R. Daniel (Danny) Bressler

This is a fascinating paper. It's the first (afaik) to actually document food&drink&retail scheduling unpredictability using actual firm data.

It illustrates v clearly why unpredictable scheduling makes these jobs so difficult:

Hi! I’m Mary and I’m on the #EconJobMarket this year.

Extreme heat doesn’t just affect students, it affects the people teaching them.

JMP 🧵:

Analysis based on work by @rdbressler.bsky.social on the mortality consequences of climate change, including our co-authored paper on country-level climate damages
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here's a few things I learned digging into electricity affordability and decarbonization in Connecticut 🧵

Really well-done article by @fastlerner.bsky.social that estimated temperature-related mortality impacts from recent climate rollbacks, drawing in part on my 2021 Nature Comms paper and my job market paper (bsky.app/profile/rdbr...). Check it out!

Should the carbon price be the same across countries and sectors?

Four kinds of imperfections call for differentiated carbon prices:
1. Different growth rates
2. Market power in trade
3. The presence of country- or sector-specific distorsive taxes
4. A constraint preventing cross-country transfers

A lot of Americans like to blame the Reagan Administration for the rise of market power and oligopoly in the US. But markups have been rising globally (except in South America) since 1980. Seems likely that other causes were at play:

drive.google.com/file/d/1W7A9...

We build on the small literature on this topic, e.g., the pioneering work of John Broome www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... wwnorton.com/books/climat... to discuss where population ethics issues will show up in benefit-cost analysis, and to explore what analysts might do to address them.

The paper doesn't have all the answers. Our goal is to identify and discuss major issues in this new frontier of regulatory benefit-cost analysis.

We show that, as benefit-cost analysis is increasingly used to assess phenomena that impact life and death many years in the future, such as climate change, making choices around how to deal with critical population ethics issues becomes unavoidable.

Population ethics poses a number of difficult questions that have been largely ignored in the practice of regulatory benefit-cost analysis.

Valuing statistical absences? Why benefit-cost analysis cannot avoid population ethics Policies subject to BCA sometimes prevent premature deaths. If survivors would later have children, those policies not only prevent deaths; they cause…

🚨New Paper🚨

Valuing statistical absences? Why benefit-cost analysis cannot avoid population ethics"

My new paper with regulatory legal scholar extraordinaire Andy Stawasz is out in Ecological Economics!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We had an all-star group of job market candidates this year and an all-star job market coordinator @rmetcalfe.bsky.social . Great set of placements in a really tough year. Proud to be a part of this group!

"The uncertainty that is baked into this crisis is all the more reason to take urgent and decisive action to address it."

Carbon majors and the scientific case for climate liability - Nature A transparent and reproducible scientific framework is introduced to formalize how trillions in economic losses are attributable to the extreme heat caused by emissions from fossil fuel companies, whi...

NEW: Fossil fuel firms like Chevron and Exxon owe the world trillions of dollars. Today in @nature.com, @jsmankin.bsky.social and I show economic losses from rising heat waves directly traceable to these firms, providing scientific support for climate accountability.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you, Jake!

Yes! Let me know when you’re in town!

Haha deal! Sounds intriguing…

Thank you, Manuel!

Yes! My new department head!

Thank you, Fran!

Job Market Done ✅ I'm thrilled to announce that I will be an Assistant Professor in Economics at Bentley University this fall.

I'm excited to join a great group of colleagues and to move back to Boston!

New preprint finding that eliminating US global health funding over the next fifteen years would cause:
- 15.2m deaths from AIDS
- 2.2m deaths from TB
- 7.9 additional child deaths

Mississippi State Univ. is hiring a tenure-track Econ Assistant Prof w/ August start!

Open field; pref. for applied micro & teaching PhD Micro I & II (Micro II this fall).

Apply: MSU site & www.aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?JOE_ID=2025-01_111475768

Please repost—it's an off-cycle search. Thanks!

There are days in life that shake you.

I’m shattered 💔 to share that I just found out that the US Government terminated my 2024 NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (~$2 million), threatening my long-promised assistant professor job at Columbia University
& academic career... 1/🧵

Essential reading for folks interested in the economics of climate change. Check it out!

Planning your climate or environment syllabus? I like to show short videos so students & I can visualize some of the things we're talking about. Here are some of the ones I like:

A chart in three parts showing data on child mortality to make the points that "The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time."

The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.

All three statements are true at the same time. Understanding this is key to solving big global problems.

We believe data & research can help us understand both the problems we face & the progress that’s possible. 🧵

Opinion | What Economists Could Learn From George Costanza Their economic models produced a disaster, but they doubled down.

What’s important about this piece is economic theory, when translated into practice, needs to overcorrect for the actual impacts to people’s lives that efficiency driven by theory create. It’s not “winners COULD compensate losers” it’s “winners DO compensate losers”.

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/23/o...