In Beijing and Shanghai, I smelt much smoke and encountered many smokers at the 5 star hotels that I had the opportunity to visit. While I stayed in a non-smoking room, my room was not smoke free. With my recent encounter with elevated carbon monoxide levels in mind, I enjoyed reading this article about smoking trends in the United States. Social interactions have become a major topic in modern economics focused on how a friend's choices might have a causal effect on my choices.
In the ongoing discussions of the segregation of the 1% and the 99%, what share of the 1% smoke? What share are overweight? What share live in polluted communities? What % of the day do the 1% spend speaking to other members of the 1%? How much of the choice of smoking is about group identity. After all, we smoke in public and reveal aspects of our personality through this public signal. Do smokers prefer to hangout with other smokers? Do many non-smokers like to hang out with smokers? I know only 2 economists who sometimes smoke and I know hundreds of economists.
Smokers know that smoking isn't good for them. Doctors plead with them to stop. There are nasty synergies between high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking yet many in this group keep smoking. If all smokers stopped smoking, how much would aggregate health care costs fall each year?
In China right now, smoking rates are declining as the educated are sharply reducing their smoking rates relative to earlier cohorts. For some evidence, read this.
Co-Authors in Shanghai
At my age, I now have a lot of co-authors. Here is a photo of three of them that I took in Shanghai. From left to right, you see three young stars named; Weizeng Sun, Jianfeng Wu and Cong Sun.
Beijing vs. Shanghai
I am back in Los Angeles after spending ten days in Beijing and Shanghai. In Beijing, I participated in a NBER-CCER conference and made many new friends at Peking University. I worked with my co-authors at Tsinghua University and toured the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. We saw some smoggy days and we experienced some Chinese humidity. The food was great and everyone treated us really well. Both Beijing and Shanghai have better subways than any American city.
We took the 5 hour bullet train to Shanghai. The 180 MPH ride was smooth and we saw many Chinese cities as we glided south and east. These cities featured new housing towers clumped close together.
Shanghai is very different than Beijing. The river that cuts through it adds to its elegance. The city has more charm than Beijing as the Europeans who lived there injected some non-communist architecture and style. Beijing is too "functional". It lacks charm. Shanghai has real neighborhoods and sometimes feels like a European city. Both Beijing and Shanghai are "rich" , sophisticated cities. Shanghai is home to over 200 Starbucks! That's progress. Both feature strong and rising economics departments. Shanghai has a Maglev Train that takes you to the airport and has a maximum speed of 450 kilometers per hour! It was fast!
We took the 5 hour bullet train to Shanghai. The 180 MPH ride was smooth and we saw many Chinese cities as we glided south and east. These cities featured new housing towers clumped close together.
Shanghai is very different than Beijing. The river that cuts through it adds to its elegance. The city has more charm than Beijing as the Europeans who lived there injected some non-communist architecture and style. Beijing is too "functional". It lacks charm. Shanghai has real neighborhoods and sometimes feels like a European city. Both Beijing and Shanghai are "rich" , sophisticated cities. Shanghai is home to over 200 Starbucks! That's progress. Both feature strong and rising economics departments. Shanghai has a Maglev Train that takes you to the airport and has a maximum speed of 450 kilometers per hour! It was fast!
Adaptation to Natural Disaster Risk in Bangladesh
I've been in China the last ten days. Shanghai is an exciting city which appears to offer higher quality of life than Beijing. While I traveled, I read the English newspapers. The China Daily is a fun paper to read as it presents a focused Chinese leadership perspective on world issues. A recent China Daily article offered some optimism about flood risk adaptation in Bangladesh. More kids are attending floating schools and this allows them to continue to learn despite frequent flood conditions. The article did not discuss transportation logistics of how the students and teachers arrive at the school.
May Apartment Update
The May results for the Houston apartment complex are in and the good performance of April has continued through May. Occupancy remained at 94%. Positive cash flow was $8,700, a noticeable improvement over April's $7,500 (which was pretty good itself). There are still some legal issues with some vendors that are increasing the administrative expenses for the month and, once again, management says these are at reduced levels compared to the past and they should be decreasing.
Rent concessions increased by about $4,000 over last month, but the loss due to vacancy decreased by about $7,500. We did have to write off almost $6,000 in bad debt compared to no write-offs last month, but we also recovered $1,000 of bad debt. Our total income was just about $1,000 less than April.
Expenses for marketing dropped, as did those for capital improvements / replacements. This is what drove our bottom line higher than last month's.
We are still running in line with the budget. We're about $3,000 over budget in income for the year and $27,000 under budget for expenses. Unfortunately, we're also $22,000 over budget for capital improvements / replacements. But overall, the property is $8,000 over budget for net income, so I really have no complaints.
Well, that's not entirely true. I do have one complaint. Management seems to be very poor at handling investor's questions via email (or at the very least, at handling my questions). Last month, when I read the news about the ongoing legal costs for vendor issues, I sent them an email asking about how many issues were still outstanding. I got no response. After reading the May results this morning, I sent them another email asking the same question. I'm also somewhat bothered that it appears t be taking longer and longer for them to get the monthly reports out. I believe back when this investment started, the monthly report would be sent out maybe 2 or 3 weeks after the end of the month. Lately, it has been coming 5 weeks or so after the end of the month.
Rent concessions increased by about $4,000 over last month, but the loss due to vacancy decreased by about $7,500. We did have to write off almost $6,000 in bad debt compared to no write-offs last month, but we also recovered $1,000 of bad debt. Our total income was just about $1,000 less than April.
Expenses for marketing dropped, as did those for capital improvements / replacements. This is what drove our bottom line higher than last month's.
We are still running in line with the budget. We're about $3,000 over budget in income for the year and $27,000 under budget for expenses. Unfortunately, we're also $22,000 over budget for capital improvements / replacements. But overall, the property is $8,000 over budget for net income, so I really have no complaints.
Well, that's not entirely true. I do have one complaint. Management seems to be very poor at handling investor's questions via email (or at the very least, at handling my questions). Last month, when I read the news about the ongoing legal costs for vendor issues, I sent them an email asking about how many issues were still outstanding. I got no response. After reading the May results this morning, I sent them another email asking the same question. I'm also somewhat bothered that it appears t be taking longer and longer for them to get the monthly reports out. I believe back when this investment started, the monthly report would be sent out maybe 2 or 3 weeks after the end of the month. Lately, it has been coming 5 weeks or so after the end of the month.
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