~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (24)

Dobbs, of course, was the Supreme Court decision saying that the constitution does not provide a right to abortion, thus leading to restrictions on abortion in many states. The pictures is from The Economist, the original paper is here. The post Tying the Knot appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Mark Bahner. Cool. You play “Most National ... by mikeInThe716In reply...

Two economists from the Harvard Growth Lab (Shah and Sturzenegger) estimate that the average transport costs for those who are employed in South Africa is equal to 57% of net wages when time to commute is accounted for. Here is the whole John McDermott tweet storm, in part that is the spatial legacy from the […] The post South Africa fact of the day...

When I post about the skyrocketing price of housing and the need to build, commentators (include some of the most astute commentators on MR), will sometimes object by pointing to the increasing and historically high number of houses per capita. They question how this aligns with rising prices and wave vaguely towards factors like monopoly […] The post Why a Housing Shortage Exists Despite...

Sometimes I feel like focusing on policies that only affect growth rates by a few tenths of a percentage point feels small. But then I remind myself that the difference between the United States and Argentina over the last 120 years was 0.5 percentage point. pic.twitter.com/Pd6SIg1FwS — Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) April 17, 2024 The post Economic growth sentences to ponder, Argentina fact of the...

Jon Hartley is one I know, here is the abstract: This study pushes our understanding of research reliability by reproducing and replicating claims from 110 papers in leading economic and political science journals. The analysis involves computational reproducibility checks and robustness assessments. It reveals several patterns. First, we uncover a high rate of fully computationally […] The post 350+ coauthors study reproducibility in economics...

Collaborations in economics across genders increased (12.5% increase of women coauthors per 100 men-authored papers) after #MeToo . But senior researchers reduced their new collaborations with junior women by 33% per 100 senior-authored papers. https://t.co/zIxDF2Hukx pic.twitter.com/2YplnMTFoy — Florian Ederer (@florianederer) April 7, 2024 The post Economists do it with models? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         Comments“And 2004-2020 is a long time horizon during...

There are pronounced racial, ethnic, and gender gaps in income in the U.S. We investigate whether these correspond with differences in competitiveness, risk tolerance, and confidence relative to performance in a large, stratified sample of the U.S. prime-age population. We find substantial differences in all three traits across Black, Hispanic, and White males and females. […] The post Disparities in psychological traits and incomes...

Is this the first one? We conduct a survey-based experiment with 2,776 students at a non-profit university to analyze income insurance demand in education financing. We offered students a hypothetical choice: either a federal loan with income-driven repayment or an income-share agreement (ISA), with randomized framing of downside protections. Emphasizing income insurance increased ISA uptake […] The post An RCT for income-sharing agreements appeared...

The full paper title is “Has Intergenerational Progress Stalled? Income Growth Over Five Generations of Americans,” by Kevin Corrinth and Jeff Larrimore.  Here is the abstract: We find that each of the past four generations of Americans was better off than the previous one, using a post-tax, post-transfer income measure constructed annually from 1963-2022 based […] The post New results on intergenerational progress appeared...

China’s admission into the WTO in 2001 heralded a new era of globalization, increasing both import competition in domestic markets and foreign opportunities for US firms. In the aggregate, the average annual profitability of US public firms during the post globalization period (2003-2019) increased by 11.5% of the corresponding pre-globalization period (1984-2002) profitability. This increase […] The post Which U.S. firms have grown in...

419 Swedish economists were asked which economics concepts are most important to understand and manage economics "for an individual" and "for a citizen", respectively. Opportunity cost was the most popular answer to both questions.https://t.co/wGQNdmzyrI pic.twitter.com/OoPK2xEMrX — Stefan Schubert (@StefanFSchubert) March 4, 2024 The post Swedish economists seem to be doing OK appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to mkt42. What is the...

We investigate how the gender gap in confidence affects the views that evaluators (e.g., employers) hold about men and women. We find the confidence gap is contagious, causing evaluators to form overly pessimistic beliefs about women. This result arises even though the confidence gap is expected and even though the confidence gap shouldn’t be contagious […] The post The Gender Gap in Confidence: Expected...

WEF 2002: The world could face lithium shortages by 2025, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says, while Credit Suisse thinks demand could treble between 2020 and 2025, meaning “supply would be stretched”. Reuters 2023:  Lithium producers are growing anxious that delays in mine permitting, staffing shortages and inflation may hinder their ability to supply enough […] The post Lithium appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit: California’s highest income tax rate is 13.3%. That is in addition to a top federal tax rate of 37%. California also has a state sales tax rate of 7.25%, and many localities impose a smaller sales tax. So if a wealthy person earns and […] The post The California tax burden is driving...

Science seems like a public good; in theory, ideas are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. But the closer we look at how ideas actually spread and are used in the world, the less they seem like public goods. As I am fond of pointing out, Thomas Keller wrote a literal recipe book for the dishes he served […] The post Is Science a Public Good? appeared...

Greg Clark may well be the most important social scientist of the 21st century. His use of historical data informed by evolutionary theory and genetics is a unique contribution to social science with important and challenging results. Clark’s latest paper (with Neil Cummins) makes a simple but striking point. If the primary systematic determinant of […] The post Matriline versus Patriline: Social Mobility in...

No, but they did get him some votes there: We study the economic and political consequences of the 2018-2019 trade war between the United States, China and other US trade partners at the detailed geographic level, exploiting measures of local exposure to US import tariffs, foreign retaliatory tariffs, and US compensation programs. The trade-war has […] The post Did the Trump tariffs help the...

I won’t double indent, but this is not by me, though I agree with it: “I agree with your read re Argentina’s history of fiscal stability. From this paper (unclear if the data is accurate), here is Argentina’s deficit from 1960 to 2016 or so: [See Figure 3 here] Notice 2003-2009 is the only time […] The post Quick tour of Argentina’s fiscal deficit...

Barro, CPI rate correlation with covid spending in 37 countries pic.twitter.com/AD47gPTbYb — 161phi (@161phi) January 21, 2024 A year or so ago I recall telling Bari Weiss in a podcast that the inflation was perhaps half real shocks, half an aggregate demand problem.  Don’t let the revisionists talk you into the hardcore RBC view! The post No, Covid spending wasn’t the only factor, but…...

There is a new paper on this topic, with what seems to be very good data: This paper examines the relationship between downward nominal wage rigidity and employment outcomes using linked employer-employee data. Wage rigidity prevents 27.1 percent of counterfactual wage cuts, with a standard deviation of 19.2 percent across establishments. An establishment with the […] The post How sticky are wages in nominal...

In September I alerted you to a crowdfunding campaign to produce a dominant assurance contract/refund bonus platform. Many of you stepped up and it’s now and up and running! The platform is called EnsureDone. It’s starting up small, with just a few projects, but already the projects are quite interesting. MakeSunsets, for example, had a […] The post World’s First Dominant Assurance Contract Platform...

We assess statistical power and excess statistical significance among 31 leading economics general interest and field journals using 22,281 parameter estimates from 368 distinct areas of economics research. Median statistical power in leading economics journals is very low (only 7%), and excess statistical significance is quite high (19%). Power this low and excess significance this […] The post Department of Uh-Oh, economic research edition...

Maybe so: We administer a Turing Test to AI Chatbots. We examine how Chatbots behave in a suite of classic behavioral games that are designed to elicit characteristics such as trust, fairness, risk-aversion, cooperation, \textit{etc.}, as well as how they respond to a traditional Big-5 psychological survey that measures personality traits. ChatGPT-4 exhibits behavioral and […] The post Are chatbots better than we are?...

That is the topic of my Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: One study of Ethiopia looked at the psychological impact of raising aspirations. The researchers created a randomized control trial, showing one group of people short films about business and entrepreneurial success in the community. Six months later, those who had seen the films had worked […] The post The economic returns to psychological interventions...