This blog post is quite a departure from my typical ones about climate change economics and policy and/or my latest podcast. It’s actually stimulated by comments that were offered by my colleague, Jim Stock, at the conclusion of this past Wednesday’s Harvard Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy.
At the beginning of the seminar, before introducing the day’s excellent presenter, Anna Russo, I announced two changes/improvements in the Seminar starting in the spring semester. One is that after 35 years of hosting the seminar series – first solo for 2 years, then 28 years with Marty Weitzman, and most recently 5 years with Jim Stock (that’s 70 semesters and a total of more than 500 seminars) – I was delighted to state that my Harvard Kennedy School colleague, Wolfram Schlenker, had agreed to take over for me in the spring, and co-host the Seminar with Jim. That’s one of two upgrades. (No, I’m not retiring, and I will be teaching my environmental economics and policy course as usual in the spring semester).
The other upgrade is that it will become the Harvard-MIT Joint Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy, meeting every week on Thursdays, 4:30-5:45 pm, but alternating locations between Harvard and MIT. The first seminar in the spring semester will be on Thursday, February 5th.
At the end of Wednesday’s seminar, after Anna’s presentation, I made my usual closing comment that the spring semester schedule will be sent out soon. But before I could stand up to leave, Jim Stock surprised me (and presumably others in the room) by standing up, moving to the front of the room, and expressing his thanks for my having founded and led the Seminar for the past 35 years (as well as making some broader, very generous comments about my contributions to environmental economics and policy at Harvard and beyond). Jim knows that I am resistant to being acknowledged publicly, let alone celebrated, so I’m not going to compound matters by repeating any of it here.
So, then, what’s the reason for this blog post today? It’s quite simple. When Jim spoke at the end of the seminar, he read a list of the authors and papers from the very first semester that I had co-hosted with Marty Weitzman in the fall of 1992, and it turned out that the list included to future Nobel laureates, Bill Nordhaus and Bob Solow (plus one who should have been – in my view – Marty himself).
I’ve inserted the schedule below for your reading pleasure. Topics in environmental economics at that time were clearly much broader than today, when the profession is focused (albeit not exclusively) on climate change. For some of you, reviewing the schedule below will bring back memories, but I hope for everyone, it will be of interest.
When I ask Karen why she moved to Penn State (having previously received tenure at Dartmouth), she responds, “Penn State is known for its work on climate. I was really excited about the opportunity to come here and build a large research program in integrated assessment modeling and economy-wide modeling for climate, not only climate policy, but climate impacts and adaptation, and I was able to do that here.”
“What I really like about this paper is it shows how econometrics and structural econometrics can be combined with economy-wide modeling to capture some important general equilibrium feedbacks that are crucial for getting the story [right]… There had been [several] papers that were using these residential sorting models, which is a structural econometric model, to analyze the effects of climate change on household location choice. And they basically were finding that climate change would create this large shift in population from southern states in the U.S. to the northern states,” she explains. “However, if you take into account equilibrium effects, you know that if everybody moves, north wages fall, housing prices increase. And these models were not taking that into account.”
‘[We] found that even though you do get some movement north, it significantly is dampened. And that seems to make sense if you start to look at what’s happening in areas that you see these people moving to high climate risk states like Arizona, Texas, Florida, because the cost of living is a lot cheaper. We’re starting to already see that type of thing [happening].”
Karen has regularly served on National Academies panels, EPA review panels, the EPA Science Advisory Board, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I ask her whether those stints have been a diversion – albeit perhaps a worthwhile diversion – from her research and teaching, or has such service actually contributed to her research and/or teaching?
She responds that serving as a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group III, in 2014, assessing literature on the scientific, technological, environmental, economic, and social aspects of mitigation of climate change since 2007, helped guide her current work as director of Penn State’s Program on Coupled Human and Earth Systems.
“Just to know how the IPCC works…has been very valuable not only in teaching… A lot of times being involved in these things allows you to identify new areas of research, and that’s helped me with some recent direction of my research program,” she remarks. She notes that her students glean a deeper understanding of how to develop public policies that will have a positive impact.
“Why you’re taking my course is you have to understand the economic incentives to change behavior, and you need some sort of training in economics to be able to do this. You need to be able to talk like an economist in terms of talking to policymakers,” she states. “You want to harness [their passion], but you want to give them the tools to be able to be more effective in trying to argue their case and make a difference.”
For this and much more, please listen to my podcast conversation with Karen Fisher-Vanden, the 63rd episode over the past five years of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month. You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. Previous episodes have featured conversations with:
David Keith, professor at Harvard and a leading authority on geoengineering
Joe Aldy, professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, with considerable experience working on climate change policy issues in the U.S. government
Scott Barrett, professor of natural resource economics at Columbia University, and an authority on infectious disease policy
Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, and founding co-director of the Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School.
Sue Biniaz, who was the lead climate lawyer and a lead climate negotiator for the United States from 1989 until early 2017.
Navroz Dubash, Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
Paul Joskow, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics emeritus, MIT.
Maureen Cropper, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland.
Orley Ashenfelter, the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, Princeton University.
Jonathan Wiener, the William and Thomas Perkins Professor of Law, Duke Law School.
Lori Bennear, the Juli Plant Grainger Associate Professor of Energy Economics and Policy, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.
Daniel Yergin, founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and now Vice Chair of S&P Global.
Jeffrey Holmstead, who leads the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell in Washington, DC.
Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Environmental Engineering at Harvard.
Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago.
Billy Pizer, Vice President for Research & Policy Engagement, Resources for the Future.
Daniel Bodansky, Regents’ Professor, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.
Catherine Wolfram, Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, currently on leave at the Harvard Kennedy School.
James Stock, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University.
Mary Nichols, long-time leader in California, U.S., and international climate change policy.
Geoffrey Heal, Donald Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia Business School.
Kathleen Segerson, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut.
Meredith Fowlie, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, U.C. Berkeley.
Karen Palmer, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future.
Severin Borenstein, Professor of the Graduate School, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
Michael Toffel, Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management and Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.
Emma Rothschild, Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard University.
In my podcast series, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” I’ve had the pleasure of engaging in conversations with a significant number of outstanding economists, who have carried out important work relevant for environmental, energy, and resource policy, including by serving in important government positions. That inevitably brings with it the reality that many of the people I’ve spoken with have been senior leaders in the profession, with the emphasis on the word “senior.” I’m very pleased to say that in my most recent podcast, I’ve broken that mold with someone who is a young, rising star in the world of environmental economics, particularly in the realm of analyzing the causes and consequences of changes in land use. I’m referring to my colleague, Charles Taylor, a relatively new Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. You can listen to our complete conversation here.
Taylor’s research often uses satellite data to address policy questions associated with land use, and at the beginning of our conversation, he explains that he first got interested in land use issues during his time spent as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, following his undergraduate years at the University of Virginia.
“I got to go work abroad in Qatar, Brazil, and Europe, and get a lot of exposure to these big climate change and land-based initiatives that governments and the private sector were doing. And I got really excited by that, and also very quickly learned I didn’t want to be a consultant,” he says. “I felt that I wanted to get more either skin in the game at that time or more in depth into the issues, and that prompted my journey into more of the entrepreneurial world.”
Charles soon connected with David Tepper, a former banker who shared his passion for land use issues, and together they co-founded Earth Partners, a private company that provides land restoration and bio-energy services intended to help rebuild soils, habitats, and other critical ecosystems.
“How do we restore ecosystems to meet all the challenges we’re facing, from water to food security to pollution to climate change, and how do we do that at scale? [The idea was to] start a company [dedicated to] next generation land management,” he remarks. “A lot of the challenges we’re facing as a society directly or relate to land management, and looking around, I didn’t really see any companies or organizations taking that head on.”
Charles notes that he decided to pivot from his entrepreneurial venture into academia once he realized the limits of what can be accomplished with capital alone.
“We had great small-scale investors who wanted to do good things, but you still had to get their money back in a few years and that limits the scope of what you can do if you really want transformational change,” he explains. “So, that made me say, okay, what if I went back to the research side and found some way I could contribute to these problems on the other side while keeping one foot or at least half my brain in this world of how this … on the ground world works?”
Much of Charles Taylor’s current academic research relates directly to environmental economics associated with land use decisions, and is intended to inform lawmakers and other stakeholders of the benefits of specific policy choices.
“Humans have touched nearly every acre of non-barren land on earth. We’ve transformed it. We farm it for our food. We take its water. We shape its rivers for reservoirs, for irrigation. We use the wood for forests. We build on it for housing… We get our energy out of it, increasingly for renewable energy. We need a lot of it for siting wind and solar. And then climate change interacts with all this,” he says. “So, there’s all these questions I am really curious about [and am interested in] quantifying and using some of the empirical tools we have [to do that].”
Taylor references a recent paper he co-authored with Caltech Assistant Professor Hannah Druckenmiller that examines land use regulation under the Clean Water Act.
“You might see this spurious relationship between where wetlands are lost and more flood damages, for example, to think of one of the benefits of wetlands. And that paper was just trying to find an empirical way to uncover that and give an estimate of the value of wetlands that then could be used by the EPA in measuring the cost and benefits of these types of regulations, which are super important and cover almost all land use decisions and where you’re going to build in the U.S.,” he explains.
For this and much more, please listen to my podcast conversation with Charles Taylor, the 62nd episode over the past five years of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month. You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. Previous episodes have featured conversations with:
David Keith, professor at Harvard and a leading authority on geoengineering
Joe Aldy, professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, with considerable experience working on climate change policy issues in the U.S. government
Scott Barrett, professor of natural resource economics at Columbia University, and an authority on infectious disease policy
Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, and founding co-director of the Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School.
Sue Biniaz, who was the lead climate lawyer and a lead climate negotiator for the United States from 1989 until early 2017.
Navroz Dubash, Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
Paul Joskow, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics emeritus, MIT.
Maureen Cropper, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland.
Orley Ashenfelter, the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, Princeton University.
Jonathan Wiener, the William and Thomas Perkins Professor of Law, Duke Law School.
Lori Bennear, the Juli Plant Grainger Associate Professor of Energy Economics and Policy, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.
Daniel Yergin, founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and now Vice Chair of S&P Global.
Jeffrey Holmstead, who leads the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell in Washington, DC.
Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Environmental Engineering at Harvard.
Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago.
Billy Pizer, Vice President for Research & Policy Engagement, Resources for the Future.
Daniel Bodansky, Regents’ Professor, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.
Catherine Wolfram, Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, currently on leave at the Harvard Kennedy School.
James Stock, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University.
Mary Nichols, long-time leader in California, U.S., and international climate change policy.
Geoffrey Heal, Donald Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia Business School.
Kathleen Segerson, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut.
Meredith Fowlie, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, U.C. Berkeley.
Karen Palmer, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future.
Severin Borenstein, Professor of the Graduate School, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
Michael Toffel, Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management and Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.
Emma Rothschild, Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard University.
