Alistair Munro

How Important are IEAs for Mitigation if Countries are of the Homo Moralis Type? - Environmental and Resource Economics Environmental and Resource Economics - We analyze international environmental agreements in a two-stage game when governments have homo moralis preferences à la Alger and Weibull,...

In Environmental and Resource Economics for March: nations incur losses if they tackle climate change in a non-cooperative and self-interested manner. Thomas Eichner & Rüdiger Pethig revisit scope for global cooperation when countries are not completely self-interested. #EAERE

Farmer Identity and risk preferences in Farmers' Choices Between Public and Private Agri-Environmental Contracts Abstract:European farmers' preferences for voluntary agri-environmental contracts are often heterogene-ous and can be influenced by behavioural factors. In our study, we investigate how farmer identity and risk preferences are related to preferences for agri-environment contracts in the UK, France, and the Netherlands. Using data from a discrete choice experiment and a sample of 767 farmers, we identify a statistically significant, but non-robust, effect showing that a stronger relative productivist farmer identity is associated with a higher preference for contracts organised by retail companies over those organised by governments. Furthermore, results show that a stronger relative productivist identity reduces the likelihood to participate in the proposed agri-environment contracts.

Wuhuu, Publication Alert! 📣 My first, first-author article (and first chapter of my dissertation), ‘Farmer Identity and Risk Preferences in Farmers' Choices Between Public and Private Agri-Environmental Contracts’, is now published #openaccess in #QOpen. 🔑🔒 1/9

This is great news. Finland to restore marshlands, which will (1) act as an natural barrier to deter a Russian invasion, (2) be a carbon sink to slow down climate change, (3) protect biodiversity. Superb!

Akiyodoshi cave system in Yamaguchi ken

Well, I knew Japan had coal mines but I still hadn’t expected the Karst landscapes of Yamaguchi ken, let alone the caves of Akiyoshido.

Earthquake refugee camp on the Imperial Palace plaza, Tokyo, 1923. | Old Tokyo See also: 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake “Earthquake photography”, 1923. Showa Emperor Tours Rebuilt Tokyo, 1930. "[M]any earthquake survivors had to reside in makeshift temporary shelters known as barra...

Earthquake refugee camp [バラック, ‘barakku’] on the Imperial Palace plaza, Tokyo, 1923.

When you collect data online, are the results from humans or AI? In a project led by Booth PhD student Grace Zhang, we estimate the prevalence of AI agents on commonly used survey platforms:
osf.io/preprints/ps...
🧵

Quite like the idea if it applies to the US too

Environmental Regulation, Firm Heterogeneity and Macroeconomic Volatility - Environmental and Resource Economics Environmental and Resource Economics - This paper investigates how firm heterogeneity affects the transmission of macroeconomic shocks and the volatility of key macroeconomic variables under...

In Environmental and Resource Economics for March: using Europe's carbon trading system as a case study, Fabio Di Dio & Lorenzo Frattarolo investigate how environmental regulation affects the impact of macroeconomic shocks. #EAERE #EconSky

Middlemost estimate suggested median to me, and would match the vibe of that graph above

Start of the story: It has been twenty-five years since a report of original research was last submitted to our editors for publication, making this an appropriate time to revisit the question that was so widely debated then: What is the role of human scientists in an age when the frontiers of scientific inquiry have moved beyond the comprehension of humans? No doubt many of our subscribers remember reading papers whose authors were the first individuals ever to obtain the results they described. But as metahumans began to dom-nate experimental research, they increasingly made their findings available only via DNT (digital neural transfer), leaving journals to publish second-hand accounts translated into human language. Without DNT humans could not fully grasp prior developments nor effectively utilize the new tools needed to conduct research, while metahumans continued to improve DNT and rely on it even more. Journals for human audiences were reduced to vehicles of popularization, and poor ones at that, as even the most brilliant humans found themselves puzzled by translations of the latest findings.

In 2000, Ted Chiag published a short story in Nature that started like this.

It’s been on my mind a lot these days.

Definitely recommend it and Chiang’s science fiction if you don’t know it already.

There's another view that the IEA knows its predictions are wrong and doesn't expect anyone to take them seriously, but it also understands how it is funded.

Scientific datasets are riddled with copy-paste errors Initial results from scanning through Excel files belonging to 600 published scientific papers.

Markus Englund built a tool for identifying repetitive sequences in scientific datasets! Read up here: www.sciencedetective.org/scientific-d...

Curated?

Cap and Trade Works in Europe. Don’t Screw It Up Few policies have done more to combat climate change than the European Union’s emissions trading system. By putting a price on carbon dioxide — currently about €70 per metric ton — it has given compan...

there i was, thinking about a piece defending the EU ETS, and the big boss has already done it:

"Few policies have done more to combat climate change than the European Union’s emissions trading system."

gift link via @opinion.bloomberg.com
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

As I understand it, to do this amazing operation, the delicate robotics need to be shipped carefully to the patient’s hospital, then setup and thoroughly tested by an expert technician then packed and shipped back afterwards. Wouldn’t it be quicker, easier and cheaper to ship out a surgeon?

Plenty of chips behind the dashboard and under the bonnet , so don’t worry.

Robots discover the tragedy of the commons.

Time to get into grounds maintenance

TIL index Malmquist (economist) had a famous father, bias Malmquist (astronomer)

Unearthing Modern Japan’s Subterranean Networks with the National Diet Library’s (NDL) Full-Text Search System (Part 1): Kugimiya Iwao and the Circles of Orthodox Christians Introduction In 2021, Japan’s NDL launched a project to digitise around 300,000 books (approximately 45 million digital images) in that fiscal year, marking the largest single mass digitisation eff…

🗃️ In the first part of three articles, Tsz Ho (Brian) Wong explores how to use NDLJP's digital collections to reconstruct the biographies of little known historical figures 📜 🏺 ⛩️ #digitalhumanities #history #historicalfigures #Japan #coding #academicsky

🔗
digitalorientalist.com/2025/02/11/u...

Reimbursing gas-fried plants for the cost of emission permits totally eliminates the point of having the EU's Emission Trading System in the first place. But I guess that's the goal.

You’d prefer detrain?

A (Green) Switch in Time Saves Nine: Assessing the Environmental Damage of the European Truck Cartel - Environmental and Resource Economics This study examines how the cartel of European truck manufacturers coordinated the timing of compliance with emission standards, generating additional air pollution without violating environmental…

In March's Environmental and Resource Economics:
Ilona Dielen, Patrice Bougette & Christophe Charlier calculate that delays in introducing emissions regulation created by a European a lorry cartel increased average infant hospital admissions by 12–18 cases per 1000 births.

buff.ly/EeOe293

Instagram Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.

A hugely important message from the UK PM.

It is vital everyone listens to it in full to understand the situation in the Middle East tonight.

As things escalate, there are 200,000 British citizens in the region who are at risk.

www.instagram.com/reel/DVW0LmL...

Cultural tightness reduces a person’s ability to be funny A new cross-cultural study reveals that people living in societies with strict social norms are less skilled at creating humor. This suggests that comedic ability is heavily shaped by our cultural environment and tolerance for rule-breaking.

Cultural tightness reduces a person’s ability to be funny

The image is a thermal rendering of industrial piping, displaying various colors indicating temperature variations. Text on the left reads, "Unlocking thermal energy. Capture, storage and re-use of industrial waste heat. Read the report online." The Royal Society logo is at the bottom left.

Our recent report on unlocking thermal energy looks at how capturing, storing and re-using waste heat from industrial processes could be a huge opportunity for the UK to make progress towards #NetZero: https://royalsociety.org/news/2026/01/thermal-efficiency-in-industry/

IFS student loans calculator

📈 Want to model your own reforms to student loans? Use our student loans calculator to see their effects here: ifs.org.uk/student-fina...

📗 Read our latest student finance analysis here: ifs.org.uk/collections/...

Allister Heath

The Nazis stopped Jewish doctors from practising, so thousands of them left the country (my great grandfather was one of them). So many left that this was a good natural experiment for estimating the causal effect of losing doctors on infant mortality (& thousands died)

How a Close Associate of Epstein’s Found Career Redemption in Japan

After a disgraced exit from the top ranks of American tech and media circles, Joichi Ito, an entrepreneur who had deep ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein secured a 2nd act in Japan with the help of powerful allies in the Japanese government
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/b...