Category: Law
Score one for the signaling model of education
In the new AER there is a paper by Melvin Stephens Jr. and Dou-Yan Yang, the abstract is this:
Causal estimates of the benefits of increased schooling using US state schooling laws as instruments typically rely on specifications which assume common trends across states in the factors affecting different birth cohorts. Differential changes across states during this period, such as relative school quality improvements, suggest that this assumption may fail to hold. Across a number of outcomes including wages, unemployment, and divorce, we find that statistically significant causal estimates become insignificant and, in many instances, wrong-signed when allowing year of birth effects to vary across regions.
In other words, those semi-natural experiments for the return to education, when some regions move with extra doses of compulsory schooling before others and we estimate differential wage effects, maybe don’t show as much as we used to think. As I’ve remarked to Bryan Caplan, if there is a criticism of a famous or politically correct result (or better yet both) getting published in the AER, you can up your Bayesian priors on that criticism being on the mark.
There are ungated copies of the paper here.
A libertarian case for expanding Medicaid
Currently health care is very expensive in the United States, especially if you have to buy hospital care without formal insurance. Under ideal institutions, it would be much cheaper, maybe a third of the current price or lower yet (not for everything, though). For instance in Singapore health care expenditures are about four percent of gdp. A libertarian may think that laissez-faire or near laissez-faire is the way to go, while others might favor single payer with price controls, and so on. In any case, in the meantime we are stuck with expensive health care, and for reasons related to bad and coercive government policy.
Now, would a libertarian think that we should cut health care services in prisons, simply because tax dollars are in play? No, the prisoners — many of whom are morally innocent — have nowhere else to go for treatment. When it comes to health care, many potential Medicaid recipients are in essence prisoners, locked into a policy-deficient environment and so they cannot buy quality care at affordable prices. So if we favor health care expenditures for prisoners we might also favor Medicaid expansions.
That said, expanding the current version of Medicaid is unlikely to be a first-best solution, no matter what your broader political stance.
Addendum: Jacob Levy offers comment.
Machines vs. lawyers
We all know the market for lawyers is shrinking, but not every part of the legal services sector is in retreat. John O. MacGinnis writes:
The job category that the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls “other legal services”—which includes the use of technology to help perform legal tasks—has already been surging, over 7 percent per year from 1999 to 2010.
Much of the rest of the piece details how various legal functions can be taken only, if only slowly, by smart software. Here is a bit more:
Until now, computerized legal search has depended on typing in the right specific keywords. If I searched for “boat,” for instance, I couldn’t bring up cases concerning ships, despite their semantic equivalence. If I searched for “assumption of risk,” I wouldn’t find cases that may have employed the same concept without using the same words. IBM’s Watson suggests that such limitations will eventually disappear. Just as Watson deployed pattern recognition to capture concepts rather than mere words, so machine intelligence will exploit pattern recognition to search for semantic meanings and legal concepts. Computers will also use network analysis to assess the strength of precedent by considering the degree to which other cases and briefs rely on certain decisions. Some search engines, such as Ravel Law, already graphically display how much a particular precedent affected the subsequent course of law. As search progresses, then, machine intelligence not only will identify precedents; it will also guide a lawyer’s judgment about where, when, and how to cite them.
The entire piece is here, interesting throughout, via B.A.
Nurses complain about algorithms
In response [to the rise of diagnostic algorithms], NNU [National Nurses United] has launched a major campaign featuring radio ads from coast to coast, video, social media, legislation, rallies, and a call to the public to act, with a simple theme – “when it matters most, insist on a registered nurse.” The ads were created by North Woods Advertising and produced by Fortaleza Films/Los Angeles. Additional background can be found at http://www.insistonanrn.org.
Here is the link. Here is an MP3 of the ad. Remarkable, do give it a listen. It has numerous excellent lines such as “Algorithms are simple mathematical formulas that nobody understands.”
For the pointer I thank Eric Jonas.
Marc Andreessen on net neutrality
So, I think the net neutrality issue is very difficult. I think it’s a lose-lose. It’s a good idea in theory because it basically appeals to this very powerful idea of permissionless innovation. But at the same time, I think that a pure net neutrality view is difficult to sustain if you also want to have continued investment in broadband networks. If you’re a large telco right now, you spend on the order of $20 billion a year on capex. You need to know how you’re going to get a return on that investment. If you have these pure net neutrality rules where you can never charge a company like Netflix anything, you’re not ever going to get a return on continued network investment — which means you’ll stop investing in the network. And I would not want to be sitting here 10 or 20 years from now with the same broadband speeds we’re getting today. So the challenge, I think, is to accommodate both of those goals, which is a very difficult thing to do. And I don’t envy the FCC and the complexity of what they’re trying to do.
The ultimate answer would be if you had three or four or five broadband providers to every house. And I think you actually have the potential for that depending on how things play out from here. You’ve got the cable companies; you’ve got the telcos. Google Fiber is expanding very fast, and I think it’s going to be a very serious nationwide and maybe ultimately worldwide effort. I think that’s going to be a much bigger scale in five years.
So, you can imagine a world in which there are five competitors to every home for broadband: telcos, cable, Google Fiber, mobile carriers and unlicensed spectrum. In that world, net neutrality is a much less central issue, because if you’ve got competition, if one of your providers started to screw with you, you’d just switch to another one of your providers.
The entire interview is interesting, including his discussion of the Obama administration and the possibility of a fragmented internet. By the way here is Marc on EconTalk with Russ Roberts.
Anti-surveillance mask (look for this to be an issue)
The 3D-printed resin mask, made from a 3D scan of Selvaggio’s face and manufactured by ThatsMyFace.com, renders his features and skin tone with surprising realism, though the eyes peeping out from the eye holes do lend a certain creepiness to the look.
…It turns out some states have anti-mask laws. And Selvaggio [the creator of these masks] — whose earlier project You Are Me let others use his social-media profiles — says he’s considered the possibility that anyone wearing his face in public could engage in illegal activity…That being said, I have come to the conclusion that it is worth the risk if it creates public discourse around surveillance practices and how it affects us all.”
The article is here, with excellent photos of the masks.
For the pointer I thank Vic Sarjoo.
The Americanization of China?
Former NBA star Yao Ming is being sued by Beijing resident Feng Changshun for endorsing a health food product that Feng said misleads consumers, in one of the first consumer rights cases involving a celebrity since a new protection law was enacted in March.
Feng is suing Baxsun Pharmacy, a retail chain in Beijing, for exaggerating the benefits of its fish oil capsules.
Yao, a spokesman for the product, is also being sued. Beijing’s Xicheng district court has confirmed that it will hear the case.
Feng said he is seeking 500 yuan ($80.10) in compensation from the retail chain and 0.01 yuan from Yao Ming.
“(The lawsuit) is symbolic. I want (Yao Ming) to admit to infringements of my rights,” he said.
You can read more here.
Is globalization bypassing New Zealand?
Bryce Wilkinson and Khyaati Acharya write:
A report in 2012 by The New Zealand Initiative drew attention to New Zealand’s seventh position among 57 countries for having the most restrictive FDI regulatory regime. This was largely due to New Zealand’s economy-wide screening regime and the broad definition of ‘sensitive’ land. Treasury has confirmed that there is credible anecdotal evidence that New Zealand’s regime is having a chilling effect on inwards FDI investment, but the materiality of this effect is an open question. It is doubtful that the damaging Crafar farms case would have triggered regulatory barriers in other Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions or comparable Asian countries.
New Zealand’s Overseas Investment Act further detracts from the country’s ‘open for business’ image by starkly asserting that it is a privilege for foreigners to be allowed to own or control sensitive New Zealand assets. This is in stark contrast to the explicitly welcoming approach widely taken elsewhere.
Statistics show that New Zealand has largely missed out on the expansion of global FDI since the mid-1990s. Both inwards and outwards stocks of FDI peaked as a percentage of GDP more than a decade ago in New Zealand, while world stocks continued their upwards climb. Between 2000 and 2011, New Zealand’s rank on UNCTAD’s FDI attraction index slumped from 73rd in the world to 146th. Hong Kong and Singapore have been in the top five throughout this period.
The longer study (pdf) covers many other points. And here are further writings by Bryce Wilkinson on New Zealand.
Who benefits from drug testing?
Black males, overall. Abigail K. Wozniak has a new NBER paper on this topic:
Nearly half of U.S. employers test job applicants and workers for drugs. A common assumption is that the rise of drug testing must have had negative consequences for black employment. However, the rise of employer drug testing may have benefited African-Americans by enabling non-using blacks to prove their status to employers. I use variation in the timing and nature of drug testing regulation to identify the impacts of testing on black hiring. Black employment in the testing sector is suppressed in the absence of testing, a finding which is consistent with ex ante discrimination on the basis of drug use perceptions. Adoption of pro-testing legislation increases black employment in the testing sector by 7-30% and relative wages by 1.4-13.0%, with the largest shifts among low skilled black men. Results further suggest that employers substitute white women for blacks in the absence of testing.
There is an earlier ungated version here.
And the internet is…
Mario Costeja González, the Spanish national who brought the complaint, said it was “not going to be a big problem for Google” because the ruling only required it to remove irrelevant information.
That is from the FT story, note that the scope and applicability of this new ruling does still remain up for grabs.
Copyright Control to Major Tom
Copyright control to Major Tom
commencing countdown
permissions gone
There’s something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Background here.
Korean markets in everything, prison meditation edition
In the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of Hongcheon, 58 miles northeast of Seoul, Kwon Yong-seok runs “Prison Inside Me,” a stress-reduction center with a penal theme. A meditation building, auditorium and management center sit on a 2-acre piece of land.
It is like this:
In June last year, the construction of the prison-like spiritual house was completed. It took a year and cost Mr. Kwon and his wife Roh Ji-hyang, head of a theater company, 2 billion won, or $19 million. Parts of the cost were covered by donations and loans from friends and relatives. Mr. Kwon says the goal of the facility, which has 28 solitary confinement cells, isn’t to make a profit.
On top of private meditation sessions, paying guests are helped to reflect on their lives and learn how to free themselves from what Mr. Kwon calls the “inner prison,” through meditation, spiritual classes and “healing” plays in a group session in the auditorium. A two-night stay costs 150,000 won or about $146.
But it may not succeed:
So far, it hasn’t been as easy for the couple to run the place as they had envisioned. They had to cut the length of stays to as little as two days because people aren’t willing to, or simply can’t, take time off. Also the facility had to make another big concession to modernity—allowing guests to check their smartphones at least once a day.
The full story is here, and for the pointer I thank Ben Smeal.
The commons are still tragic
Kevin Grier reports:
Paul Krugman points us to the success story of the rebound of US fish stocks. He then makes an amazing leap to climate change saying, “Fighting climate change isn’t really all that different from saving fisheries; if we ever get around to doing the obvious, it will be easier and more successful than anyone now expects.”
I actually agree with the first part, and the Vox article that Krugman links to makes the point pretty well, just not in the way Paul wants it to be made.
Now the big caveat: Yes, US fisheries seem to be recovering. But that’s not true for much of the rest of the world. And, given that the United States imports around 91 percent of its seafood, this is a pretty crucial caveat.
All told, the best-managed fisheries around the world — the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland — only make up about 16 percent of the global catch, according to a recent paper in Marine Pollution Bulletin by Tony Pitcher and William Cheung of the University of British Columbia.
By contrast, more than 80 percent of the world’s fish are caught in the rest of the world, in places like Asia and Africa — where rules are often less strict. The data here is fairly patchy, but the paper notes that many of these nations are less likely to follow the UN’s Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, and there’s evidence that “serious depletions” may be occurring…
In other words, overfishing, like climate change, is a global problem that the US can’t fix on its own. Our fish stocks are rebounding, and our carbon emissions are falling, but much of the rest of the world is moving in the wrong direction on both issues.
The full post is here.
Why Vampires Live So Long
NYTimes: Two teams of scientists published studies on Sunday showing that blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice, rejuvenating their muscles and brains. As ghoulish as the research may sound, experts said that it could lead to treatments for disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease.
The key papers are here and here and here. Some of the papers are pointing to a specific protein but the last paper suggests that simple transfusions also work and that raises a number of issues of public policy. As Derek Lowe notes:
Since blood plasma is given uncounted thousands of times a day in every medical center in the country, this route should have a pretty easy time of it from the FDA. But I’d guess that Alkahest is still going to have to identify specific aging-related disease states for its trials, because aging, just by itself, has no regulatory framework for treatment, since it’s not considered a disease per se.
…You also have to wonder what something like this would do to the current model of blood donation and banking, if it turns out that plasma from an 18-year-old is worth a great deal more than plasma from a fifty-year-old. I hope that the folks at the Red Cross are keeping up with the literature.
A simple Bayesian updating on Ukraine
Putin didn’t carve off the eastern parts of the country, although he could have. I now infer he wishes to take the whole thing. There are sometimes reasons why you do not wish to stop and take the free lunch and create a focal line, namely that it can constrain you for the future. I don’t mean that Putin will conquer Ukraine by military force, but rather bit by bit he will harass the current government into losing legitimacy, until a strongly pro-Russian, pro-Putin government is running that country. By hook or by crook.