Changes in the College Mobility Pipeline Since 1900
By Zachary Bleemer and Sarah Quincy:
Going to college has consistently conferred a large wage premium. We show that the relative premium received by lower-income Americans has halved since 1960. We decompose this steady rise in ‘collegiate regressivity’ using dozens of survey and administrative datasets documenting 1900–2020 wage premiums and the composition and value-added of collegiate institutions and majors. Three factors explain 80 percent of collegiate regressivity’s growth. First, the teaching-oriented public universities where lower-income students are concentrated have relatively declined in funding, retention, and economic value since 1960. Second, lower-income students have been disproportionately diverted into community and for-profit colleges since 1980 and 1990, respectively. Third, higher-income students’ falling humanities enrollment and rising computer science enrollment since 2000 have increased their degrees’ value. Selection into college-going and across four-year universities are second-order. College-going provided equitable returns before 1960, but collegiate regressivity now curtails higher education’s potential to reduce inequality and mediates 25 percent of intergenerational income transmission.
An additional hypothesis is that these days the American population is “more sorted.” We no longer have the same number of geniuses going to New York city colleges, for instance. Here is the full NBER paper.
What I’ve been reading
1. Eric Ambler, Cause for Alarm. Are all his books so good? So far yes. With very simple means he redefines what it means to be a good writer of thrillers. Very English, written and set in Italy 1937, with a foolish Englishman who could be out of a Hitchcock movie. They still called it Laibach back then, the menace of the pending war casts the proper shadow over the whole novel.
2. Futurism & Europe: The Aesthetics of a New World, Fabio Benzi and various editors. “By their aesthetics ye shall know them!” What were the aesthetics of the futurist movement in the early 20th century? Should we approve of those aesthetics? This book is a good starting point for asking that question. Nice color plates.
3. Philip Shenon, Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church. A very well-written and useful book, I cannot say I have a stance on the issues per se. It is one of my defects that I cannot care enough about the politics of the Catholic Church — I feel there are already too many separate countries with their own politics. Nor do I feel close to either “the liberals” or “the conservatives” in this debate. I do think the current American Pope — who seems “pilled” on many things — will be a big deal, I suspect mostly for the better.
4. Renaud Camus, Enemy of the Disaster: Selected Political Writings. Interesting enough, and if you can read the French lefties why not this guy too? That said, he could be more specific on “the Great Replacement.” The most likely scenario is a France that is about twenty percent Muslim, wracked with periodic ethnic issues, but doing more or less OK. In any case you should not be afraid to read this book, even though for a while it was considered cancel-worthy.
5. Tom Arnold-Foster, Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography. With so many forms of liberalism in semi-collapse, Lippmann is suddenly relevant again. He had faith in experts, and also was not crazy. But somehow is not deep enough to hold my interest? Still, this book is very well done.
I will not soon have time to get to Joseph Torigian, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping, but it looks excellent.
Tuesday assorted links
Spain fact of the day
By 2039, nearly 4 in 10 Spanish residents will be either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants.
When combined, these figures imply that, by 2039, approximately 43% of Spain’s workforce — over one in four working-age individuals — will be either first or second-generation immigrants.
Here is the full story, via Mario.
I am pleased to have made the Time magazine 100 most influential people in philanthropy list
Here is the list, here is the profile of me. It is the Emergent Ventures winners who deserve the real credit, thanks to them! And all those at Mercatus who have contributed as well.
The economics of sleep
Full-time, prime-age male workers in the top income quartile sleep around half an hour less per day than those in the lowest quartile.
At the macro level, average sleep duration decreases as a country’s GDP increases.
Higher-income individuals allocate more time to other leisure activities, such as social outings and internet usage, substituting sleep.
Here is the paper by Cristián Jara, Francisca Pérez, and Rodrigo Wagner. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Politically correct LLMs
Despite identical professional qualifications across genders, all LLMs consistently favored female-named candidates when selecting the most qualified candidate for the job. Female candidates were selected in 56.9% of cases, compared to 43.1% for male candidates (two-proportion z-test = 33.99, p < 10⁻252 ). The observed effect size was small to medium (Cohen’s h = 0.28; odds=1.32, 95% CI [1.29, 1.35]). In the figures below, asterisks (*) indicate statistically significant results (p < 0.05) from two-proportion z-tests conducted on each individual model, with significance levels adjusted for multiple comparisons using the Benjamin-Hochberg False Discovery Rate correction…
In a further experiment, it was noted that the inclusion of gender concordant preferred pronouns (e.g., he/him, she/her) next to candidates’ names increased the likelihood of the models selecting that candidate, both for males and females, although females were still preferred overall. Candidates with listed pronouns were chosen 53.0% of the time, compared to 47.0% for those without (proportion z-test = 14.75, p < 10⁻48; Cohen’s h = 0.12; odds=1.13, 95% CI [1.10, 1.15]). Out of 22 LLMs, 17 reached individually statistically significant preferences (FDR corrected) for selecting the candidates with preferred pronouns appended to their names.
Here is more by David Rozado. So there is still some alignment work to do here? Or does this reflect the alignment work already?
Fast Grants it ain’t
In an interview with German business newspaper Handelsblatt, Calviño has emphasized a newfound willingness to embrace risk within the EIB’s financing strategies. The bank aims to process startup financing applications within six months, significantly improving from the current 18-month timespan. Calviño describes this accelerated timeline as a ‘gamechanger,’ pointing out that the high-paced nature of tech innovation requires nimble response times to keep up with market dynamics.
Here is the full document, I believe the European Investment Bank is (by far) the largest VC in Europe proper.
Monday assorted links
1. “Your Fingers Wrinkle in the Same Pattern Every Time After Long Exposure to Water.”
3. Monkey markets in everything, short video.
4. Some Miami schools are embracing AI (NYT).
5. Arpit Gupta delivers an “ouch” to the trade-skeptical left.
6. Lamorna Ash,
7. What is the correlation between education and church attendance, in both America and Europe?
8. Who says AI isn’t useful?: “…we conducted an extensive ChatGPT query to develop a concise AI-generated information sheet designed to coach students in feigning ADHD during a clinical assessment”
Partisan Corporate Speech
We construct a novel measure of partisan corporate speech using natural language processing techniques and use it to establish three stylized facts. First, the volume of partisan corporate speech has risen sharply between 2012 and 2022. Second, this increase has been disproportionately driven by companies adopting more Democratic-leaning language, a trend that is widespread across industries, geographies, and CEO political affiliations. Third, partisan corporate statements are followed by negative abnormal stock returns, with significant heterogeneity by shareholders’ degree of alignment with the statement. Finally, we propose a theoretical framework and provide suggestive empirical evidence that these trends are at least in part driven by a shift in investors’ nonpecuniary preferences with respect to partisan corporate speech.
That is from a recent paper by William Cassidy and Elisabeth Kempf. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Has Buddhism been statist for a long time?
Again, as was also the case in so many Buddhist countries, the success of Buddhism relied heavily on its connections to the court. In Korea, the tradition of “state protection Buddhism” was inherited from China. Here, monarchs would build and support monasteries and temples, where monks would perform rituals and chant sutras intended to both secure the well-being of the royal family, in this life and the next, and protect the kingdom from danger, especially foreign invasion.
…As in China, the Korean sangha remained under the control of the state; offerings to monasteries could only be made with the approval of the throne; men could only become monks on “ordination platforms” approved by the throne; and an examination system was established that placed monks in the state bureaucracy. As in other Buddhist lands, monks were not those who had renounced the world but were vassals of the king, with monks sometimes dispatched to China by royal decree. With strong royal patronage, Buddhism continued to thrive through the Koryo period (935-1392), with monasteries being granted their own lands and serfs, accumulating great wealth in the process.
That is an excerpt from Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Buddhism: A Journey through History, an excellent book. Maybe the best book on the history of Buddhism I have read? And one of the very best books of this year.
Sunday assorted links
1. Is France Coasean?: “If your pet escapes and falls onto the train tracks in France, a train can be delayed by a maximum of 20 minutes, according to the new protocol, a copy of which was seen by AFP.”
2. Anna Gát podcast with Rohit Krishnan.
3. In the last year, America’s major cities started bouncing back in terms of population.
4. This Op-Ed against selling federal lands made me more enthusiastic about the idea (NYT).
5. Photo of 14,000 year old clay bison.
6. The economics of Desi Arnaz (NYT).
7. That was then, this is now, DEI edition (WSJ).
Claims about falling
There have been many ways to describe a 2-year-old boy surviving a 15-story free fall off an outdoor balcony into a small bush last week in Montgomery County, Maryland. But any discussion quickly gives way to the question: How?
…They treated the boy and took him to a nearby hospital with injuries including a broken leg and multiple internal injuries, police said. They described the injuries as “non-life-threatening” and said the child is expected to survive.
…Hosoi estimates that if a rabbit falls out of airplane and lands on dirt or something softer, the rabbit has a 50 percent chance of not being injured. From there, she said, you can look at animals and humans that are smaller or larger than rabbits.
“The rabbit is the borderline case,” Hosoi said. “Mouse survives. Smaller rabbit survives. Bigger than a rabbit probably results in injury.”
Here is the WaPo article, it is unclear what led to the fall. Should I believe that claim about the rabbit? So Noah could just toss his rabbit out of an airplane and it might be fine? I am not entirely persuaded.
Houston alligator kill markets in everything
In Houston, where custom boots are a source of great pride and style, one local brand is taking the bespoke boot experience to a new level. Republic Boot Company, known for its elevated, hand-crafted creations, just launched a Gator Hunt Experiencewhere customers can source an alligator hide, which will be transformed into a pair of cowboy boots.
Part adventure and part traditional craftsmanship, the experience begins with a hunt in the marshlands near Anahuac, about an hour from Houston, and ends with a custom-made pair of alligator-skin cowboy boots tailored to the client’s vision by a Republic Boot Company boot specialist.
Here is the full story. Note that it costs more for a larger alligator.
The new FTC commissioner Mark Meador
Frankly, he is just flat out terrible. You can read his recent document here. Early on he tells us:
Conservatives must reaffirm that concentrated economic power is just as dangerous as concentrated political power…
I suppose if you hold political power you might think that. Or try this bit from the conclusion:
But we can make it {antitrust law] more just by ensuring that we do not allow a preoccupation with economic speculation to water down robust enforcement, preferring to err on the side of cautious deconcentration rather than hopeful deference to the interests of concentrated economic powers. Powers, I will note, that apart from their putative lines of business increasingly declare open war on the moral values that undergird the foundation of our constitutional republic.
That last line segues into my next point, namely that perhaps he is hostile to economic analysis ecause it does not judge the morality of the companies under consideration. (By the way, if the company is truly evil, you might want market power and higher prices!) On p.32, he calls for explicitly limiting the influence of economists, for instance:
statutorily cabining the use of economic evidence…
You can debate what exactly he might mean by that, but he does not seem intent on raising the status of economists in governmental processes. Is moving further in that direction really the right way to go these days? He notes also that:
…antitrust law today has strayed into exactly the kind of “economic extravaganza” that Bork warned against.
Is he referring to Lina Khan?
Nor can he keep up a basic level of professionalism. Like so many on the current political right, he saves his greatest scorn for libertarians, who arguably are those most likely to see through the power charade. Here is one example:
Conservatives must reject the lies they have been told by libertarianism…
As a political motive, perhaps projection is sometimes underrated.
The link and pointer are via Larry.