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Around the campus
A report conducted by student research with Professor Clair Brown shows the financial risk of CalPERS holding fossil fuel assets, and lays out the economic argument for divestment from those assets. Read the report here.
This ceiling on the feasible level of interest rates means that when the next recession hits, central banks will have little scope for reducing them, says Professor Barry Eichengreen in his article for The Guardian. Read more
Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP
Berkeley Economics Professor Emmanuel Saez has been awarded an honorary degree, joining a prestigious group of recipients that includes the chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel, Drew Faust, an editor, a museum director, and distinguished professors. Read more
Congratulations to Prof. Dmitry Taubinsky for being honored with the Hellman Award. Established by Warren & Chris Hellman and their children in 1994, the purpose of the Hellman Fellows Program is to support the research of promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their chosen fields of endeavor. Read more about the Hellman Fellows Fund here.
"The tools Zucman has identified...challenge a series of assumptions, fiercely held by many economists and policymakers, about how the world works.". Read more about Gabriel Zucman's work and his next publication with Emmanuel Saez. [Via Bloomberg]
Berkeley Economics Professor Dmitry Taubinsky, along with economists from the University of Pennsylvania and New York University, developed a cost-benefit analysis and suggested that a federal tax on soda at a rate between 1 and 2.1 cents an ounce would be the “optimal” tax with the greatest public benefit. "A national tax on soda would yield as much as $7 billion a year in net welfare to society," concluded the researchers. Read more