Monday assorted links

1. Did irrigation entrench the patriarchy?  By Alice Evans.

2. Casey Mulligan measures deaths of despair.

3. “We create a novel reign-level dataset for European monarchs, covering all major European states between the 10th and 18th centuries. We first document a strong positive relationship between rulers’ intellectual capabilities and state-level outcomes…We also show that rulers mattered only where their power was largely unconstrained. In reigns where parliaments checked the power of monarchs, ruler ability no longer affected their state’s performance.”  Link here.  And Ian Bremmer’s Eurasia Group on the top risks for 2021.

4. The Military Health System: “We find evidence that off-base care is associated with slightly greater resource intensity, but also notably better outcomes, suggesting marginal efficiency gains from care privatization.” That’s from Jon Gruber and co-authors, not the Heritage Foundation.

5. “Countries with higher death rates in the war [WWII] saw lower death rates in the first wave of the COVID pandemic, though the effect faded in the pandemic’s second wave.

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