Category: Data Source
What does the American public believe?
Many things that ain’t so, according to our colleague Bryan Caplan. They believe that protectionism creates jobs, and they think that big corporations, rather than supply and demand, set the price of gasoline. See the link for a longer discussion and some citations of specific questionnaire evidence.
Here is my favorite bit:
The only category of spending that the public invariably wants to cut is foreign aid–which amounts to about 1% of the federal budget!
Believe it or not, it is not unusual for a member of the general public to think that foreign aid consists of forty percent of the United States government budget. Of all the biases we observe in voters, “suspicion of foreigners” appears to be the most pronounced. Bryan, who has done the relevant work here, is writing a book on how and why democracy can go astray through irrational voters, I await its release eagerly.
Here are some broader polls on NAFTA and free trade, compiled by AEI. Even the people who favor free trade, presumably for its benefits to consumers, think it costs us jobs. Given how the public feels, I am always surprised that we have as much free trade as we do.
The Commanding Heights
PBS has put the entire Commanding Heights television series on the net. Wisely, in addition to longer sections, they have broken the series down in a variety of ways so that you can find short clips on people, countries or ideas. Here is a quicktime video about the the day the tide turned.
Two things that you don’t want to see made
Hint: both contain a lot of pork. Senator John McCain has a list (link via Bruce Bartlett’s Talking Points.)
Here are a few of my favourites from recent legislation:
$1.5 million for the University of Nevada-Las Vegas to conduct safety and risk analysis. (I did some risk analysis in Las Vegas once, but not on taxpayer money).
$278,000 for asparagus technology and production (WA)
$2,000,000 for exotic pet diseases (CA)
$300,000 for future foods (IL)
Not less than $2,300,000 for the International Fertilizer Development Center. (Hmmm…Nahh, too easy.)
$1,000,000 for the Amanut Society.
Bear in mind that these projects have not been through any sort of peer-review process – these are pet projects of particular members of Congress that are inserted into larger bills.
Everything you always wanted to know about currency boards…
Here is an extensive web site on currency boards and dollarization, maintained by Kurt Schuler (conflict of interest notification: he is a former student of mine).
If you doubt Kurt’s thoroughness, follow the link to a piece on currency boards in St. Helena, yes that’s right the place where Napoleon went. The site also offers an extensive discussion of what went wrong in Argentina, again all links run through the main page. Thanks to the Mises blog for the pointer.
Which states donate the most money?
Here is the list, done in per capita terms.
Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, is number one. Then comes Arkansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Alabama, all relatively poor states. The richer states, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, all lie near the bottom.
Andrew Sullivan tells us that the giving states are those that tend to support Bush and the Republicans, suggesting that Republicans are more generous. Well, sort of, church giving is driving these results. Here is the distribution of giving for 2000, churches get 36.5% of all American donations, the single largest category. Art and culture get 11.4%. No doubt, religious states both give more and support Bush more.
What do Scandinavians export?
It is commonly known that Sweden and Norway stand among the top five nations for foreign aid per capita.
It is less commonly known that, in per capita terms, they are among the top five arms exporters in the world. Here is the whole list, along with a color-coded map.
And who is number one on the list? Macedonia. The U.S. is number ten, France number seven.
From Nationmaster.com, a valuable data source, growing by the day.
Do you want to know cinema attendance per capita? The U.S. is number two, just behind Iceland. Georgia is number six, and Lebanon is number ten.
Business Regulation
Andrei Shleifer and colleagues have engaged in a massive collection of data on legal regimes around the world. The World Bank has now released a major report written by the same group called Doing Business 2004 (summary here). In addition, the data from their project is available on the World Bank website Doing Business. This is a major resource for economists.
Here’s a nice graph from the report (click to expand).
