Where credit is due

The friend who proposed the theory of cultural consumption I mention at Free Exchange today was none other than CT contributor Sarah Darley.

Addendum: I don’t want to derail discussion of environmental economics at this blog, but those who enjoyed the pop culture post at Free Exchange are encouraged to read Felix Salmon’s response. I have a few further thoughts in the comments to his post.

Free exchange

This is a big week for me: I will be guest-blogging this week over at the Economist.com on Free Exchange!

I will be doing some posting on U.S. climate policy, including a couple more substantive posts that I’ve been meaning to write for awhile and now have a good reason to hammer out. I also hope to post at least a couple things that would be completely off-topic here at CT, but will provide some variety over at Free Exchange.

I will probably post infrequently here at CT, but I think my co-bloggers are planning to keep things lively. And please come over to Free Exchange and join the discussion!

Why don’t econ blog ads sell luxury goods?

Over at 26econ:

The survey that John Whitehead and I did of econ blog readers has finished and produced some interesting results. Thanks very much to everyone who took the time to do the survey. In total we got 387 responses. Here’s a summary of the basic responses to each question …

Check the income responses.  This looks like an income distribution of subscribers to the FT or the WSJ, if not Bloomberg.  Also remember that the ~25% of blog readers that list their occupation as “students” are probably mopping up a lot of the low end of the distribution.  Can econ blogs get premium ad rates due to their rather exclusive clientele?

You’ll notice we don’t have ads around here but maybe we should start hawking Cristal and cavier.

Survey of econ blog readers

Over at 26econ:

John Whitehead and I are conducting a brief survey of readers of economics blogs. I’d be really grateful if you could spend a few minutes answering the questions. The idea is to get some idea of the “demand side” of economics blogs. This will be a nice complement to my earlier survey of econ blog authors. We’ll publish the results when the survey is over.

Take the survey!

I took it.  It’s quick and painless.  It also really drove home for me the way that blogs are becoming an increasingly large portion of my news diet.

Oh, hey internet, what’s up?

Regular readers of this blog now have a general sense of what my posting habits are like in a month in which I spend a quarter of the month on vacation, two of my best friends get married, my hard drive fails, I look for new housing, and my alma mater makes a deep run in the NCAA tournament.

I don’t know if that’s an excuse or an apology, or perhaps just an acknowledgment that real life is going to distract me from this blog sometimes. But hopefully a more regular posting schedule commences today. I actually still have a housing search to conduct and a computer to nurse back to full health, but there are no weddings this month, no vacation time, and the ridiculously talented Memphis Tigers have dimmed my basketball fever.

Speaking of basketball, though, Tim Haab calls me out for making such vanilla Final Four picks in the EnvEcon tournament pool. Presumably by “vanilla” he means “correct”. The upshot is he’s slightly ahead right now but if the UCLA Bruins beat Memphis on Saturday then I beat Tim and John in their own pool. I just became a Bruins fan! Not that this is much to brag about since Tim and I are both pretty far off the lead, but I’ll take it.*

Anyway, while I was “away” we’ve had a new blogger join us, Erica Myers. Welcome Erica! She’s got some background in experimental economics, which is an exciting addition to our collective perspective.

Coming your way this month I think we should have a couple of interesting book reviews, plus I attended a couple events last month that I want to post thoughts on.

Before I go I’ll put in plugs for two upcoming events at RFF, both next week. Wednesday April 9 there will be a “First Wednesday” event on curbing electricity demand, looking specifically at Maryland’s Strategic Energy Plan. Then on Thursday April 10 Matt Kotchen will be here presenting his paper that shows daylight saving time increases energy use.  Please join us for either — or both! — events.

*We’re not even going to mention fellow environmental economics blogger Mike Giberson of Knowledge Problem, who’s whipping our butts, let alone the bloggers at the far front of the pack, Jim Casey and James Hamilton.

Let’s make waves in Tim and John’s (tournament) pool

The EnvEcon guys have decided to run their own NCAA tournament pool over at their blog. Given the emerging rivalry between our domains, we here at CT are going to jump in and try to make a mess.

Here’s the deal: Head over to the EnvEcon post and sign up to their ESPN.com group. When you create your bracket change the name of your entry (under “Edit Entry Settings”) to include “CT” in the name of your entry. You’ll see, for example, that my entry is currently named “DHall(CT) The new rivalry”.*

Tim and John are currently promising “a free ‘Drive Less!’ bumper sticker and bragging rights over John” for the winner. We don’t have any cool gear yet, but if a CT reader wins we’ll give you props here on the blog, plus promise you a future Common Tragedies shirt or hat should they come to exist.

*That last bit is subject to change over the next few weeks, e.g., “EnvEcon gets pwned”, “OSU=NIT”, etc. Further suggestions welcome.

Cross-pond love

Green Central, the environment blog of the TimesOnline, has named us one of the top 50 eco blogs:

Common Tragedies

An American perspective on the economic impact of climate change from research assistants at Resources for the Future.

We love you too, Britain!

Check out the entire list, there are some good sites on there that I wasn’t aware of previously. For example, the blog listed just under us, Energy Outlook, looks like a good source for news and analysis on emerging energy technologies. It’s going in the reader!

Econ blogger survey

Aaron Schiff of 26econ surveyed economics bloggers late last year, and I participated. He has posted and summarized survey results at his blog. I was somewhat surprised by how few bloggers comment at other sites (particularly given the self-selection bias involved in responding to a survey from another econ blogger). I was also initially surprised by the age of the typical econ blogger — over 50% are over 40 — but upon reflection I supposed that, at least for academicians, it does take awhile to get established and perhaps younger researchers are too busy trying to get tenure (and guarding their reputations). Aaron also hosts a useful ranked directory of econ blogs.

In related econ-blog-rankings news, CT has just been added to Brian Gongol’s rankings.

Update: Aaron’s directory has just crossed the 200 econ blog threshold, an event that prompts a few awards, including one to our favorite (shamelessly self-promoting) blog… a blog you might call the “granddaddy” of environmental economics blogs.  (Only kidding, John, only kidding!)

Econoblog fantasy draft

Dani Rodrik posts on new blogs by Krugman and the World Bank’s chief economist for South Asia. I’m excited about both of these for sure, but the comments that follow center on which economists ought to be online. I’m encouraged to see suggestions of some environmental and resource folks, such as Schelling, Nordhaus, Dasgupta, and Weitzman. Hopefully one or more will heed the call and pick up the habit. My favorite part of economics blogs is seeing top scholars debate issues on a semi-regular basis. The discussion is certainly exciting to follow for those of us who have a somewhat unconventional perspective of what makes a superstar.