What’s all the buzz about climate change?

April 23, 2021 · by · in

by Brent Sohngen, Professor of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, Ohio State University There has been an avalanche of news about climate change.  President Biden hosted a bunch of heads of state at a climate conference, and announced a pledge…

The Benefits of Ohio Public Natural Spaces

The Benefits of Ohio Public Natural Spaces

April 17, 2021 · by · in

Brent Sohngen, Dept. of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics Ohio doesn’t have a mountain, and we aren’t all that close to the ocean, but what Ohio lacks in altitude or coastal amenities, our natural areas make up for in attitude. …

The Status and Changing Face of Ohio Agriculture

The Status and Changing Face of Ohio Agriculture

March 5, 2021 · by · in

by: Ani Katchova, Associate Professor and Farm Income Enhancement Chair, Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, The Ohio State University Farmers deal with many stressors, most of which are out of their control: extreme weather, market changes, COVID-19, trade wars, fluctuating market…

Carbon in soils and trees: What should farmers and society worry about?

February 20, 2021 · by · in , , , , , ,

Carbon in soils and trees: What should farmers and society worry about?            Brent Sohngen, Professor of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, Ohio State University As the US re-enters the Paris Agreement and companies all over the world work to become…

Re-entering Paris Agreement could reduce pollution, cost most Americans little

February 16, 2021 · by · in , , , , ,

By Brent Sohngen This article ran in the Columbus Dispatch on February 13, 2021: https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/02/13/re-entering-paris-agreement-likely-reduce-pollution-cost-americans-little/4282378001/ One of the first official acts of President Joe Biden was to re-enter the Paris Agreement, that 2015 pact among most of the world’s countries to…

Markets and consumers, not president, control oil’s future

November 6, 2020 · by · in

The following appeared in the Columbus Dispatch on November 4, 2020: https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/columns/2020/11/04/column-markets-and-consumers-not-president-control-oils-future/6136112002/   Brent Sohngen, AED Economics, Ohio State University For practically 150 years, oil has been at the center of the American economy.  At first, it provided a source…

“Power-Based” Bargaining Over Trade: What Has Been the Economic Cost?

July 30, 2020 · by · in , ,

The U.S.-China trade war represents a natural experiment in the sense that we have not seen such wide-ranging increases in tariffs since the 1930s, when Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (Bown and Zhang, 2019).  Not surprisingly, applied trade economists…

“Power-Based” Bargaining Over Trade: Myopic Behavior by the United States?

July 29, 2020 · by · in , ,

Analysis of the current administration’s trade policy choices has typically interpreted them in terms of a zero-sum game, i.e., rather than generating mutual benefits in a positive-sum game, international trade is a game where economically, one country is a winner…

Economic Myths in the Age of Populism and Implications for Ohio

Economic Myths in the Age of Populism and Implications for Ohio

January 22, 2020 · by · in

The Winter 2020 Swank Advisory Council meeting featured presentations from Dr. Mark Partridge, professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at The Ohio State University and chair of the C. William Swank Program in Rural-Urban Policy, and…

How Big are the Damages from Algal Blooms for Beaches and Fishing in Lake Erie?

August 14, 2019 · by · in

By Brent Sohngen (sohngen.1@osu.edu) A consulting company, Key-Log Economics has just released a report estimating the economic benefits from phosphorus reductions in Lake Erie (http://www.keylogeconomics.com/lakeerievalue.html).  This report adds up estimates from a variety of studies and attempts to calculate a…