Category: Data Source

New data on media bias

by  Tyler Cowen in

In this study, we propose a novel approach to detect supply-side media bias, independent of external factors like ownership or editors’ ideological leanings. Analyzing over 100,000 articles from The New York Times (NYT) and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), complemented by data from 22 million tweets, we assess the factors influencing article duration on their digital homepages. By flexibly controlling for demand-side preferences, we attribute extended homepage presence of ideologically slanted articles to supply-side biases. Utilizing a machine learning model, we assign “pro-Democrat” scores to articles, revealing that both tweets count and ideological orientation significantly impact homepage longevity. Our findings show that liberal articles tend to remain longer on the NYT homepage, while conservative ones persist on the WSJ. Further analysis into articles’ transition to print and podcasts suggests that increased competition may reduce media bias, indicating a potential direction for future theoretical exploration.

That is from a recent paper by Tin Cheuk Leung and Koleman Strumpf.

Student Demand and the Supply of College Courses

by  Tyler Cowen in

From a recent Jacob Light paper:

In an era of rapid technological and social change, do universities adapt enough to play their important role in creating knowledge? To examine university adaptation, I extracted the information contained in the course catalogs of over 450 US universities spanning two decades (2000-2022). When there are changes in student demand, universities respond inelastically, both in terms of course quantity and content. Supply inelasticity is especially pronounced in fields experiencing declining demand and is more pronounced at public universities. Using Natural Language Processing, I further show that while the content of existing courses remains largely unchanged, newly-created courses incorporate topics related to current events and job skills. Notably, at selective institutions, new content focuses on societal issues, while at less selective institutions, new content emphasizes job-relevant skills. This study contributes uniquely to our understanding of the supply-side factors that affect how universities adapt to the rapidly evolving landscape.

John Cochrane offers comment as well, the first half of the post is interesting on demographics also.

Religion and the ideological gender gap

by  Tyler Cowen in

Matriline versus Patriline: Social Mobility in England, 1754-2023

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Greg Clark may well be the most important social scientist of the 21st century. His use of historical data informed by evolutionary theory and genetics is a unique contribution to social science with important and challenging results.

Clark’s latest paper (with Neil Cummins) makes a simple but striking point. If the primary systematic determinant of social outcomes is genetic then we expect the father and the mother to contribute equally (each giving half their genes). If, on the other hand, the primary determinant is social then we expect widely different mother-father contributions in different societies and at different times and for different characteristics. Fathers ought to matter more in patriarchies, for example, and mothers more in matriarchies and gender-egalitarian societies. Similarly, if social factors are determinative, we would surely see a rising contribution of mothers to child outcomes as the social power of women rises (you can’t use your mother’s contacts in the legal profession to get a job, for example, if your mother was never a lawyer.) Similarly, if social factors are determinative we would expect mothers to be more important perhaps for characteristics determined early and fathers for characteristics determined late.

As Clark and Cummins write:

Social institutions and conventions would suggest that social status will often be more strongly transmitted between generations on either the patriline or the matriline. The factors favoring stronger transmission on the matriline are the much greater involvement in all societies of mothers in the care and education of children. The greater time investment of mothers in childcare is found in all societies, even those such as in contemporary Nordic countries where gender equality is the most advanced. Thus we would on the human capital interpretation of social outcomes expect a greater maternal than paternal connection in the modern world. However, a countervailing force in earlier times was the greater access of fathers to resources, and professional contacts. Also since in earlier years only fathers had occupations and educational qualifications, the father could be much more of a model for the outcomes of sons. It is thus uncertain whether the paternal or maternal line would better predict social outcomes in any earlier society. But we would expect the paternal effect to be greater in high status groups, and the maternal effect greater in average or lower class families.

What we find with the FOE data, however, is that in 27 out of 31 child outcomes (other than wealth) examined across marriages in the years 1754-1995, the patriline and matriline had a predictive ability for child outcomes that was not statistically distinguishable at the 5% level. In the four cases where the coefficients differed significantly, in three the maternal effect was greater, and in one the paternal effect. Thus for most social outcomes – literacy, age at beginning work, age at leaving schooling, higher education, and occupational status – mother and fathers appear always to contribute roughly equally. The one clear exception is wealth, where always patriline wealth is a much stronger predictor of child wealth than is matriline wealth.

…The results suggest, however, that the mechanism of transmission is largely independent of parental time interacting with children. The results reported above are thus consistent with the finding of Clark (2023) that the pattern of inheritance of most social outcomes in England 1600-2022 was consistent with direct additive genetic transmission. Such transmission would imply a symmetry of mother and father predictive effects.

Did the Trump tariffs help the heartland?

by  Tyler Cowen in

No, but they did get him some votes there:

We study the economic and political consequences of the 2018-2019 trade war between the United States, China and other US trade partners at the detailed geographic level, exploiting measures of local exposure to US import tariffs, foreign retaliatory tariffs, and US compensation programs. The trade-war has not to date provided economic help to the US heartland: import tariffs on foreign goods neither raised nor lowered US employment in newly-protected sectors; retaliatory tariffs had clear negative employment impacts, primarily in agriculture; and these harms were only partly mitigated by compensatory US agricultural subsidies. Consistent with expressive views of politics, the tariff war appears nevertheless to have been a political success for the governing Republican party. Residents of regions more exposed to import tariffs became less likely to identify as Democrats, more likely to vote to reelect Donald Trump in 2020, and more likely to elect Republicans to Congress. Foreign retaliatory tariffs only modestly weakened that support.

That is from a new NBER working paper by David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson.

Hot parents, richer kids?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Since the mapping of the human genome in 2004, biologists have demonstrated genetic links to the expression of several income-enhancing physical traits. To illustrate how heredity produces intergenerational economic effects, this study uses one trait, beauty, to infer the extent to which parents’ physical characteristics transmit inequality across generations. Analyses of a large-scale longitudinal dataset in the U.S., and a much smaller dataset of Chinese parents and children, show that a one standard-deviation increase in parents’ looks is associated with a 0.4 standard-deviation increase in their child’s looks. A large data set of U.S. siblings shows a correlation of their beauty consistent with the same expression of their genetic similarity, as does a small sample of billionaire siblings. Coupling these estimates with parameter estimates from the literatures describing the impact of beauty on earnings and the intergenerational elasticity of income suggests that one standard-deviation difference in parents’ looks generates a 0.06 standard-deviation difference in their adult child’s earnings, which amounts to additional annual earnings in the U.S. of about $2300.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Daniel S. Hamermesh and Anwen Zhang.

Alice Evans on the ideological gender divide

by  Tyler Cowen in

“I suggest,

  1. Men and women tend to think alike in societies where there is
    1. Close-knit interdependence, religosity and authoritarianism, or
    2. Shared cultural production and mixed gendered offline socialising.
  2. Gendered ideological polarisation appears encouraged by:
    1. Feminised public culture
    2. Economic resentment
    3. Social media filter bubbles
    4. Cultural entrepreneurs.”

Here is the full piece, currently the best piece on this topic.

Central African Republic estimate of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

Published in the journal Conflict and Health last April, the report suggests that the world’s deadliest humanitarian crisis in 2022 was not in Afghanistan, Ukraine, or other places featured regularly in the news — but in CAR.

The Central African Republic has neither reliable birth and death registries nor regular censuses. To figure out how many people were dying, Karume’s team traveled by car, boat, motorcycle, and foot to conduct interviews across the country. When they analyzed their survey data, they estimated that nearly 6 percent of CAR’s population died within 2022, in a country with a median age around 15. Scaling for population size, this toll would amount to a loss of more than two New York Cities. And yet, the world outside of Africa is barely aware that CAR is a country. The title of the team’s report asks: “How can we not know?”

Here is more, by Amy Maxmen, via Dylan Matthews.

South Dakota is trying to hold on

by  Tyler Cowen in

Bihar is holding on:

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Quick tour of Argentina’s fiscal deficit (from my email, anonymous author)

by  Tyler Cowen in

I won’t double indent, but this is not by me, though I agree with it:

“I agree with your read re Argentina’s history of fiscal stability. From this paper (unclear if the data is accurate), here is Argentina’s deficit from 1960 to 2016 or so:

[See Figure 3 here]

Notice 2003-2009 is the only time with a noticeable superavit (exports > imports, taxes > spending), which coincides with Kirchner. It happily coincided with booming soy prices and it was immediately followed by more public spending. Remember soy exports have their own special tax rate (retenciones + FX tax, ~double other exports). Here are soy prices (source):

[See Figure here]

Here is Carlos Pagni in 2009 covering the law that let the state spend as much as it pleased once again. This was only a few years after 2004, when the IMF had forced Argentina to pass Ley 25.917 constraining government spending and debt under GDP.

Also notice that the deficit continued after the hyperinflation of 1989-1990! Between the privatizations, Plan Bonex, and reduced social spending, Menem reduced inflation (and caused a recession for which he is resented to this day). Then Cavallo comes in with convertibilidad. This gets world bankers excited and the dollars start flowing back into Argentina but the fiscal deficit immediately resumes. That same Menem ran an ad campaign in 1999 partially based on infrastructure investments after his decade of deficit.

In other words, the Peronistas simply do not believe that too much spending leads to a crisis. They will always spend if allowed to. Argentina still lacks the institutions to prevent this.

Looking at the recent history of fiscal deficit, Milei can make two contributions:

Short-term: Cut spending before things explode. The Peronistas would’ve continued to print + spend, deepening the problems. Milei is already succeeding at this and will likely succeed while he remains in power. For example, he has cut some of the funding to the provinces, which will be forced to cut their spending. Some of them are already considering printing their own currency (paper bonds like the LECOP or Patacones from 2001). 

Long-term: Prevent future spending. This is what the Libertarians promise: remove the people that spend us to the ground for good. We should measure “historical success” by this measure. This is why dollarization is attractive: it prevents the state from printing money to fund its deficit. 

I have my hopes up but I don’t understand Argentinian institutions or history well enough to know if he can make progress on this. As a comparison, the Bank of England was founded in 1694 and became formally independent a few centuries later in 1997 (including an IMF intervention into fiscal spending as recent as 1976).”

No, Covid spending wasn’t the only factor, but…

by  Tyler Cowen in

A year or so ago I recall telling Bari Weiss in a podcast that the inflation was perhaps half real shocks, half an aggregate demand problem.  Don’t let the revisionists talk you into the hardcore RBC view!

Who feels the pinch of status competition?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is one interesting hypothesis:

Despite the persistence of anti-Black racism, White Americans report feeling worse off than Black Americans. We suggest that some White Americans may report low well-being despite high group-level status because of perceptions that they are falling behind their in-group. Using census-based quota sampling, we measured status comparisons and health among Black (N = 452, Wave 1) and White (N = 439, Wave 1) American adults over a period of 6 to 7 weeks. We found that Black and White Americans tended to make status comparisons within their own racial groups and that most Black participants felt better off than their racial group, whereas most White participants felt worse off than their racial group. Moreover, we found that White Americans’ perceptions of falling behind “most White people” predicted fewer positive emotions at a subsequent time, which predicted worse sleep quality and depressive symptoms in the future. Subjective within-group status did not have the same consequences among Black participants.

That is from a new paper by Nava Calouri, Erin Cooley, Lauren E. Philbrook.  Via excellence.

How sticky are wages in nominal terms?

by  Tyler Cowen in

There is a new paper on this topic, with what seems to be very good data:

This paper examines the relationship between downward nominal wage rigidity and employment outcomes using linked
employer-employee data. Wage rigidity prevents 27.1 percent of counterfactual wage cuts, with a standard deviation of 19.2 percent across establishments. An establishment with the sample-average level of wage rigidity is predicted to have a 3.3 percentage point higher layoff rate, a 7.4 percentage point lower quit rate, and a 2.0 percentage point lower hire rate. Estimating a structural model by indirect inference implies that the cost of a nominal wage cut is 33 percent of an average worker’s annual compensation.

That is by Gabriel Ehrlich and Joshua Montes, recently published in American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics.  Here are less gated versions of the paper.  I found this of particular interest:

Establishments in the construction supersector display the least wage rigidity, with an average of 8.8 percent of wage cuts prevented. Establishments in the public administration and finance supersectors display the most wage rigidity, with average levels of 39.3 and 41.7 percent of wage cuts prevented, respectively.

Of course employment in the construction sector is highly cyclical, and employment in public administration often is governed by tenure, not exactly what fits best into the standard story.

World’s First Dominant Assurance Contract Platform

by  Alex Tabarrok in

In September I alerted you to a crowdfunding campaign to produce a dominant assurance contract/refund bonus platform. Many of you stepped up and it’s now and up and running! The platform is called EnsureDone. It’s starting up small, with just a few projects, but already the projects are quite interesting. MakeSunsets, for example, had a campaign to raise $1000 to fund a test of seeding the atmosphere with sulfur to increase reflection. That campaign failed which meant the people who had agreed to contribute earned a refund bonus! The UX could also use some work. Still, it’s nice to see this idea being tested in the wild and I have inside info that another such platform will launch soon.