Category: Data Source
Capuchin monkeys are not fooled by Veblen goods
…Using a capuchin population previously trained in a token market, we explored whether monkeys used price as an indicator of value across four experiments. Although monkeys demonstrated an understanding of which goods had which prices (consistently shifting preferences to cheaper goods when prices were increased), we observed no evidence that such price information affected their valuation of different kinds of goods.
In other words, the monkeys don’t think that the more expensive goods are more valuable per se. Yet the monkeys are judged cognitively deficient for getting the problem right!:
These results suggest that human pricing effects may involve more sophisticated human-unique cognitive capacities, such as an understanding of market forces and signaling.
Hat tip goes to Diane Coyle.
Facts about Hurricane Katrina, and the benefits of regional migration
In 2006, the year after the storm, wage and salary income for the average Katrina victim in our sample is roughly $2,200 lower than their matched counterparts. Remarkably, the earnings gap is erased the following year, and by 2008, the hurricane victims actually have higher wage income and total income than control households.
That is from a new NBER working paper by Tatyana Deryugina, Laura Kawano, and Steven Levitt. I agree with this claim:
…strong ties to a place, especially a place with limited economic opportunities such as New Orleans, have adverse economic consequences. When forced by an exogenous shock to migrate, people are able to choose from a wide range of possible locations to move to, and they seem to choose places that offer them better economic opportunities.
You will find an ungated version here.
The economics of Uber
We were talking about this at lunch the other day, and now Josh Barro steps forward with the numbers:
The average price of an individual New York City taxi medallion fell to $872,000 in October, down 17 percent from a peak reached in the spring of 2013, according to an analysis of sales data. Previous figures published by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission — showing flat prices — appear to have been incorrect, and the commission removed them from its website after an inquiry from The New York Times.
In other big cities, medallion prices are also falling, often in conjunction with a sharp decline in sales volume. In Chicago, prices are down 17 percent. In Boston, they’re down at least 20 percent, though it’s hard to establish an exact market price because there have been only five trades since July. In Philadelphia, the taxi authority recently scrapped a planned medallion auction.
There is more here. I learn also that Nevada just banned Uber.
Many workers will end up above-average too
…of those in middle-skill occupations who remain in a full-time job, about 83 percent are still working in a middle-skill job one year later. … What types of jobs are the other 17 percent getting? Mostly high-skill jobs; and that transition rate has been rising. The percent going from a middle-skill job to a high-skill job is close to 13 percent: up about 1 percent relative to before the recession. The percent transitioning into low-skill positions is lower: about 3.4 percent, up about 0.3 percentage point compared to before the recession. This transition to a high-skill occupation tends to translate to an average wage increase of about 27 percent (compared to those who stayed in middle-skill jobs). In contrast, those who transition into lower-skill occupations earned an average of around 24 percent less.
That is Ellie Terry and John Robertson via Mark Thoma.
Economics and chess session at the SEA
Session 16M, Economics and Chess
Papers:
“Thinking Outside the Game Tree: Game Preparation at Chess World Championship”
Doru Cojoc, Columbia University“Do Rational Agents Make Rational Decisions? Evidence from Chess Data”
Alexander Matros, University of South Carolina
Irina Murtazashvili, Drexel University“Human and Computer Preference Divergences at Chess”
Kenneth Regan, University at Buffalo
Tamal Tanu Biswas, University at Buffalo
Jason Zhou, SUNYIT
The link to the program is here. Here is Cojoc’s earlier paper on mixed strategies in chess.
Carlsen played an imperfect match, by the way, especially in the second half, but won on the grounds of age and stamina. For the next cycle, I see Grischuk as the most likely challenger, as Aronian tends to choke at key moments and Caruana does not yet have a good enough positional understanding of the middle game and end game. Carlsen will hold the title still for some while to come.
The pointer is from Daniel Klein, here is his earlier paper on why don’t government officials seem like villains (pdf).
Does crime increase on game day? (football)
David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee report:
This article investigates the effects of National Football League (NFL) games on crime. Using a panel data set that includes daily crime incidences in eight large cities with NFL teams, we examine how various measurements of criminal activities change on game day compared with nongame days. Our findings from both ordinary least squares and negative binomial regressions indicate that NFL home games are associated with a 2.6% increase in total crimes, while financially motivated crimes such as larceny and motor vehicle theft increase by 4.1% and 6.7%, respectively, on game days. However, we observe that play-off games are associated with a decrease in financially motivated crimes. The effects of game time (afternoon vs. evening) and upset wins and losses on crime are also considered.
Is it that a game works up everyone’s excitement, but the playoff games the criminals actually watch? That is via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Statistical discrimination in Israeli used car markets
Asaf Zussman has a 2013 Economic Journal paper on this topic (pdf, gated), here is the abstract:
Using a combination of randomised field experiments, follow-up telephone surveys and other data collection efforts, this article studies the extent and the sources of ethnic discrimination in the Israeli online market for used cars. We find robust evidence of discrimination against Arab buyers and sellers which, the analysis suggests, is motivated by “statistical” rather than “taste” considerations. We additionall find the Arab sellers manipulate their identity in the market by leaving the name field in their advertisements blank.
That abstract could be more informative, here are some concrete results from the paper, noting that market participants do not wish to start a transaction which will then later end up cancelled:
1. Both questionnaire answers and market behavior show discrimination towards Arabs.
2. “The overall [seller] response rate to emails is 22% higher for the Jewish than for the Arab buyer.”
3. An Arab buyer offering a car’s posted price receives the same amount of response as a Jewish buyer requesting a 5-10% discount off the posted price.
4. Based on questionnaires, unfavorable attitudes towards Arabs are positively correlated with Jewish religiosity and negatively correlated with education.
5. Jewish questionnaire responses are correlated with actual marketplace discrimination against Arab transactors. This concordance of words and action is by no means always the case in other studies of discrimination.
6. Arab buyers discriminate against sellers from their own ethnic group, although not as much as Jews discriminate against Arab sellers.
7. The share of used car advertisements without seller name is 10.8% for Jewish sellers, 29.5% for Arab sellers, and 16.7% for sellers with “shared” names.
You will find ungated versions here, and for the pointer I thank Ben Southwood.
Which fields in economics get cited the most?
We have some new results, from Maria Victoria Anauati, Sebastian Galiani, and Ramiro H. Gálvez, all consistent with my prior intuitions:
Does the life cycle of economic papers differ across fields of economic research? By constructing and analyzing a large dataset that combines information on 9,672 articles published in the top five economic journals from 1970 to 2000 with detailed yearly citation data obtained from Google Scholar, we find that published articles do have a life cycle that differs across fields of economic research (which we divide into the categories of applied research, applied theory, econometrics methods and theory). Applied research and applied theory papers are the clear winners in terms of citation counts. For the first years after their publication, they receive higher numbers of citations per year than papers in other fields of research do. They also reach a higher peak number of citations per year and apparently sustain those peak levels for longer, in addition to being cited over longer periods of time (i.e., they have a longer lifespan). Citation patterns are much less favorable for theoretical papers, which are the object of fewer citations per annum in the first years following publication, have lower peak numbers and a shorter lifespan. Econometric method papers are a special case; the pattern for most of these papers is similar to the pattern for theory papers, but the most successful papers (as measured by the number of citations) on econometric methods are also the most successful papers in the entire discipline of economics.
The SSRN paper is here. And via Ben Southwood, here is an interesting new paper on how citation success usually pops up early in the life of a paper: “…citations in the first two years after publication explain more than half of the variation in cumulative citations received over a longer period.”
Facts about Lords
The House of Lords, that is:
One hundred and thirteen draw paychecks from financial-services firms. Twenty-six are paid by resource-extraction companies. Twenty work for foreign governments, in capacities that include advising officials on policy and consulting for government-controlled companies.
Some of those jobs materialized after they joined the House of Lords.
There is much more here, from Justin Scheck and Charles Forelle. For the pointer I thank Matthew A. Petersen.
African immigrant fact of the day
That’s African immigrants to the United States, here is the fact:
In 2009, 41.7 percent of African-born adults age 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 28.1 percent of native-born adults and 26.8 percent of all foreign-born adults.
The source is here, further information about African immigrants is here. They speak good English at very high rates — close to three-quarters — and they are more likely than other immigrants to be participating in the labor force. And their importance is rising:
Though African immigrants represented only 0.4 percent of all foreign born in 1960, this share grew to 1.4 percent in 1980, to 1.8 percent in 1990, and to 2.8 percent in 2000…
People born in the U.S. were roughly four times as likely to report engaging in violent behavior than immigrants from Asia and Africa…
The future of immigration to America is likely African, some south Asian, and Chinese, with Latinos continuing to have a presence as well.
Women earn less than men even when they set the pay
That women earn less money than men is well known. But research has revealed that even when women start their own not-for-profit “social enterprises” they pay themselves less than their male peers.
The study, comprising 159 social entrepreneurs in the UK, showed an adjusted pay gap between the sexes of about 23 per cent. That is similar to the global difference in earnings between men and women. The International Labour Organisation estimates that to be about 23 per cent – meaning that, for every £1 men earn, women earn 77p.
…The new research, by academics at London Business School, Aston University and the University of Antwerp, mirrors previous findings on the salaries earned by male and female founders of for-profit companies. A report on Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses programme, noted that female participants, on average, paid themselves 80 per cent of the salary of male participants.
Saul Estrin, visiting professor of strategy and entrepreneurship, London Business School, and co-author of the latest report, points out that the differences cannot be explained by discrimination since these chief executives set their own pay.
He looked at the entrepreneurs’ job satisfaction and found female social entrepreneurs to be more satisfied with their role than their male counterparts.
One hypothesis suggested in the article is that the female entrepreneurs prioritize autonomy over higher pay and end up happier in these jobs, relative to their alternatives, than do the male entrepreneurs.
Does union membership help cause marriage?
According to David Schneider and Adam Reich it does, their paper is called Marrying Ain’t Hard When You Got A Union Card? Labor Union Membership and First Marriage. The abstract is this:
Over the past five decades, marriage has changed dramatically, as young people began marrying later or never getting married at all. Scholars have shown how this decline is less a result of changing cultural definitions of marriage, and more a result of men’s changing access to social and economic prerequisites for marriage. Specifically, men’s current economic standing and men’s future economic security have been shown to affect their marriageability. Traditionally, labor unions provided economic standing and security to male workers. Yet during the same period that marriage has declined among young people, membership in labor unions has declined precipitously, particularly for men. In this article, we examine the relationship between union membership and first marriage and discuss the possible mechanisms by which union membership might lead to first marriage. We draw on longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-79 to estimate discrete time event-history models of first marriage entry and find that, controlling for many factors, union membership is positively and significantly associated with marriage. We show then that this relationship is largely explained by the increased income, regularity and stability of employment, and fringe benefits that come with union membership.
That is via the excellent Kevin Lewis, who cites some other interesting papers at the link.
All of a sudden, Asian-Americans are voting more Republican
Philip Bump reports:
Note the big swing in the Asian voting bloc, too. In 2012, strong support for the president among Asian-American voters was a surprise. Asian voters preferred the president by 47 points. In 2014, the (low turnout) group split about evenly. It was a 46-point swing.
The full account is here, via Megan McArdle.
Older articles are growing in impact
That is the conclusion from Alex Verstak et.al., here are some sentences to ponder:
…the impact of older articles has grown substantially over 1990-2013. In 2013, 36% of citations were to articles that are at least 10 years old; this fraction has grown 28% since 1990. The fraction of older citations increased over 1990-2013 for 7 out of 9 broad areas and 231 out of 261 subject categories. Second, the increase over the second half (2002-2013) was double the increase in the first half (1990-2001).
The full abstract and article is here. For the pointer I thank Dan Getz.
Intimate Partner Violence in the Great Recession
Daniel Schneider, Kristen Harknett, and Sara McLanahan have been working on this topic. The result is not surprising, but nonetheless worthy of note:
In the United States, the Great Recession has been marked by severe negative shocks to market conditions. In this study, we combine longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study with Bureau of Labor Statistics data on local area unemployment rates to examine the relationship between adverse labor market conditions and intimate partner violence between 1999 and 2010. We find that rapidly worsening labor market conditions are associated with the prevalence of violent controlling behavior in marriage. These effects are most pronounced among whites and those with at least some secondary education. [emphasis added] Worsening economic conditions significantly increase the risk that white mothers and more educated mothers will be in violent/controlling marriages rather than high quality marital unions.
The working paper is here (pdf).