That's awesome - I'm glad it led to your great paper!
Posts by Felix Pretis
Great to see more use of break detection to identify effective policies - for agricultural emissions in Europe: "the most effective [...] being mixes addressing N2O emissions, primarily through improved fertilizer management and more efficient nitrogen use."
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Thanks for your great presentation and glad you could make it out here!
Glad to have had the chance to present our work on climate policy mixes & green innovation at the @uvic.ca Economics Department & talk about econometrics w @felixpretis.bsky.social this week. Vancouver Island is such a beautiful place. On a good day, you can see as far as the Olympic National Park!
"The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding."
Austria's newly famous tool-using cow - maybe it should have been a co-author? "Flexible use of a multi-purpose tool by a cow" - www.cell.com/current-biol...
“if you take carbon out of the ground, you must put it back” - Our OpEd with Andrew Weaver @ajwvictoriabc.bsky.social and Myles Allen in the Calgary Herald.
Opinion: Decarbonized oil is Canada’s climate opportunity calgaryherald.com/opinion/colu...
Grizzly hunting won't reduce attacks - article in @thenarwhal.ca cites our working paper in which we 'find little evidence that lethal control interventions lead to significant long-run reductions in human-black bear conflict' (albeit for black bears): papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
The costs of Direct Air Capture will not fall as much as hoped. "Efforts to reduce carbon emissions should therefore* continue at pace, says the research team."
*Therefore is problematic here, as it implies that if DACCS was cheap less reductions are needed. No, no, no.
ethz.ch/en/news-and-...
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Call for papers:
HISTORY OF CLIMATE ECONOMICS
Details at:
journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/19...
Editors of the Special Issue
Christophe Cassen (CNRS, CIRED Paris)
Béatrice Cointe (CNRS, CSI Paris)
Antoine Missemer (CNRS, CIRED Paris)
Deadline for abstracts : January 15th, 2026
Drought influences human-wildlife conflict in California, very cool paper! Results seem consistent with our work on human-wildlife conflict in BC: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Fascinating study! I wouldn't mind a domesticated raccoon.
My paper examining the accuracy of hurricane damage nowcasts is now out in the International Journal of Forecasting.
Open access link (until Jan 3) is here: tinyurl.com/4eztf7xx
Fig. 2. Learning rates for technologies in the Performance Curve Database are seldom constant. (b) Past learning rate (i.e., the learning rate for the first half of points in the data series) versus future learning rate (i.e., the learning rate observed in the second half of the points in the data series) for the same technologies. The past learning rate is not a good predictor of the future learning rate as measured by the Pearson correlation coefficient for the learning exponent of 0.12 and not significantly different from 0 at the 5% confidence level. Outliers (not shown) include nuclear electricity (−109,−32), offshore gas pipeline (−59,13), crude oil (−87,55), and motor gasoline (−29,64).
Experience curves indicate that successful technologies reduce in cost by ~20% for each doubling of cumulative production.
However, we find that past learning rates are not very predictive of future learning rates, throwing many energy tech cost projections into doubt.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ad...
I sat down for a nice long chat on the Nick Standlea Show
about the economics of AI: How it's changing our labor market, who it's going to help and hurt, how policy can help, and what each of us can do to stay relevant.
Posted to my (fledgling) youtube channel here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oful...
Working on econometrics and climate? 🌦️ The Econometrics Journal & EMCC call for papers for a new special issue on 'Econometric Modeling of Climate Change and the Green Transition' - submit by February 28th, 2026. More information on the EMCC website: sites.google.com/view/emcccon... #Econsky
Thanks to all the attendees and presenters for making the trip to Victoria for the 9th Conference on Econometric Modelling of Climate Change tinyurl.com/emcc2025uvic! See you next year in Aalborg! #EconSky
"Going deep: Can CO2 be locked away below the seafloor?" - great overview on our Solid Carbon project for offshore geological CO2 storage by the team at New Frontiers (who are kindly funding the research): sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/funding-fina... #Econsky
Attention Climate Solutions Scholars! @uvic.ca seeks its next Canada Excellence Research Chair 🇨🇦: www.uvic.ca/research-inn...
You: world class scholar, looking to make a move
Us: #5 in world for climate action, collegial, stunning location (B.C.) w award-winning climate policy
Pls share widely!
Excited to announce a new funding opportunity for research on "what works" in climate adaptation. We are specifically looking for strong causal designs that tell us what interventions work (or don't) to reduce impacts of a changing climate. Plz share + apply!
seedfunding.stanford.edu/apply/U5N4
The preliminary programme for the 9th Conference on Econometric Models of Climate Change at the University of Victoria, 2025 is now available online! Looking forward to seeing everyone in Victoria in August! #EconSky tinyurl.com/emcc2025uvic
How much did the carbon tax actually impact inflation?
My latest for @TheHubCanada: thehub.ca/2025/05/22/... #cdnecon #cdnpoli
Interesting meta analysis on the social cost of carbon - quite surprising to see authors themselves be variables in a regression!
"I'm going to govern in econometrics" is a winning campaign slogan for the ages.
Only 4 more days to submit! The abstract submission deadline for the 9th Conference on Econometric Models of Climate Change is coming up on April 17th! #EconSky
This chart from Australia allows for some optimism though...
The carbon tax in British Columbia (BC), Canada.
Today the BC carbon tax has been removed. It's unfortunate that a simple climate policy had become so politicized.
Talk about ironic timing: our paper on the CO2 response to carbon pricing just came out in the April issue of Energy Economics. Hot off the press, cold in the policy grave. #Econsky