Saez Takes Home the Clark Medal

Congratulations to Emmanuel Saez, winner of this year

Another Reason to Hate Spam

The conventional wisdom holds that electronic correspondence is unequivocally better for the environment than snail mail, but a new study finds a surprising result concerning the 62 trillion spam emails sent last year. The energy used to transmit, process, and filter spam could have powered 2.4 million homes, or all the foreclosed homes in the U.S., for a year. (HT: Jeffrey Bladt)

Early Spring

Did you know that in 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted a particular variety of lilac in more than 70 locations around the U.S. Northeast, to detect the onset of spring -- in turn to be used to determine the appropriate timing of corn planting and the like? The records the U.S.D.A. have kept show that those same lilacs are blooming as much as two weeks earlier than they did in 1965. April has, in a very real sense, become May.

That's from a RealClimate blog post about a new book by Amy Seidl called Early Spring. The subtitle is An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World -- so no, it doesn't appear that Seidl is blaming the lilacs for global warming.

Vortex Voyeurism

| Next month, a small army of meteorologists armed with 40 sensor-loaded vehicles and a flying drone will stalk America's southern plains, trying to get an unprecedentedly detailed look at tornadoes as they form. The project, the largest and most ambitious of its kind, aims to unravel some mysteries of how these giant storms are born. Once we understand that, can tornado power plants be too far behind?

Better Air Travel: Just Add Recession

| The economic boom of the mid-2000's brought horror stories of an air travel system straining to operate well over capacity. But fewer people flew in 2008, and a survey shows that translated into better service -- fewer delays and cancellations, fewer lost bags, and fewer overbookings. Maybe it's time to add airline service quality to the list of economic indicators. But is it a leader or a laggard?

Lunch-Hour Viewing

| We can't decide whether this blog is best before, during, or after lunch: delicious sandwiches, brought to your screen by an ordinary scanner. Naturally, it's called scanwiches. (HT: Liz Bloomfield)

"Our Rollers Are Worried"

The new tax hike on tobacco products went into effect yesterday. There are few better examples for Econ 1, and the players involved clearly understand the issues. For cigars, my smoke of choice, the tax on good domestically produced cigars rises from 5 to 40 cents. "Many of our rollers are worried," Hector Ventura, operations manager for El Credito, told the Associated Press. "They think that if we have less sales, they will lose their jobs. We know for sure the tax increase will reduce our sales. It's not good for our business, not good at all."

He's right that his sales will drop; and his workers understand that labor demand is derived from product demand, so the demand curve for labor will shift rightward.

As always, the important question is, "How much?" Evidence suggests that the demand for tobacco products generally is not very price-elastic; and I'd bet that the demand for better cigars is less elastic than for most tobacco products. So I don't think sales or employment will drop much. And some of the reduction will come because those who like risk -- and want the very best -- switch to untaxed but illegal Cuban cigars: the number of Cohibas and Montecristos smoked in the U.S. will rise!

Did Those Sexy Missiles Sell?

| Earlier, we asked blog readers whether an Israeli arms firm could actually sell missiles to India with a Bollywood song-and-dance number. Apparently, they've sold quite a few -- but despite, not because of the commercial, which reportedly evoked "incredulity and derision" from the Indian public and defense establishment. One senior defense officer told the Times of India: "We are buying a whole host of missiles ... and other equipment from Rafael. Their products are good. But this advertisement is quite tacky ... like a C-grade Hindi movie song." (HT: Mayur Misra)