Los efectos de la nueva movilidad en la densidad urbana

 Según Glaeser et al, su efecto no es evidente, pero apuestan por una densificación:

Will 21st century transportation innovations work against urban density, as the car did in the 20th century, or promote urban centralization, as the railroad did in the 19th century? Reducing the cost of commuting always reduces urban centralization in the classic Alonso-Muth-Mills model but that result reverses if the number of trips is endogenous and the elasticity of trips with respect to their costs is greater than one. That elasticity may have increased over time, as an increasing share of daily trips seems to be discretionary and city centers increasingly provide entertainment. This paper asks discusses the urbanizing effects of four trends in transportation technology: shared mobility (such as Uber), autonomy (such as Waymo), vertical travel and green mobility, as provided by bike lane. As people spend more time travelling in denser, large areas, innovations that reduce the time cost of travel, such as autonomous cars, seem likely to complement urban living, as long as they don’t excessively increase traffic. Sharing is also easier in big cities, so technologies that involve sharing are also centripetal. The other trends seem less likely to have major effects. Moreover, the forces of inertia, which include both regulation and legacy infrastructure, are likely to limit the impact of any new technologies in Europe and the U.S., so that the biggest changes in urban form are likely to appear in east Asia and the developing world. 

Una visión post-ODS

 En el curso de la FSR, Loyola Autumn Research School, de este año, volví a coincidir con Monica Contestabile, editora en jefe de Nature Sustainability, que indicó esta editorial que publicaron el año pasado sobre los ODS. En ella, aparte de confirmar que ni de coña llegaremos a cumplir con los ODS, plantean un cambio de estrategia, en la que se priorice la pobreza como causa última de mucho de lo demás:

multilateral efforts should move away from presenting a list of goals — and then having to build a complicated system of targets that show how all priorities are intertwined — to building a framework with poverty and inequality and their mutual relationship with the natural world at its core, if global consensus exists that without addressing poverty and inequality globally, it will not be possible to advance sustainable development.  

El mercado y el "pluralismo disciplinado"

Una forma curiosa de formular una de las ventajas de los mercados que funcionan bien. No me parece tan distinto de la "destrucción creativa" de Schumpeter, que va justo a lo que más falla habitualmente en muchos mercados: el dejar morir las malas ideas.

Impuestos vs "nudges"

Interesante artículo de Harford, resumiendo a su vez un working paper de List et al. :

Behavioral interventions have become central to modern public policy, but their empirical promise remains contested because estimated treatment effects often appear small. We argue that a policy response is economically meaningful only relative to the response generated by alternative policies. We assemble more than 1,200 estimates from over 600 studies comparing “nudges” and traditional price interventions in the markets for cigarettes, alcohol, influenza vaccination, electricity, and residential water. Translating nudge effects into equivalent price changes, we find that behavioral interventions often correspond to enormous fiscal interventions, from an 11% tax on electricity to a 100% subsidy on influenza vaccinations. Nudges are also more cost-effective than price instruments in all markets, but cost-effectiveness does not predict the welfare ranking of policies. Using a behavioral extension of the Marginal Value of Public Funds, we show that nudges have high welfare returns at the margin, while price instruments often generate larger total surplus at scale. 

La importancia del riesgo para la inversión en renovables

 Un paper (en Econometrica, nada menos) muestra cómo el riesgo de contraparte (es decir, de los compradores de electricidad) afecta significativamente a la inversión en renovables, que, o se reduce, o requiere mayores precios para ser rentable. Y que cuando hay un agente (en este caso, el estado central indio) que da más garantías, la cosa mejora. Algo que confirma lo que hemos defendido en alguna ocasión: que para promover los PPAs no es necesario que el comprador sea el Estado, sino que garantice la transacción para reducir este riesgo de contraparte.

¿Es posible sustituir los fósiles?

 Yo siempre he pensado que por supuesto. Pero sagún parece, algunos autores (y conozco a alguno de ellos, creo) siguen insistiendo en que hay razones físicas que lo impiden, y que la transición no es posible porque las nuevas renovables sólo añaden, no sustituyen. Es cierto que, si uno mira las cifras agregadas hasta ahora, eso es lo que está pasando...pero eso no significa que tenga que seguir así a futuro. Michael Liebreich lo explica razonablemente bien.

Consejos para revisar artículos científicos

Nada particularmente nuevo, pero bastante sensato, y utilizando la IA para lo que realmente aporta.