Is Meat the New Tobacco? Regulating Food Demand in the Age of Climate Change

Switching from a meat-heavy to a plant-based diet is one of the highest-impact lifestyle changes for climate mitigation and adaptation. Conventional demand-side energy policy has focused on increasing consumption of efficient machines and fuels. Regulating food demand has key advantages. First, food consumption is biologically constrained, thus switching to more efficient foods avoids unintended consequences of switching to more efficient machines, like higher overall energy consumption. Second, food consumption, like smoking, is primed for norm- shifting because it occurs in socially conspicuous environments. While place-based bans and information regulation were essential in lowering the prevalence of smoking, the same strategies may be even more effective in reducing meat demand. Several policy reforms can be implemented at the federal level, from reform of food marketing schemes to publicly subsidized meal programs

Motivic zeta function via dlt modification

Given a smooth variety $X$ and a regular function $f$ on it, by considering the dlt modification, we define the dlt motivic zeta function $Z^{\rm dlt}_{\rm mot}(s)$ which does not depend on the choice of the dlt modification.Comment: 11 page

Stockholder and Bondholder Reactions To Revelations of Large CEO Inside Debt Holdings: An Empirical Analysis (CRI 2009-005)

We conduct an event study of stockholders’ and bondholders’ reactions to companies’ initial reports of their CEOs’ inside debt positions, as required by SEC disclosure regulations that became effective early in 2007. Results show that bond prices rise, equity prices fall, and the volatility of both securities drops at the time of disclosures by firms whose CEOs have sizeable pensions or deferred compensation. The results indicate a transfer of value from equity toward debt, as well as an overall destruction of enterprise value, when a CEO’s inside debt holdings are large

Poles of maximal order of motivic zeta functions

We prove a 1999 conjecture of Veys, which says that the opposite of the log canonical threshold is the only possible pole of maximal order of Denef and Loeser's motivic zeta function associated with a germ of a regular function on a smooth variety over a field of characteristic zero. We apply similar methods to study the weight function on the Berkovich skeleton associated with a degeneration of Calabi-Yau varieties. Our results suggest that the weight function induces a flow on the non-archimedean analytification of the degeneration towards the Kontsevich-Soibelman skeleton.Comment: to appear in Duke Mathematical Journa

The essential skeleton of a degeneration of algebraic varieties

In this paper, we explore the connections between the Minimal Model Program and the theory of Berkovich spaces. Let $k$ be a field of characteristic zero and let $X$ be a smooth and proper $k((t))$-variety with semi-ample canonical divisor. We prove that the essential skeleton of $X$ coincides with the skeleton of any minimal $dlt$-model and that it is a strong deformation retract of the Berkovich analytification of $X$. As an application, we show that the essential skeleton of a Calabi-Yau variety over $k((t))$ is a pseudo-manifold.Comment: To appear in American Journal of Mathematic