Members in the News: Cash, Corrigan, Rousu, Dorfman, Kolodinsky, and Bishop

Sean Cash, Tufts University Jay Corrigan, Kenyon College Matthew Rousu, Susquehanna University Would you delete Facebook for $1,000? A Tufts economist put that theory to the test By: Boston Business Journal - December 19, 2018 Tufts University economist Sean Cash doesn’t normally dabble in the valuations of giant tech companies. As the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy professor puts it, “My bread and butter is bread and butter.” But a few years ago, Cash got interested in answering the question of how much users of Facebook — rather than owners, or shareholders — value the company. With a paper published today in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, Cash (along with colleagues at Kenyon College, Michigan State University and Susquehanna University) addresses that question. Their answer: About $1,000 a year per user. (Continued...) Read more on: Boston Business Journal, ABC News, abc News Radio, Business Standard, and Boston Globe Jeffrey Dorfman, University of Georgia The Stock Market Is Acting Like A Bully Throwing A Temper Tantrum Written by Jeffrey Dorfman: Forbes - December 20, 2018 Yesterday, as universally expected, the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates by one-quarter point, for its fourth rate hike of the year. In the accompanying statement, the Fed suggested it now foresaw only two hikes in 2019, down from its previous stated expectation of three, that it saw inflationary and recessionary risks as fairly balanced, and that it would proceed cautiously. In response to actions and a statement by the Fed that were 99.9% in line with market expectations, the U.S. stock market declined nearly 2% in value. The only logical interpretation of this reaction is that the stock market is trying to bully the Fed into keeping rates artificially low forever. (Continued...) Read more on: Forbes Uncomfortable Truths About Climate Change, Carbon Taxes And Inequality Written by Jeffrey Dorfman: Forbes - December 18, 2018 While the Yellow Vest protests in France are motivated by more than just opposition to an increase in the tax on gasoline, that proposed gas tax increase was an important rallying point and has now been cancelled by President Macron’s government. These events coinciding with both a new UN report on the worldwide failure to act on climate change and a UN conference hoping to nudge countries toward compliance with the Paris Agreement on climate change point to a huge problem: most policies to slow or halt climate change have costs that fall heaviest on the poor. (Continued...) Read more on: Forbes Jane Kolodinsky, University of Vermont Here's How Foods Made With Genetically Modified Ingredients Will Be Labeled From Now On By: Gizmodo - December 21, 2018 Companies will be allowed to notify customers if a food or ingredient is bioengineered in four ways. These can either be a written out disclosure, an illustrative USDA-approved symbol, the use of QR codes scannable by smartphones or a website link, and text messages. But according to Jane Kolodinsky, an applied economist at the University of Vermont who has studied people’s attitudes toward GMOs, there’s still plenty of foods commonly thought as genetically modified that will be left unlabeled by the USDA’s standards. “The ruling is clearly a compromise,” she told Gizmodo via email. “It omits ingredients that many people believe are GM and others do not.” (Continued...) Read more on: Gizmodo Richard C. Bishop, University of Wisconsin Is chronic wasting disease more than just a danger to the ecosystem? By: The Cabin - December 26, 2018 The economic impact of CWD has already been noted in states where the disease has been prevalent for several years. Professor Richard C. Bishop estimates that the CWD outbreaks in Wisconsin have caused losses in the hunting industry that have added up to anywhere from 53 to 79 million dollars in 2002. Wisconsin had about 600,000 registered hunters that year, so the loses came to between 85 and 127 dollars per hunter. Bishop also noted that while these losses are small related to the whole economy, they are influential in some rural areas but data is unavailable to estimate the exact amount. (Continued...) Read more on: The Cabin

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*Articles in response to the AAEA Communicating Out Strategy Press Releases highlighting: Government Relations, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, Choices Magazine, General Media, and/or 2018 AAEA Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.