Category: Law
Intimate partner violence against women and the Nordic paradox
That is the title of a new and interesting paper by Enrique Garcia and Juan Merlo, here is the (to me) rather surprising summary:
The Nordic countries are the most gender equal nations in the world, but at the same time, they also have a disproportionately high rate of intimate partner violence against women. This is perplexing because logically violence against women would be expected to drop as women gained equal status in a society. A new study explores this contradictory situation, which has been labeled the ‘Nordic paradox.’
Denmark clocks in at about 32%, Finland at 30%, and Sweden at 28%; Denmark and Finland by the way should disabuse you from blaming this phenomenon on immigrants.
My first response was to think this must be a data reporting issue. Perhaps Nordic women are more willing to step forward, or somehow those systems are more efficient in recording such complaints. But the paper does not support that interpretation:
…the same FRA survey provides data suggesting lower levels of disclosure of IPV [intimate partner violence] to the police by women in Nordic countries as compared to other EU countries. For example the average percentage for the EU of women indicating that the most serious incident of IPV came to the attention of the police is 20%, whereas for Denmark and Finland is 10% and 17% for Sweden. In any case, the ‘higher disclosure’ explanation, however, would not solve the Nordic paradox, as these more ‘reliable’ levels of disclosure would rather reinforce the paradox posited by very high levels of IPV prevalence (prevalence rates around 30% is by all means disproportionate) in countries with high levels of gender equality.
So this remains a puzzle. Here is an earlier post on a very different form of the Nordic gender equality paradox. And here is a recent post on (non-Nordic) brutishness.
For the pointer I thank Eric Barker.
The new economics of cybercrime
“We’re living through an historic glut of stolen data,” explains Brian Krebs, who writes the blog Krebs on Security. “More supply drives the price way down, and there’s so much data for sale, we’re sort of having a shortage of buyers at this point.”
…But cybercriminals’ most crucial adaptation in recent years has little to do with their technical tools and everything to do with their business model: They have started selling stolen data back to its original owners. To keep cybercrime profitable, criminals needed to find a new cohort of potential buyers, and they did: all of us. At the heart of this new business model for cybercrime is the fact that individuals and businesses, not retailers and banks, are the ones footing the bill for data breaches.
Here is the full Josephine Wolff piece.
FAA Grounds Uber of the Sky
Uber is not only fast and convenient it spreads the capital cost of an automobile over a large group of people, thereby increasing efficiency. A typical general aviation aircraft costs ten times or more the price of an automobile so the case for an Uber of the sky is strong. Indeed, shortly after the Wright Brothers flew, informal ride-sharing bulletin 
boards and word of mouth connected pilots with passengers who wanted to hitch a ride and were willing to share the cost.
Flytenow created an app to more easily connect pilots to “passengers” who would pay a share of the “cost” (the reason for the quotes will become clear) but was shut down by the FAA. Flytenow argued that they were simply modernizing the bulletin board system but the FAA worried that they were doing an end run around regulation. The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 requires pilots who are being compensated for their services to have a commercial license. Flytenow was shut down.
Jared Meyer interviewed the founders:
Jared Meyer: …from what I understand, it is still completely legal to find people to share flights (and their costs) by using old-fashioned tools such as bulletin boards or telephone calls. Why does the FAA not allow people to use peer-to-peer online interaction to make the process much more efficient and inclusive?
Alan Guichard: You’re exactly right. Pilots have always been allowed to share flights as long as the pilot and the passenger share a common purpose, which they clearly have on an online bulletin board such as Flytenow. The FAA’s concern is that online interaction will lead to sharing beyond what they refer to as “friends and acquaintances.”
For example, the FAA explained that advertising a shared flight on Facebook would be permissible if a person only had a few friends, but that the same flight would transform the pilot into Delta or American Airlines if he or she had “thousands” of friends.
An Uber of the sky would increase the number of private flights and put pressure on the airlines. It would also create some safety issues. Right now only the rich regularly risk their life in a small airplane. Do we want more people to have access? It’s debatable but there is certainly some level of safety where we would want more passenger-carrying small-aircraft. But which is chicken and which is egg? Safety doesn’t just happen–safety is in part an endogenous consequence of investment and demand. How will we get flying cars if we restrict investment?
Can War Foster Cooperation?
There is a new NBER working paper on this question by Michal Bauer, Christopher Blattman, Julie Chytilová, Joseph Henrich, Edward Miguel, Tamar Mitts:
In the past decade, nearly 20 studies have found a strong, persistent pattern in surveys and behavioral experiments from over 40 countries: individual exposure to war violence tends to increase social cooperation at the local level, including community participation and prosocial behavior. Thus while war has many negative legacies for individuals and societies, it appears to leave a positive legacy in terms of local cooperation and civic engagement. We discuss, synthesize and reanalyze the emerging body of evidence, and weigh alternative explanations. There is some indication that war violence especially enhances in-group or “parochial” norms and preferences, a finding that, if true, suggests that the rising social cohesion we document need not promote broader peace.
That is an all-star line-up of authors, and no this doesn’t mean any of those individuals are in favor of war. That would be the fallacy of mood affiliation, and we all know that MR readers never commit the fallacy of mood affiliation…
Artists, writers, and academics on Brexit
That is a Mary Beard feature in the 3 June 2016 edition of the Times Literary Supplement. Various luminaries were asked what they thought of Brexit. My favorite answer came from Colm Tóibín:
The European Union, despite its flaws, or perhaps because of them, is a wholly rational institution. Like most of us, it is in constant need of urgent reform and can handle anything except a crisis. Even though it is deeply secular, the EU has performed miracles. It has allowed France and Germany to move close to each other; it has allowed Irish and British ministers to meet as equals, which the Irish have enjoyed. It can also make us laugh — the group photographs of the EU leaders after their meetings and the antics of the European Parliament are wholly ludicrous…
More brutal was Jan Morris:
Being politically in or out of Europe has had no impact at all on my own work, and I have no idea what it’s done for or to the cultural life of Britain. For myself, I have long argued for a federal Britain within a federal Europe, but it was always a dream anyway, and I’ve woken up now. If reasons you require, look around you!
Declan Kiberd had a good point:
They [the English] realized that in some ways England’s was an immensely stressed society, whose people had been so distracted by the British cultural project that they still faced an unresolved identity question of their own. It’s a long time since Bernard Shaw described England as the last, most fully penetrated of the British colonies — which could be why its people feel such ambivalence about the more recent transnational scheme.
I do recommend that you all subscribe to the TLS. If you would like yet another point of view, from Dissent, here is Richard Tuck with the Left case for Brexit.
China (Bitcoin) fact of the day
Most trading in bitcoin takes place in China: Huobi and OKCoin, two Chinese exchanges, are thought to account for more than 90% of transactions. The currency seems to have become an outlet for Chinese savers frustrated with their limited investment options and searching for high-yielding assets. The Chinese authorities are worried enough to have banned banks from dealing in bitcoin, but individuals are still free to speculate and have been doing so with gusto.
That is from The Economist. It is consistent with my view that Bitcoin is a largely mature technology, used mostly for evading Chinese capital controls.
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali has passed away at the age of 74. Given the great love and honor shown to him since carrying the Olympic Torch at the Atlanta games in 1996 and being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George Bush in 2005 it is perhaps difficult to remember how reviled he was in the 1960s after he converted to Islam, changed his name, and refused to be drafted.
David Susskind, the well regarded television producer and talk show host, said this to Ali in a bitter exchange in 1968:
I find nothing amusing or interesting or tolerable about this man. He’s a disgrace to his country, his race, and what he laughingly describes as his profession. He is a convicted felon in the United States. He has been found guilty. He is out on bail. He will inevitably go to prison, as well he should. He is a simplistic fool and a pawn.
We should remember these things, however, because more than Ali’s courage in the ring, it was Ali’s courage in fighting the US government and much of the US public that made him a great American.
How to fix London real estate problems
James Jirtle writes to me:
I am a long-time reader of your blog (and your books!) and hugely enjoyed your recent interview with Camille Paglia.
I was wondering whether you might consider writing a post about potential policy responses to the housing crises in many major cities, perhaps nowhere as acute as in London where I live.
London is a bit of a perfect storm: (i) restrictive planning regimes, preventing the building of new homes; (ii) a strictly-enforced “green belt”, limiting the physical expansion of the city; and (iii) huge inflows of both people and capital (both foreign and domestic, in the form of buy-to-let investors) driving up demand.
The average London house price passed £500,000 last November (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-prices/11959731/Average-London-house-price-hits-500000-as-capitals-housing-market-shows-no-sign-of-losing-steam.html) and average rents for a 1-bedroom flat now exceed £700/month (http://www.workgateways.com/working-in-the-uk/cost-of-living).
Various policy responses have been proposed, including:
- raising stamp duty (tax on the purchase of a home – the UK government recently raised rates on homes worth more than £500,000, and introduced punitive rates on purchases of second homes);
- raising council tax (property tax – where a property is rented, this is paid by the tenants);
- “bedroom taxes” on unused bedrooms (currently in place for social housing);
- increasing taxes on private landlords (the UK government recently removed the ability of landlords to deduct mortgage interest, and capped deductions for repairs);
- loosening planning restrictions and taking other actions to combat NIMBYism;
- building on the green belt;
- deposit assistance for first-time buyers (the UK government currently underwrites mortgages of up to 95% LTV for first-time buyers for properties worth up to £600,000 and has introduced savings accounts where the government adds 25% to savings used to purchase a new home, contributing up to £3,000);
- punitive taxes on unused planning permission;
- direct price controls;
- restrictions on foreign ownership of property; and
- increasing interest rates.
Which of these (if any) do you think are likely to be effective? Are there other policies which might be beneficial that I haven’t listed? Politicians here have spent a lot of time bemoaning the crisis, but I don’t have much confidence that the solutions currently being proposed are likely to help. Ideally, I think the goal should be to enable those who live and work in the city to live in reasonable, affordable comfort without causing those currently on the housing ladder to lose significant amounts of money. But maybe we’re already beyond the point where that’s possible?
TC: I say we are probably beyond the point of fixing it, though marginal improvements surely are possible. Here is a good feature story by The Economist on the problem.
Intimate Partner Violence in the Great Recession
That is a recent paper from Schneider, Harknett, and Mclanahan (pdf), here is the abstract:
In the United States, the Great Recession has been marked by severe negative shocks to labor 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 increases in the prevalence of violent/controlling behavior in marriage. These effects are most pronounced among whites and those with at least some post-secondary education. 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 culture and polity that is Washington sentences to ponder
The ride-hailing group [Uber] is smarting over guidelines that let government workers recoup transport costs such as “feeding and stabling horses” but do not appear to permit claims for taking an Uber.
Here is the Barney Jopson FT article. It remains to be seen whether or not the regulations will be changed.
Open and Closed India
In an interview the LSE’s distinguished economic historian Tirthankar Roy was asked how his work on colonial India informs our understanding of contemporary India.
What was similar between the colonial times and the post-reform years? The answer is openness. The parallel tells us that openness to trade and investment is good for capitalism, whether we consider the colonial times or the postcolonial. The open economy did not deliver capitalistic growth in the same fashion in both eras. But there were similarities. In both the periods, not only commodities but also capital and labour were mobile, which encouraged freer flow of knowledge, skills, and technology, and created incentives for domestic producers to become better at what they were doing.
…It is necessary to stress the lesson that open markets and cosmopolitanism were good for the Indian economy, because the political rhetoric in India remains trapped in nationalism, which tends to blame global trade and global capital for poverty and underdevelopment. That sentiment started as a criticism of the British Raj, nurtured by the left, and the negativity persists. The pessimistic view of openness is based on a misreading of economic history. There were many things seriously wrong with the British Raj, but market-integration was not one of these. Influenced by a wrong reading of history, India’s politics remains unnecessarily suspicious of globalisation and cosmopolitanism.
For evidence of rhetoric trapped in nationalism look no further than the Indian government’s refusal to allow Apple to sell used iPhones in India.
Hat tip: Pseudoerasmus on twitter.
Against Historic Preservation
Larry Summers asks:
How…could our society have regressed to the point where a bridge that could be built in less than a year one century ago takes five times as long to repair today?
As I wrote in Launching:
Our ancestors were bold and industrious–they built a significant portion of our energy and road infrastructure more than half a century ago. It would be almost impossible to build the system today. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the infrastructure of our past to travel to our future.
Summers alludes to the regulatory thicket as a cause of the infrastructure slowdown but doesn’t have much to say about fixing the problem. Here’s a place to begin. Repeal all historic preservation laws. It’s one thing to require safety permits but no construction project should require a historic preservation permit. Here are three reasons:
First, it’s often the case that buildings of little historical worth are preserved by rules and regulations that are used as a pretext to slow competitors, maintain monopoly rents, and keep neighborhoods in a kind of aesthetic stasis that benefits a small number of people at the expense of many others.
Second, a confident nation builds so that future people may look back and marvel at their ancestor’s ingenuity and aesthetic vision. A nation in decline looks to the past in a vain attempt to “preserve” what was once great. Preservation is what you do to dead butterflies.
Ironically, if today’s rules for historical preservation had been in place in the past the buildings that some now want to preserve would never have been built at all. The opportunity cost of preservation is future greatness.
Third, repealing historic preservation laws does not mean ending historic preservation. There is a very simple way that truly great buildings can be preserved–they can be bought or their preservation rights paid for. The problem with historic preservation laws is not the goal but the methods. Historic preservation laws attempt to foist the cost of preservation on those who want to build (very much including builders of infrastructure such as the government). Attempting to foist costs on others, however, almost inevitably leads to a system full of lawyers, lobbying and rent seeking–and that leads to high transaction costs and delay. Richard Epstein advocated a compensation system for takings because takings violate ethics and constitutional law. But perhaps an even bigger virtue of a compensation system is that it’s quick. A building worth preserving is worth paying to preserve. A compensation system unites builders and those who want to preserve and thus allows for quick decisions about what will be preserved and what will not.
Some people will object that repealing historic preservation laws will lead to some lovely buildings being destroyed. Of course, it will. There is no point pretending otherwise. It will also lead to some lovely buildings being created. More generally, however, the logic of regulatory thickets tells us that we cannot have everything. As I argued in Launching:
There are good regulations and bad regulations and lots of debate over which is which. From an innovation perspective, however, this debate misses a key point. Let’s assume that all regulations are good. The problem is that even if each regulation is good, the net effect of all the regulations combined may be bad. A single pebble in a big stream doesn’t do much, but throw enough pebbles and the stream of innovation is dammed.
It’s time to blow the dam. Creative destruction requires some destruction.
Do witchcraft beliefs hurt economic progress?
Maybe so, here is the latest:
Where witchcraft beliefs are widespread, American University Economics Professor Boris Gershman found high levels of mistrust exist among people. Gershman also found a negative relationship between witchcraft beliefs and other metrics of social capital relied upon for a functioning society, including religious participation and charitable giving.
It’s long been argued that witchcraft beliefs impede economic progress and disrupt social relations, and Gershman’s statistical analysis supports that theory. From a policy perspective, Gershman’s results emphasize the importance of accounting for local culture when undertaking development projects, especially those that require communal effort and cooperation. Gershman and other social scientists believe that education can help foster improved trust and decrease the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs.
Furthermore:
Parents in witchcraft-believing societies inculcate antisocial traits in children.
Second-generation immigrants from witchcraft-believing nations are less trusting.
Here is the summary statement, here is the full article. Here are related papers by Gershman. For the pointer I thank the excellent Samir Varma.
Ride sharing, vehicle accidents, and crime
That is a new paper from Sean E. Mulholland and Angela K. Dills. Here is the abstract:
The advent of smart-phone based, ride-sharing applications has revolutionized the vehicle for hire market. Advocates point to the ease of use and lower wait times compared to hailing a taxi or pre-arranging limousine service. Others argue that proper government oversight is necessary to protect ride-share passengers from driver error or vehicle part failure and violence from unlicensed strangers. Using a unique panel of over 150 cities and counties from 2010 through 2013, we investigate whether the introduction of the ride-sharing service, Uber, is associated with changes in vehicle accidents and crime. We find that Uber’s entry lowers the rate of DUIs and fatal accidents. For most specifications, we also find declines in arrests for assault and disorderly conduct. Conversely, we observe an increase in vehicle thefts.
For the pointer I thank the excellent Kevin Lewis.
How well does the post-recession world scale?
The bumps we’ve seen over the past 12-18 months stem from a reality that the post-recession world we’ve built doesn’t scale beyond its current size. Consider the following:
-Chipotle wanted to be this era’s McDonald’s. Turns out scaling organic, freshly-prepared food isn’t as cheap or easy as they thought.
-Fintech lenders promised to disrupt big banks. Turns out the lending business requires a lot of capital, and that in jittery markets that capital doesn’t like funding a growing lending business. Maybe the big bank model isn’t so bad.
-The San Francisco Bay Area is the economic center of the early 21st century. But it’s finding that scaling housing and infrastructure for workers is a lot harder than scaling servers and storage. So jobs and people have to move to cheaper metros.
-On demand startups were the solution to mass unemployment and megacity renters who demand services immediately. But they’re finding that as the labor market tightens those workers are getting harder to find, and maybe the unit economics never worked to begin with.
-Tesla wants to disrupt the auto industry. But it’s never produced more than 50,000 cars in a year, and suddenly has to meet demand for as many as 500,000 cars a year. That won’t be cheap or easy, and it’s unclear how much shareholders and lenders will be willing to finance that growth. It’s not as cheap to scale atoms as it is to scale bits.
-Uber and Facebook are the 800-pound gorillas in their respective industries. But as they grow, they’re running into problems of scale. For Uber, it’s finding drivers and fighting regulation. For Facebook, it’s eating too much of the revenue pie for content, and maybe as it grows it’s going to come under greater and greater scrutiny given its media clout. Both will argue they’re not utilities, but the vision and scale they aspire to would make them exactly that.
-Conservatism is finding that the demographic groups that believe in conservatism no longer scale to form a viable national party. Trump will soon find the same to be true for his white working class coalition. The Republican Party needs a new ideology or constituency that can scale to compete with Democrats.
It’s time to let Steve Jobs and Ronald Reagan rest in peace, and find new leaders who can build the world of the 2020′s.