Month: May 2022
Mexicans die from the cold
We examine the impact of temperature on mortality in Mexico using daily data over the period 1998–2017 and find that 3.8 percent of deaths in Mexico are caused by suboptimal temperature (26,000 every year). However, 92 percent of weather-related deaths are induced by cold (<12 degrees C) or mildly cold (12–20 degrees C) days and only 2 percent by outstandingly hot days (>32 degrees C). Furthermore, temperatures are twice as likely to kill people in the bottom half of the income distribution. Finally, we show causal evidence that the Seguro Popular, a universal health care policy, has saved at least 1,600 lives per year from cold weather since 2004.
That is from a new paper in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, authored by François Cohen and Antoine Dechezleprêtre. Here are ungated copies.
Are spies a cyclical asset?
The number of secret search and eavesdropping orders approved by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court dropped by more than half in the last two years, according to data released Friday by government officials who attributed the drop to the pandemic keeping even spies and terrorism suspects at home.
The figures released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) show the FISA court, named after the law that created it to handle sensitive national security cases, approved 907 probable cause applications in 2019, which plummeted to 524 the following year and 430 in 2021. Those orders covered an estimated 1,059 targets in 2019 — a figure that sank down to 376 last year.
Here is the full story.