Course timing and readings
Efficiency! The Ultimate Carbon Calculator (germane to the Wegmans assignment); Tradeoffs in the Environment. These readings and lectures will be particularly useful as you prepare your ideas for the EETT and Interviews.
Assignments and due dates
I have posted your fourth weekly assignment. I added a discussion portion to this one again, and our TA team is gonna be leading discussions with you on it, so look for their announcement. So, to be clear, assignment #3 is due this Sunday the 14th and assignment #4 is due on Sunday the 21st.
- EETT Project Part Two: is included as part of this week’s homework. If you plan to skip the homework this week, you must STILL hand in the EETT Brainstorm portion. We are expecting fantastic papers this year, and we feel strongly that working on it individually and in stages is the best way to deliver a quality project that you will be proud of. You are going to have to demonstrate that you had a second engagement with your group and have followed on with ideas.
- Discussion Portions of Your Weekly Assignments: Please check out Caitlin’s weekly announcement, great job during week three.
Excellent GROUP projects are those that are pondered and discussed and debated all semester long. It will be evident if you do or do not do this. I know that our course does not have quizzes or exams, but if you are not regularly coming to class, you are going to struggle mightily on inclusion of environmental economics ideas in your projects, and your project will surely suffer. Just working hard and doing a very well-produced project is NOT a guarantee of a good grade. Doing great environmental economics is a requirement for a good grade.
Note that Professor Rizzo grades all non-weekly work for the course.
Course projects
Group Project Cheat Sheet
We have THREE group experiences in lieu of quizzes and exams.
- 1. Get Outside Project:
- a. Due November 4th.
- b. Group size between 4 and 8.
- 2. EETT (this is part one of a two-part engagement experience)
- a. Reflection 1: due as part of Week 3 RRR (Sept 14th)
- b. Reflection 2: due as part of Week 4 RRR (Sept 21st)
- c. Individual EETT Submission: due Sept 25th
- d. Group Precis: due Oct 5th
- e. Final Project: due Oct 17th
- f. Group size between 4 and 8
- 3. Interview Project (this is part two of a two-part engagement experience)
- a. Project due December 11th
- b. Group size between 4 and 8
Other class administration and availability
MARK Your Class Calendars: Our two Wegmans consulting groups will be making their pitches to Jason Wadsworth, the Sustainability Director at Wegmans, and Lynn Donahue of the Greene Center.
- The pitch is Tuesday, September 23rd
- The pitch is IN-CLASS (we voted on this)
- The pitch is in our standard classroom, B&L106.
TA Office Hours and Info Look for an announcement from our Head TA Cailtin Lipton for an update.
- The TAs are going to offer office hours and weekly discussion sessions which will enable you to explore class topics more deeply, and to dive into portions of the weekly class work (and possibly receive credit for doing so).
My Availability: For the most up to date info on my office hours availability, and campus whereabouts and other ways (possibly) to meet and get in touch with me, check our Office Hours Blackboard page at tiny.cc/RizzoHours. I also post some job info on there and other items to discuss.
Office hours are a great place to bring your EETT group to bounce ideas off of me, and I am happy to help you all get a baseline start on the topics you are interested in.
Please stop by our picnic lunch bunches on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11:30am to 12:45pm, they’ve been fun. Meet new people! Talk to my freshmen!
I will be out and about this weekend, so call me if you need me, I won’t be on the computer too much.
PUBLIC SERVICE
No One Dies Alone (NODA): From a former student: “No One Dies Alone (NODA) URMC extends this mission to patients who are facing the end of life without loved ones at their side, or who do not qualify for hospice services.
Some patients may be eligible for hospice but are unable to access it due to bed/staff shortages or lack of awareness of hospice care. NODA volunteers step in to provide for these individuals.
If you are interested in volunteering, please fill out this short form. For more information or questions, contact Anika Sharma at ashar51@u.rochester.edu
GET OUTSIDE
ADK Hike: I am likely to make my way to the ADKS on the 9/26 weekend and/or 10/17 weekend (or more than one), my favorite fall hike ever is doing Rocky Peak Ridge and Giant from New Russia as a through hike and then either spot a car or bicycle. There are many others. An easier hike, but with nearly as exposed views may be the Jay Range. Will let you know. I used to organize campsites and hotel rooms and all that, not so this time around. Both Meadowbrook Campground and Wilmington Notch are booked, though there are spots in Frontier Town (35 mins south in Shroon Lake) available. There may be spots at the private Lazy Acres. There are hostels both in LP and in Keene Valley, the place I used to go to a bunch was T-Max and Topos.
NAPLES GRAPE FESTIVAL: try some Grape Pie after you do a hike of Hi Tor.
PICK YOUR OWN: Rochester is an awesome place to enjoy the fall harvest. My favorite two places are Lagoner Farms (on East side, they also host a nice restaurant, fudge shoppe and cidery) and West Wind Farms (on West side).
Upcoming Special Events
Department of Economics Engerman Lecture
Who: Robert Margo of Boston University
A specialist in the history of the American economy with particular emphasis on the economic history of African-Americans, Margo is the author or co-author of 5 books and over 150 articles, book chapters and book reviews. He has served on the editorial boards of many journals, including the Journal of Economic History, the American Economic Review, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics; and he has served as editor or co-editor of the Southern Economic Journal and of Explorations in Economic History. He was elected a Fellow of the Cliometric Society in 2012.
Additionally, Margo is an accomplished performer on classical guitar, mandolin, renaissance and baroque lutes. In the Boston area, he performs regularly with the Providence (Rhode Island) Mandolin Orchestra and the New American Mandolin Ensemble.
When: Wednesday, October 15th
Where: TBD
What: TBD
The Politics and Markets Project, Hosted by Professor David Primo
Title: Topic TBD (this will be a moderated panel discussion, likely on immigration)
Date: Wednesday, November 5th
Time: 7:30pm to 8:30pm
Location: Wegmans Hall, 1400.
The Department of Economics will be hosting several additional events this fall, TBA, coming soon!
Expected Guests/Topics: Lorenzo Caliendo (late September); Paul Bloom on Empathy/Compassion; David Livingstone-Smith (philosopher); Victor Haghani (money manager)
Some Things That Captured Our Attention
Your Neighbor is Not Your Enemy.
Small Shareholders “Free Ride” on Pollution Reduction: “First, small shareholders will systematically vote for a greener corporate profile. Second, firms with a smaller weighted median shareholder will pollute less. Third, countries with concentrated corporate wealth holdings and/or more individualized firm ownership pollute more.”
Superforecasters: Too pessimistic on AI, too optimistic on … green energy.
Intellectual Property Promotes Drug Development: We show that when intellectual property rights become unenforceable, research investment and commercialization nearly cease. In doing so, we test two claims central both to our model and the innovation literature more generally—that stronger
intellectual property protection does, in fact, induce investment, and that heterogeneity in the availability of these rights distorts investment. The welfare consequences of inadequate incentives in our empirical context are large. Our estimates suggest that 200-800 new uses for existing drugs would have been developed under counterfactual policies.
Flush Externalities Down the … THRONE
Fun Facts to Know and Tell: single family “sprawl” homes are (when you slice the data to make it look this way) more energy efficient than dense apartments. Sure to be shouted from every (apartment) rooftop, right?
Keepin’ Cool – Personal Ways to Adapt to a Heating Planet: “At the micro level, personal technological solutions are emerging rapidly. Wearable neck fans provide portable cooling, while phase-change materials integrated into clothing can absorb and release body heat to maintain comfortable body temperatures. Cooling vests used by outdoor workers can significantly reduce heat stress during physical labor.”
Internalizing Externalities: Radioactive Rhino edition
Newtown Wouldn’t Believe Quantum Physics, and Now He Wouldn’t Believe ALCHEMY: Are we able to turn Hg into Au?
Chart of the Week
Migration desires over time (think about the implications for climate change adaptation)
Photo of the Week
Right in your backyard here in Rochester:
Film, music, cultural item of the Week
Wild Birds Revealed (we got many years to Maine in May to watch this frenzy, but almost all of you live near nesting Osprey (would have been a rare sight 50 years ago), so just sit and watch them.
They Said It
People who don’t understand why I emphasize population are the ones who have to take their shoes off to count to 20
…
The training of economics makes them most “utterly unequipped to understand the ecological underpinnings of economic systems”
-Paul Ehrlich
(as recounted in Twenty Years After the Population Bomb)