Category: Data Source

I do, it seems.  Don’t tell my suppliers, but I am a big fan of zero price search.  Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst write:

Using scanner data and time diaries, we document how households substitute time for money through shopping and home production. We find evidence that there is substantial heterogeneity in prices paid across households for identical consumption goods in the same metro area at any given point in time. For identical goods, prices paid are highest for middleaged, rich, and large households, consistent with the hypothesis that shopping intensity is low when the cost of time is high. The data suggest that a doubling of shopping frequency lowers the price paid for a given good by approximately 10 percent. [TC: is that all????]  From this elasticity and observed shopping intensity, we impute the shopper’s opportunity cost of time, which peaks in middle age at a level roughly 40 percent higher than that of retirees [emphasis added]. Using this measure of the price of time and observed time spent in home production, we estimate the parameters of a home production function. We find an elasticity of substitution between time and market goods in home production of close to 2. Finally, we use the estimated elasticities for shopping and home production to calibrate an augmented lifecycle consumption model. The augmented model predicts the observed empirical patterns quite well. Taken together, our results highlight the danger of interpreting lifecycle expenditure without acknowledging the changing demands on time and the available margins of substituting time for money.

Here is the paper, and thanks to Bruce Bartlett for the pointer.  We also learn that people with children pay higher prices (presumably they have less time to search) and people in their forties with children pay the highest prices of all, six to eight percent more than people in their twenties or sixties.

I also take these results to imply that poor households, which shop more frequently and pay lower prices, are better off in material terms than CPI-based measures of real income will imply.  That being said, they also have less time.  Fans of the "happiness literature," which suggests more money above a certain level doesn’t make you better off, should favor less search.  After all, we are told that people enjoy time spent with friends more than either money or sex.  So does this view (not mine) suggest that we shut down discount outlets and induce more consumption of time?  Are single price monopolies better than price discrimination?  Is Marshall’s the true enemy of the middle class?

Half of all subsidies go to only 5% of Congressional districts.

Four commodities–corn, wheat, rice and cotton–account for 78 percent of all ag subsidies.

Daniel Drezner has more.

Over 2001 and 2002, America’s 25,000 cotton farmers received more subsidies — about $3 billion — than the entire economic output of Burkina Faso in a year.  Two million people in Burkina Faso live partly or fully from cotton farming.

The information is from Raising Less Corn, More Hell: The Case for the Independent Farm and Against Industrial Food, by George Pyle.  The book is more libertarian and less anti-corporate than the title makes it sound.

One of my macro students asks: "Why there is such a focus on nonfarm employment in statistics?"  As opposed to total employment, that is.  If you know why, comments are open.

Check out Paul Krugman mentions in the blogosphere. 

Addendum: His column today on the Medicare drug bill is excellent, and I otherwise would have linked to it.  Here is one partial version.

Second addendum: Gary Karr, Medicare’s chief spokesman, sent me the following in an email:

1. Robert Keohane

2. Kenneth Waltz

3. Alexander Wendt

4. Samuel Huntington

5. John Mearsheimer

6. Joseph Nye

7. Robert Jervis

8. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

9. Bruce Russett

10. Robert Gilpin

When I see a list like this, I realize just how much of an economist I am.

Addendum: This may be further information, and perhaps the poll was restricted to the field of IR.

A small African state like Chad has an economy smaller than that of a Washington suburb like Bethesda and a banking sector smaller than the Federal Credit union set up for World Bank staff.

That is from Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist.

This year alone, Shanghai will complete towers with more space for
living and working than there is in all the office buildings in New York City.

Here is the full story.

Remember that poll from a month or so ago?  Here are the winners, ugh to number one.  Here is the full list and vote tally; having a non-European, hard to spell or pronounce last name virtually guarantees you sink to the bottom.  Milton Friedman was the number one write-in candidate.  France had one name in the top forty.  Thanks to www.politicaltheory.info for the pointer. 

Estimated wealth of African wealth held in foreign accounts, expressed as a percentage of African GDP: 172

That is from Harper’s Index, October 2005 issue, p.11, the figure is based on UN sources.

A few days ago I cited The New York Times on the honeybee. Many of you (thank you, all) have written in to mention the deer, a source of deadly car crashes. While this choice depends on your theory of causality, the word "dangerous" does seem to apply, here is one data source.

Cast your five votes here, plus you can see how old each candidate is and how many of these names you have read or heard of.  Several economists, such as Krugman, Becker, Sen, Summers, and Bhagwati, are included in the polling; Hernando de Soto and Richard Posner make the list as well.  For other nominees, how about Derek Parfit and Milton Friedman?  Philip Roth?  The politically incorrect Michel Houllebecq?  Bruno Latour?  Marvin Minsky or Hans Moravec?  I am glad to see Pramoedya Toer on the list.  How about the Google people?  An early blogger?

What is the most dangerous animal in the United States, not counting people?  View here.  Read here.  If that (NYT) link won’t work for you, here is another source.