Month: August 2021
Who are the most rational people?
From John A. Doces and Amy Wolaver:
We examine the question of rationality, replicating two core experiments used to establish that people deviate from the rational actor model. Our analysis extends existing research to a developing country context. Based on our theoretical expectations, we test if respondents make decisions consistent with the rational actor framework. Experimental surveys were administered in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, two developing countries in West Africa, focusing on issues of risk aversion and framing. Findings indicate that respondents make decisions more consistent with the rational actor model than has been found in the developed world. Extending our analysis to test if the differences in responses are due to other demographic differences between the African samples and the United States, we replicated these experiments on a nationally representative analysis in the U.S., finding results primarily consistent with the seminal findings of irrationality. In the U.S. and Côte d’Ivoire, highly educated people make decisions that are less consistent with the rational model while low-income respondents make decisions more consistent with the rational model. The degree to which people are irrational thus is contextual, possibly western, and not nearly as universal as has been concluded.
Speculative, and not replicated, but the point remains of definite interest. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
What should I ask Ed Glaeser?
He has a new book out with David Cutler, namely Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation.
I will be doing a joint CWT with them, sequentially rather than simultaneous. So what should I ask Ed Glaeser? There is a separate post for suggestions for Cutler.
What should I ask David Cutler?
He has a new book out with Ed Glaeser, namely Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation.
I will be doing a joint CWT with them, sequentially rather than simultaneous. So what should I ask David Cutler? There is a separate post for suggestions for Glaeser.
A reader’s wishes for Covid coverage
From my email:
“In the last 18-19 months why have these stories not been written:
• Why no stories on hospice care in the United States relating to covid19 statistics (hospice has been removed from our common lexicon)? I’ve asked you this before, I know.
• Why no stories on the earnings of publicly held life insurance companies ?
• Why no stories about strategies written about the myriad of home health care providers in this country? What is their role in lessening hospital stays in the last 18 months. Did they play a role?
• Why know detailed explanation of how excess deaths are calculated – what are the excess death estimates for the next 5 years? I assume the data is easily found.
• No actuaries providing keen information and insights?
• Detailed investigations and stories of the traveling nurse industry ? I know several, interesting stories to say the least. Mostly regarding compensation.
• No keen insights from the coroners industry? The inexact science of “cause of death” in the last 100 years.
Would love you thoughts on my questions and why have there been no stories about the above?”
Historical Migration, Vitamin D Deficiency, and Health
In an interesting new paper, Andersen et al. (2021) use the Putterman-Weil historical migration index to show that life-expectancy is lower in countries where a large proportion of that country’s population emigrated from places with more sunlight (UV-R). Ethiopians in Israel, Indians in the UK and blacks in the United States, for example, tend to have Vitamin D deficiency and higher levels of mortality and morbidity from a wide variety of diseases. The effect at the global level is small but significant, about the same order of magnitude as the effect of income, inequality, and schooling.
Lots of other things are going on globally, of course, so the authors go to some lengths to control for confounding. They show, for example, that the same relationship exists within the United States. Unfortunately, they don’t have a direct measure of Vitamin D deficiency by place but they suggest based on previous research that Vitamin D deficiency is a cause of allergies so they look for whether differences in sunlight between current location and the ancestor population (DIFFUV) can explain epinephrine autoinjector prescription rates. Admittedly, there quite a few links in that causal chain but the idea is clever!
…we utilize the link between vitamin D deficiency and anaphylaxis; the latter being a serious allergic reaction (often caused by food), which is rapid in onset and may even cause death. A growing body of evidence suggests that vitamin D deficiency is an important cause of anaphylaxis (Mullins and Camargo, 2012). Laboratory evidence, for instance, suggests several mechanisms through which vitamin D affects allergic reactions in general and anaphylaxis in particular (Camargo et al., 2007). Studies also show a clear relationship between season of birth (fall and winter, the least sunny months) and food allergy prevalence (Sharief et al., 2011). A large US survey shows higher rates of food sensitization in infants born to mothers with low vitamin D intake during pregnancy (Nwaru et al., 2010). Finally, several studies document that epinephrine (a medicine used for life-threatening allergic reactions) autoinjector prescription rates vary with latitude (proxy for exposure to sunlight) in Australia, the UK, and the USA (Peroni and Boner, 2013).
Accordingly, we propose to employ epinephrine autoinjector prescription rates (EAPRs) as a crude proxy for actual vitamin D deficiency across US states. The questions we are then able to pose are the following: Does DIFFUV predict EAPR? Does EAPR correlate with life expectancy once we omit DIFFUV? Naturally, if both answers are in the affirmative then this further supports the interpretation of our main findings. Table 7 provides answers to these questions. In the first five columns we explore whether DIFFUV is a predictor of EAPR. In interpreting EAPR as a proxy for health we also control for our baseline variables: income, inequality, and human capital, as well as regional fixed effects. As can be seen upon inspection of the said columns, DIFFUV indeed correlates with EAPR in the expected way.
Hat tip: Kevin Lewis.
Those new service sector jobs? — drive your own kid to school
Bus drivers are in such short supply that EastSide Charter School in Wilmington, Del., is offering parents $700 to drop off and pick up their children for the school year.
The article is interesting throughout. It turns out there is a shortage of bus drivers, a shortage of buses with working AC (chip issues), and some schools are flush with cash due to government stimulus.
Slow economists, crowding each other out
Publishing in economics proceeds much more slowly on average than in the natural sciences, and more slowly than in other social sciences and finance. It is even relatively slower at the extremes. We demonstrate that much of the lag, especially at the extremes, arises from authors’ dilatory behavior in revising their work. The marginal product of an additional round of re-submission at the top economics journals is productive of additional subsequent citations; but conditional on re-submission, journals taking more time is not productive, and authors spending more time is associated with reduced scholarly impact. We offer several proposals to speed up the publication process. These include no-revisions policies; limits on authors’ time revising articles, and limits on editors waiting for dilatory referees.
Here is the full paper by Aboozar Hadavand, Daniel S. Hamermesh, and Wesley W. Wilson. And from Lester R. Lusher, Winnie Yang, and Scott E. Carrell, here is a related study:
Publishing takes a long time in economics. Consequently, many authors release “working” versions of their papers. Using data on the NBER working paper series, we show that the dissemination of economics research suffers from an overcrowding problem: An increase in the number of weekly released working papers on average reduces downloads, abstract views, and media attention for each paper. Subsequent publishing and citation outcomes are harmed as well. Furthermore, descriptive evidence on viewership and downloads suggests working papers significantly substitute for the dissemination function of publication. These results highlight inefficiencies in the dissemination of economic research even among the most exclusive working paper series and suggest large social losses due to the slow publication process.
Is less attention for each paper necessarily a bad thing?
Gwenifer Raymond’s “Hell for Certain”
Here is a recent article about Raymond.
Solve for the Fairfax County third dose equilibrium
I am genuinely unsure how this one is going to play out:
There is no proof of medical condition required to receive a third dose of vaccine at one of the Fairfax County Health Department vaccination sites, and individuals will not be asked to provide medical documentation.
Then there is this insanity, for people who in expected value terms need it most:
There is not enough information to recommend an additional vaccine dose for people who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Studies are currently underway to evaluate the protection provided by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to people with weakened immune systems. Recommendations for these people will be coming in the near future. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend that people with a compromised immune system who have received a dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine start a new vaccination series with Pfizer or Moderna.
But I guess we’ll be telling them something different a few weeks from now! Or maybe not. Here is the cited press release.
Tuesday assorted links
1. New job offering in science and technology policy.
2. Hobgoblin. And five to ten thousand Americans still in Afghanistan.
3. Why is it so hard to be rational? (New Yorker) — and here is part of my cameo: “Cowen suggested that to understand reality you must not just read about it but see it firsthand; he has grounded his priors in visits to about a hundred countries, once getting caught in a shoot-out between a Brazilian drug gang and the police.”
4. Monte dei Paschi di Siena, possibly the world’s oldest bank, may be on the way out, as it recently failed a stress test (NYT).
5. Chinese government acquires stake in TikTok, and board seat. Corrected link here.
6. A claim that the frozen animal carcasses may have mattered after all.
Felines as labor market outlier?
When given the choice between a free meal and performing a task for a meal, cats would prefer the meal that doesn’t require much effort. While that might not come as a surprise to some cat lovers, it does to cat behaviorists. Most animals prefer to work for their food — a behavior called contrafreeloading.
A new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine showed most domestic cats choose not to contrafreeload. The study found that cats would rather eat from a tray of easily available food rather than work out a simple puzzle to get their food.
“There is an entire body of research that shows that most species including birds, rodents, wolves, primates — even giraffes — prefer to work for their food,” said lead author Mikel Delgado, a cat behaviorist and research affiliate at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “What’s surprising is out of all these species cats seem to be the only ones that showed no strong tendency to contrafreeload.”
Here is the link, via E Durbrow. Having grown up with multiple cats, I can attest that part of the results should come as no surprise. But why do other animals prefer to work for their food?
Afghanistan thoughts
From my Bloomberg column, here is only one part of the argument, at the close:
The hawks I know, especially those with a politically conservative bent, typically will admit or perhaps even emphasize that the American electorate lacks the stomach for long-term interventions. But rather than consider the practical implications of such an admission, they too quickly flip into moralizing. We hear that the American citizenry is not sufficiently committed, or perhaps that non-conservative politicians are morally bankrupt, or that the Biden administration has made a huge mistake. But those moral claims, even if correct, are a distraction from the main lesson at hand. If your own country is not morally strong enough to see through your preferred hawkish policies, maybe those policies aren’t going to prove sustainable, and thus they need to be scaled back.
I still largely agree with most of the hawk worldview: America can be a great force for good in the world, the notion of evil in global affairs as very real, America’s main rivals on the global stage are up to no good, and there is an immense amount of naivete and wishful thinking in most of those who do not consider themselves hawks. What I do not see is a very convincing recipe for hawk policy success over time.
That all said, I still think the Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan was a policy mistake. The U.S. has allowed a very certain evil to rule about 38 million people, without constraint, and has damaged America’s credibility.
And:
This debate involves a host of untenable views. One camp condemns America’s Afghan interventions but offers few constructive alternatives. Another affiliates with hawkish values, but cannot enforce America’s will. Yet another recognizes the fragility of the current situation, but does not wish to turn over the keys to evil right now and hopes to straggle toward a different set of alternatives.
Very reluctantly, I’ve signed up for the last option.
I don’t by the way agree with Alex’s claim that we got nothing from our involvement in Afghanistan. We used it to bring down the Soviet empire, at a high benefit to cost ratio, noting that we have subsequently not handled the fallout very well.
Fluvoxamine update and new call for related proposals
In December 2020, we noticed a few findings — some of them from Fast Grants-funded scientists — that led us to be optimistic that fluvoxamine might be an effective Covid-19 treatment.
— Patrick Collison (@patrickc) August 16, 2021
Do read through the whole thread!
Monday assorted links
1. The roots of why people refuse to engage in win-win thinking.
2. Those new Mozambique service sector jobs: “This musician will sing about your enemies over WhatsApp.”
The FDA and CDC Standards on the J&J Vaccine and the Immunocompromised are Unintelligible
Last week the FDA authorized and the CDC now recommends a third mRNA booster for the immunocomprimised. The CDC says:
Who Needs an Additional COVID-19 Vaccine?
Currently, CDC is recommending that moderately to severely immunocompromised people receive an additional dose. This includes people who have:
- Been receiving active cancer treatment for tumors or cancers of the blood
- Received an organ transplant and are taking medicine to suppress the immune system
- Received a stem cell transplant within the last 2 years or are taking medicine to suppress the immune system
- Moderate or severe primary immunodeficiency (such as DiGeorge syndrome, Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome)
- Advanced or untreated HIV infection
- Active treatment with high-dose corticosteroids or other drugs that may suppress your immune response
That’s very reasonable but the headline is inaccurate because the CDC then goes on to say:
The FDA’s recent EUA amendment only applies to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, as does CDC’s recommendation.
Emerging data have demonstrated that immunocompromised people who have low or no protection following two doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines may have an improved response after an additional dose of the same vaccine. There is not enough data at this time to determine whether immunocompromised people who received the Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccine also have an improved antibody response following an additional dose of the same vaccine.
So if you got one dose of J&J and are immunocompromised then you can’t get a second dose. But if you got two doses of an mRNA (which is already more effective than one dose of J&J) and are immunocompromised then the CDC recommends a third dose. None of this makes any sense. The weasel words there ‘isn’t enough data to determine’ indicate a typical failure to think in Bayesian terms and use all the information available and a typical failure to think in terms of patient welfare and expected cost and benefits.
Notice also the illiberal default. Instead of saying ‘we don’t have data on the J&J vaccine and the immunocompromised so we are not at this time recommending or not recommending boosters but leaving this decision in the hands of patients and their physicians’ they say ‘we don’t have data and so we are forbidding patients and their physicians from making a decision using their own judgment.’
Hat tip: Pharmacist CB.