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Happy Earth Day 2008!

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Well, obviously I missed it. World Water Day was yesterday, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to participate.

In 1992, the UN General Assembly designated March 22 as “World Water Day” to draw international attention to the critical lack of clean, safe drinking water worldwide.

According to the site, 1 billion people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water which makes it even easier for me to boycott bottled water. One billion people! This is truly sad. What’s even worse is how many of us spend $1.50 or more on the stuff because it’s convenient and an alternative to soda. I encourage all of you to boycott bottled water and start carrying around a Nalgene bottle or similar. If you must purify it, get a Brita filter pitcher and keep it the fridge.

As I mentioned just because World Water Day was yesterday, doesn’t mean you missed your chance to participate. There are plenty of water walks in the US this Saturday, 24 March (didn’t see any elswhere) or join the Virtual Water Walk. Finally, you can join me and boycott bottled water. I’ve kept my promise since the beginning of February, with just one exception and I’ve been reusing that plastic bottle since. Take the money you will save and give to others so they may have clean drinking water.

Al Gore brought 500,000 messages with him as he testified before Congress yesterday on the threat of climate change, urging legislators to take action. Unfortunately this has become a political issue and it doesn’t help matters that Gore is identified with the Democrats. It is unbelievable that there are people out there like Republican Senator James Inhofe leading a defensive charge.

“It is my perspective that your global warming alarmist pronouncements are now and have always been filled with inaccuracies and misleading statements,” Mr. Inhofe said.

And this is the guy that is the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee?!

When will this stop being a political issue and start being a real threat that we can all discuss without taking sides. We have a very narrow window of opportunity to change the course of destruction of our world and parties are bickering over taxes and protectionism.

A twitter friend, baratunde just sent this to me. If you care about saving the planet from irreversible damage, make yourself heard TODAY. Al Gore is testifying to Congress on global warming tomorrow, Wednesday, March 21st. He will hand deliver your message of support for immediate legislation. Click on Hurricane Katrina now and take 2 minutes to fill out the card. Here is my personal message:

The best solutions to reversing global warming are also the simplest: 1) Increase the federal gasoline tax 10 cents per year incrementally over the next 10 years as Dr. N. Gregory Mankiw suggests. You can keep your tax revenue even if you reduce paryoll taxes by the same amount 2) Ban incandescent light bulbs. 3) Invest in public transportation instead of building new roads.

You have to do it today since Mr Gore is testifying to Congress tomorrow.

NASA photo of Hurricane Katrina sea surface temperatures

Why are you still reading? Fill out the card now!

As many of you know, I am a postgrad in economics and appreciate charts and graphs. So, I’ve been chuckling at Jessica Hagy’s, Indexed for a few weeks now thanks to a friend’s suggestion. Jessica has a simple, brilliant concept: take line graphs and Venn diagrams, throw in a bit of controversial social topics, mix together on a lined index card, and you have a new breed of daily web comic. Today’s Indexed takes on the meaty issues of global warming, abortion, taxes, gay marriage, health care, and Iraq. If you ask me, Jessica’s index cards a loads funnier that most newspaper political cartoons.

Not all of her cards are serious or political in nature. This one about high school reunions hits the nail on the head and got me to snicker since I recently went to my own 10 year reunion. There are loads of other great index cards and it’s definitely a blog I read regularly. Her site could use some tweaking and it’s really frustrating that she has urls in the the header that are not linked, but its easy to look past all that with the great content.

Finally, Indexed just got a book deal with Penguin Viking, so I can’t wait to see what else is in store for Jessica Hagy. Congratulations!

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I hope you don’t have to hear the news about the loss of your job from this blog… RTE is reporting that Motorola in Cork will close its plant by the end of May which means 330 people will be getting pink slips today. This announcement comes just 2 days after Procter & Gamble announced a plant closure in County Tipperary, affecting 280 people. Pfizer also stated they would be eliminating 500 jobs in Ireland last month.

Is the party over for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Ireland? The large share of FDI in Ireland is attributed to its low 12.5% corporate tax rate and comprises over 1000 mutli-national corporations, many of which are US-based. With the American economy on shaky ground, Ireland is at risk of a downturn as more multi-nationals head for Eastern Europe and Asia where labour is cheaper.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of these announcements in the coming weeks and months.

Like last week, I gave another presentation for a different class today. The course is called Economics of Technological Change and covers diffusion (adoption) of technology in a given industry and time frame, among other things. My semester project for this class is to examine the diffusion of solar power in the United States. I am looking at the rate of adoption, the impact solar power has had on innovation and R&D in the industry, effects on economic growth, effects of subsidies, impact on the environment, as well as how solar power has fared with other sources of renewable energy in terms of adoption rate.

The presentation went well considering we were limited to just 5 minutes. There are 48 students in the class so we had to be brief. As I have mentioned earlier, it seems to be a trend in Ireland, or at least at NUI Galway, to present research while in progress, long before the paper is due. Last semester I was hesitant about this procedure, but I have grown to like it and have quickly realized the benefits. For example, the professor has a chance to guide your research and offer suggestions. Dimitri, my instructor, seemed impressed by my topic but cautioned that there is enough material on solar energy diffusion to complete a PhD program. He suggested ways of focusing the research by looking at data for just the past 10 years within the commercial sector, for example. It’s good to air thoughts in front of a group and bounce ideas off others to enhance the focus and I’m much more excited about my project now.

This week, I was able to use Apple Keynote properly on my own notebook and it worked out nicely making for a smooth presentation. I must admit, I felt a little like Nobel Prize nominee Al Gore during An Inconvenient Truth. [grin] I enjoyed speaking in front of the class, it felt very comfortable. I even received some compliments about the slide presentation, thanks to Apple Keynote. Everyone else had the same boring PowerPoint theme, except one student that distributed an outline.

So far, two projects started and another one starting next week with a group of three of us. The semester is really heating up, no pun intended, but I will keep chugging away on the blog posts as well. I welcome your comments and suggestions about my project below.

Photo courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory Credit–Robb Williamson

I found this video courtesy of Greg Mankiw, one of my favorite blogging economists. I apologize in advance for the nerdy humor, but anyone connected to economics will appreciate the jabs at Mankiw’s 10 Principles of Economics.

I presented my research to the other Higher Diploma students yesterday and it was well received. To prepare for my presentation. I used Apple’s Keynote, part of the iWork ‘06 office package. I must say I was very impressed how easy it was to put together a professional presentation. It was a joy to use as compared to Microsoft’s PowerPoint software. As with most Apple products, Keynote was very intuitive and has several built in templates to choose from based on your audience. You can make it look fun or professional, or somewhere in between. The slide transition effects Apple borrowed from OS X are very impressive, but my favorite effect is the reflective picture. If you use iTunes, you know what I’m talking about…how the album artwork appears to be resting on a glossy black table with its reflection in front. It is very easy to add a tables, graphs, pictures, music, videos and even websites.

The presentation view is pretty slick as well. It allows you to see a clock, your elapsed time and your notes on your MacBook, while your audience can only see the appropriate slide. The software is well worth it just for Keynote, but it also includes Pages, Apple’s meager attempt at a word processor. I anticipate the next iteration of iWork (perhaps ‘07?) should have more advanced spreadsheet functions and Apple users may be able to dump Microsoft once and for all. Until then, I still use Excel as well as OpenOffice.org for the word processor and spreadsheet functions.

The downside to my presentation was partly due to Apple’s decision to make a different display adapter for the MacBook than what was used on the iBook G4. When I got to the presentation room, I had my old iBook VGA adapter and to my shock and horror, when I plugged in the cord to my MacBook, it did not fit. Damn you, Apple. That’s like making a new iPod that doesn’t function with all of the old accessories and cables. Oh wait, they did that with the new Shuffle as well. Fortunately, Keynote has the ability to export to PowerPoint, so I just dumped that file on a USB key and used the instructor’s notebook for the presentation. Unfortunately, I didn’t have all the snazzy features of Keynote.

I digress. Despite these problems the presentation went on without any problems. I outlined my paper and proposed direction, got some great feedback from my fellow students and instructors. The idea of presenting a paper while you are working on it is very new to me as an American student. I did something similar last semester and I had my doubts about this practice, but once I presented my topic in front of my peers, I was sold on the idea. By presenting the research during the research, I am able to look at my topic in a whole new light and focus on areas that may not have been entirely obvious. For example, my instructor suggested that I not only look at the economic impact of gasoline taxes, but to also look at the political discourse. Furthermore, he suggested separating these into a few sections and examining opposing views. The class feedback was useful and I also learned a valuable lesson to not trust adapters!

I am very busy this week preparing for a presentation for my research thesis. My topic is regarding the proposal of increasing gasoline (petrol) taxes in the US in order to reduce petroleum consumption, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and slowing the inevitable global warming trend. I am looking at federal and state gasoline taxes as compared to other OECD countries. US gasoline taxes are significantly lower and do very little to encourage conservation of oil. One of my favorite economists, Dr Greg Mankiw, is a champion of Pigovian taxes which are taxes that correct negative externalities. In other words, a graduated increase of the federal gasoline tax will correct the market in order to reduce oil consumption, reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and encourage innovative technologies and cleaner alternative fuel sources.

Dr Mankiw’s manifesto has inspired me to research this further. My research will examine the optimal tax at which consumption will be reduced and will study the proposal of offsetting payroll or income taxes so that there will be zero gain or loss in tax revenue overall.

If your head isn’t spinning and I still have your attention. You will see that I am extremely busy and likely will not post again until the dust has settled from my presentation on Thursday evening. I might have to have a few pints and some good craic. See you soon!

Image credit: Wikipedia

Yesterday was a busy and interesting day. I met with a PhD student on campus and we discussed the idea of shifting from a wealth or money-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. In a nutshell, money is a scarce resource that only a few of us in the world claim a majority stake.

Let’s take a look at an oversimplified example. If one man has, for example, $100 and another man has $0, then the poor man will do what he can to get some of that money, whether that involves work, begging, or stealing. The rich man will do everything he can to prevent giving up any of his money to the poor person. This creates a dichotomy and the rich man will only get richer and the poor man will either gain a small amount of money by means of working, begging, or stealing or else die and be forgotten. There exists a highly accepted theory that amount of education one attains is highly correlated to amount of wealth and thus the more education one has, the higher the wages one receives. Therein lies the conundrum; in order to make money, one must be educated and in order to be educated, one must have money. This nearly inescapable loop makes it impossible for the poor to rise to the level of education of the rich. Wealth accumulation is simply unsustainable.

Knowledge, on the other hand, is not a scarce resource if it is defined as a good. In other words, it is certainly possible for more than one person to know Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. The transfer of knowledge, unlike the transfer of money, does not reduce the holder’s wealth. A teacher does not lose knowledge when his or her student learns it. In fact the opposite occurs, in most cases, and that new knowledge is spread throughout a society when the students become teachers themselves. The only thing that happens is that teacher has given up some time to transmit that knowledge to others.

If the poor man in the example cannot afford an education he will always be poor and the rich man will always have the edge. If knowledge were the basis of the economy rather than money there would be a greater balance of wealth and power in the world. This is obviously a very simple example in a two person economy but the central idea is important.

Shifting away from money and toward knowledge may be a just a pipe dream, but it is certainly worth striving to achieve. This discussion was brought about by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project by MIT that I have written about many times before. It is a simple idea perhaps inspired by the old adage: “If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day and if you teach him how to fish, he will eat forever.” The project seeks to produce laptops for children in developing nations with poor education for $100 each. The laptop, it is believed, will be a lifetime learning tool, especially when connected to the Internet. A few books costing a similar amount will only teach a few subjects, while networked laptop will give a child unlimited learning opportunities.

The OLPC project is exactly the kind of idea that is necessary for the poor and developing nations in the world need in order to be able to succeed. Short term welfare such as food and medical supplies are still important, but for long term growth, knowledge is the answer.

Please refer to Paul Romer or David Warsh’s book for more information. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

The dinner was great, but I think we went a little overboard on the scope of it. The scallops were delicious and the cake was chocolatey but not too sweet. Yesterday I spent most of the day periodically hunching over with stomach pain. Needless to say, I didn’t eat much yesterday and certainly didn’t feel like posting anything on this blog.

I had a meeting with my research advisor today. My project consists of an 8000 word essay on the research of gasoline taxes in the US. I’ll keep you posted on the progress. In addition, I have an econometrics project using STATA as well as a short (2000 word) essay on the diffusion of solar technology in the US. The workload for the semester is finally piling on at a rapid pace. I might have to be brief with some of the posts, but stay tuned…

I have loads of fun content coming your way and I plan to do a weekly Irish culture post. See you soon!

I always figured bottled water was very un-economical and this informal analysis by Pablo Päster sheds some light on the matter. It is seemingly true that more water is actually used in the production of a bottle of water than is actually delivered in the bottle itself. Not to mention the amount of fossil fuels burned in the process. These figures are incredible.

Starting today I have promised to be much more conscious of the water I consume. If anything, I think I’ll try to stick to my Brita filter and get a reusable sports bottle. I guess it’s never to late to start a New Year’s resolution.

Carbon taxes anyone? What are your thoughts? Write them below…

The Northern Ireland Assembly, currently suspended since October 2002, may resume sessions in March, according to this week’s The Economist. The International Monitoring Commission met January 30th and seems satisfied that the IRA has ceased terrorist activities. This prompted prime ministers Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, of Britain and Ireland, to call for an election of a new assembly March 7th, with a resumption of self rule on March 26th.

The Northern Ireland Assembly aims to share power between the Unionists and the Nationalists and establish self-government of the region. If the elections take place, which are in doubt, it would be a another significant step toward peace intended by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.