarily known as a scholar), but also because of the close attention Adelman pays to Hirschman's ideas and the long arc of his thinking, which moved so closely in relation to his active  life.

I now have a much better understanding of why I always have found Hirschman's approach to social science so admirable. To understand the man's life is to better appreciate his thinking. All of the social scientists I have admired most, including (in addition to Hirschman) Tom Schelling (who plays a fairly prominent role throughout Adelman's biography), Lin Ostrom, Amartya Sen, and Herbert Simon, share in common very high levels of creativity with a relative disdain for conventional, discipline-bound thinking. They do not give rise to schools of thought, but embody them in a way that makes it extraordinarily difficult for more ordinary scholars to follow in their giant footsteps.

From One Conference to the Next

Having returned yesterday from the annual meeting of the Association for Law, Property, and Society, today is the semestral "mini-conference" at the Ostrom Workshop. It is one of the two longest-standing pillars of the Workshop, along with the Monday colloquia, having taken place each semester for the past 40 years. And it's a pretty cool event. Each semester, participants in the Workshop seminar, both grad students and visiting scholars, prepare papers for the mini-conference. Instead of presenting papers themselves however, their papers are presented and briefly critiqued by senior scholars, serving in a mentorship role to the conferees, before discussion ensues among the entire group. In some semesters, the mini-conference stretches out over two days; this semester, it's just one day.

I'll be presenting two papers this afternoon: one by Li Guoqing on the emergence of private homeowners' associations in China; another by Josephine van Zeben on the allocation of regulatory  competences in the EU. Needless to say, I never fail to learn a lot from prepping papers for presentation at the mini-conference.

Badfinger

The Independent has a great story (here) on Badfinger, the first band I ever saw live (1971, Auditorium Theater, Chicago) and still one of my all time favorites.

ALPS 4

I'm in Minneapolis for the 4th Annual Meeting of the Association for Law, Property, and Society (ALPS). The program is chock full of interesting papers and panels (see here). I'm on a plenary roundtable on Saturday to talk about Lin Ostrom's influence and lessons for property scholars. I'm always honored to represent and talk about Lin and the Workshop she created with her husband Vincent. One of the questions our panel will be addressing is how Lin's work is influencing our own current projects. Fortunately, I'm involved in a number of Workshop-related projects that are extending Lin's projects and methods of analysis. It should be fun.

UPDATE: The opening plenary panel is on various approaches to property law research, including property theory, doctrinal, socio-legal, empirical, historical/cultural, "applied" (whatever that means), and geographical. Notice anything missing from that list? Did the organizers simply believe that economics has nothing to do or say about the structure of property law? This cannot be a case of simple neglect, can it? Definitely makes me feel like an outsider (although I know others here who use economic analysis, at least from time to time, in their property research).