On April 13th, Claremont McKenna College hosted the third annual Southern California Conference in Applied Microeconomics, often referred to as SCCAM. Organization of the conference was spearheaded by CMC's Professor Heather Antecol, with support from the Lowe Institute of Political Economy, the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children, and the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance.
The conference began with an unexpected bout of terrible weather, courtesy of Southern California. Luckily, economists present at the conference were a hardy bunch. They cheerfully attended the continental breakfast in Harvey Mudd College's Galileo Hall, followed by the first two sessions on public and environmental economics chaired by CMC's Heather Antecol and UCLA's JR DeShazo.
At noon, the conference-goers headed to lunch in Claremont McKenna's Founder's Room, where they were joined by various students, staff, and faculty of the Claremont Colleges. MIT's Dr. Michael Greenstone presented the lunch keynote, addressing the question: "Can Adaptation Save Us from Climate Change?" In his concluding remarks, he urged the audience to remember that climate change will make a large impact over the next century, and that mitigation is and will continue to be challenging. Adaptation, he argued, will be a big part of the solution, but it is a costly course of action with an uneven impact.
Following lunch, a larger group of conference participants braved the downpour of rain and headed back to Galileo Hall to attend presentations on health, development, and labor economics. These sessions were chaired by RAND's Mireille Jacobson, UCI's Kitt Carpenter, and UCSB's Kelly Bedard, respectively. Thereafter, the conference wrapped up, with attendees heading off to a dinner filled with lively discussion of the day's work.