Category: Law
What the Kia-Hyundai Crime Wave Tells Us About the Long-Term Decline in Crime
Motor vehicle thefts (per capita) are about one third the level they were in the early 1990s, a drop which is consistent with the Great Crime Decline, the large fall in many crimes since the early 1990s. A lot of ink has been spent trying to explain the great crime decline–abortion legalization, lead abatement, increased imprisonment, more policing–these are just some of the leading theories.
In recent years, however, there has been a notable increased in motor vehicle theft–not back to earlier peaks–but a substantial increase. Theft hasn’t increased uniformly across the board, however. Thefts of Kias and Hyundais have seen massive increases–in some places thefts of these cars have increased by a factor of five or ten in just a few years. The reason is simple–most cars today have electronic immobilizers which mean that without the key present these cars can’t easily be hotwired. Some enterprising thieves, however, discovered that Kia and Hyundai neglected to install these devices and they spread the word through Tik-Tok videos about a method to quickly and efficiently jack these cars.
I propose that the micro can shed light on the macro. Consider the four theories for the great crime decline that I mentioned earlier–abortion legalization, lead abatement, increased imprisonment and more policing. The first two, abortion legalization and lead abatement, are theories about why there are fewer criminals–these theories say that people improved and that is why crime declined. But better people shouldn’t steal any car models, including Kias and Hyundais! Moreover, people haven’t suddenly become worse. Thus, offender-based theories cannot explain the sharp rise in motor vehicle thefts. There have been some changes in punishment, imprisonment and policing, in recent years but these have been slow moving and fairly small and in addition they also don’t explain the rise in Kia and Hyundia thefts in particular.
Obviously, what explains the rise in thefts of Kias and Hyundias in particular is the discovery that these vehicles were unguarded, unprotected and unsecured. Notice that being unguarded, unprotected and unsecured swamped any effect coming from abortion legalization, lead abatement, increased imprisonment or more policing.
The failure of the big four to explain the rise in Kia and Hyundai thefts isn’t proof that these theories are wrong. But lets ask the inverse question, can the rise in Kia and Hyundai thefts suggest an explanation for the great crime decline? In other words, can we explain the great crime decline by an increase in security. Begin with the most direct case, motor vehicle theft. Car immobilizes and other security devices began to be installed in the 1990s so the timing fits. Moreover, the timing fits multiple countries. One of the weaknesses of theories of the great crime decline such as increased imprisonment and policing is that these theories work for the United States but the crime decline occurred in many industrialized countries at about the same time. Canadian crime rates, for example, fall in near lockstep with US rates but with very different prison and policing strategies. Immobilizer technology, however, happened at similar times in similar places and where we saw delays or early adoption we also see delayed or early falls in motor vehicle theft. In addition, motor theft declined first for newer cars (secured) rather than for older cars despite the fact that the newer cars are the more desirable for thieves–again this fits the security hypothesis better than an offender or punishment hypothesis.
The security hypothesis fits motor vehicle theft but the connection is less clear with respect to other crimes. Home security devices have increased and become higher quality over time but the change was less rapid and less precisely timed to the early 1990s. The rise of credit cards and decline of cash could have reduced muggings, although again the timing doesn’t appear to be precise. Violent crime would seem even less likely to be security related–although cameras and lights surely matter–but keep in mind that a lot of violent crime is a side-effect of property crime. Vehicle thefts, muggings and drug deals turn into homicides, for example. In addition, there are “life of crime” or “career” effects. If you make motor vehicle theft and burglary less profitable that makes a life of crime less profitable which can reduce crime in general even without specific deterrence.
Overall, the security hypothesis carries some weight, especially in explaining multiple countries. I don’t fully discount any of the major theories, however. Multiple causation is important.
The main less I draw is this: The increase in Kia and Hyundai thefts suggests that the crime wave declined not because the ocean became more gentle but because we built more secure sea walls. The big waves are still out there in the vast ocean and if we lower the walls we shouldn’t be surprised if another big crime wave comes rolling in.
My Conversation with Harriet Karimi Muriithi
This is another CWT bonus episode, recorded in Tatu City, Kenya, outside of Nairobi. Harriet is a 22-year-old waitress. Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Harriet is a 22-year-old hospitality professional living and working in Tatu City, a massive mixed-used development spearheaded by Jennings. Harriet grew up in the picturesque foothills of Mount Kenya before moving to the capital city as a child to pursue better schooling. She has witnessed Nairobi’s remarkable growth firsthand over the last decade. An ambitious go-getter, Harriet studied supply chain management but and wishes to open her own high-end restaurant.
In her conversation with Tyler, Harriet opens up about her TikTok hobby, love of fantasy novels, thoughts on improving Kenya’s education system, and how she leverages AI tools like ChatGPT in her daily life, the Chinese influence across Africa, the challenges women face in village life versus Nairobi, what foods to sample as a visitor to Kenya, her favorite musicians from Beyoncé to Nigerian Afrobeats stars, why she believes technology can help address racism, her Catholic faith and church attendance, how COVID-19 affected her education and Kenya’s recovery, the superstitions that persist in rural areas, the career paths available to Kenya’s youth today, why Nollywood movies captivate her, the diversity of languages and tribes across the country, whether Kenya’s neighbors impact prospects for peace, what she thinks of the decline in the size of families, why she enjoys podcasts about random acts of kindness, what infrastructure and lifestyle changes are reshaping Nairobi, if the British colonial legacy still influences politics today, and more.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: How ambitious are you?
MURIITHI: On a scale of 1 to 10, I will say an 8.5.
This episode is best consumed in combination with the episode with the village elder Githae Gitinji. The contrast between the two perspectives is startling. And here is my CWT episode with Stephen Jennings, concerning Tatu City itself.
My Conversation with Githae Gitinji
This is a special bonus episode of CWT, Githae is a 58-year-old village elder who mediates disputes and lives in Tatu City, Kenya, near Nairobi. Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
In his conversation with Tyler, Githae discusses his work as a businessman in the transport industry and what he looks for when hiring drivers, the reasons he moved from his rural hometown to the city and his perspectives on urban vs rural living, Kikuyu cultural practices, his role as a community elder resolving disputes through both discussion and social pressure, the challenges Kenya faces, his call for more foreign investment to create local jobs, how generational attitudes differ, the role of religion and Githae’s Catholic faith, perspectives on Chinese involvement in Kenya and openness to foreigners, thoughts on the devolution of power to Kenyan counties, his favorite wildlife, why he’s optimistic about Kenya’s future despite current difficulties, and more.
Excerpt:
COWEN: What do you do that the court system does not do? Because you’re not police, but still you do something useful.
GITHINJI: What we normally do, we as a group, we listen to one another very much. When one person reaches that stage of being told that you are a man now, you normally have to respect your elder. Those people do respect me. When I call you, when I tell you “Come and we’ll talk it out,” with my group, you cannot say you cannot come, because if you do, we normally discipline somebody. Not by beating, we just remove you from our group. When we isolate you from our group, you’ll feel that is not fair for you. You come back and say — and apologize. We take you back into the group.
COWEN: If you’re isolated, you can’t be friends with those people anymore.
GITHINJI: When we isolate you, we mean you are not allowed to interact in any way.
COWEN: Any way.
GITHINJI: Any business, anything with the other community [members]. If it is so, definitely, you have to be a loser, because you might be needing one of those people to help you in business or something of the sort. When you are isolated, this man tells you, “No. Go and cleanse yourself first with that group.”
If you find his Kikiyu accent difficult, just read the transcript instead. This episode is best consumed in a pair with my concurrently recorded episode with Harriet Karimi Muriithi, a 22-year-old Kenyan waitress — the contrasts in perspective across a mere generation are remarkable.
Apple Ad From 1999
My excellent Conversation with Stephen Jennings
Recorded in Tatu City, Kenya, not far from Nairobi, Tatu City is a budding Special Enterprise Zone. Here is the transcript, audio, and video. Here is the episode overview:
Stephen and Tyler first met over thirty years ago while working on economic reforms in New Zealand. With a distinguished career that transitioned from the New Zealand Treasury to significant ventures in emerging economies, Stephen now focuses on developing new urban landscapes across Africa as the founder and CEO of Rendeavour.
Tyler sat down with Stephen in Tatu City, one of his multi-use developments just north of Nairobi, where they discussed why he’s optimistic about Kenya in particular, why so many African cities appear to have low agglomeration externalities, how Tatu City regulates cars and designs for transportation, how his experience as reformer and privatizer informed the way utilities are provided, what will set the city apart aesthetically, why talent is the biggest constraint he faces, how Nairobi should fix its traffic problems, what variable best tracks Kenyan unity, what the country should do to boost agricultural productivity, the economic prospects for New Zealand, how playing rugby influenced his approach to the world, how living in Kenya has changed him, what he will learn next, and more.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: Just give us some basic facts. Where is Tatu City right now, and where will it be headed when it’s more or less finished?
JENNINGS: Tatu City is the only operational special economic zone [SEZ] in the country. It is 5,000 hectares of fully planned urban development. It is at quite an advanced stage. We have 70 large-scale industrial companies with us, including major multinationals and many of the regional leaders. We have 3,000 students come on site every day to our four new schools. We’re advanced in building the first phase of the first new CBD for the region. We have tens of thousands of core center jobs moving into that area, together with other modern office amenities. All of the elements — we have many residential modules, thousands of new residential units at a wide range of price points — all of the elements of a new city are in place.
COWEN: How many people will end up living here?
JENNINGS: Around 250,000.
COWEN: And how many businesses?
JENNINGS: There’ll be thousands of businesses.
And delving more deeply into matters:
COWEN: What do you think is the book [on economic development] that has influenced you most?
JENNINGS: It’s a very good question. I think I’ve read just about everything in development. There’s nothing I really like very much. Development is a black box. I don’t think there’s anything that has much predictive power. There’s a lot of ex post explanations, whether they be policy settings, location, culture. I think 90% of them are ex post; very few of them are predictive. Some of them are just tautologies. I really like factualization.
It’s descriptive more than analytical, but it just makes it clear that most of the world has been on a very similar development trajectory. It’s just not sequenced. Sweden started early; Ethiopia started late. But the nature of the transition and the inevitability of that transition, other than very extreme circumstances, is kind of the same.
COWEN: What do you think economists get wrong?
JENNINGS: I don’t think we really understand development at all, because if we could, we could predict it. We can predict virtually nothing. It’s just too complicated. It’s too connected with politics. I think there’s a lot of feedback loops and elements of development that we don’t understand properly. We certainly can’t quantify them because the development’s happening in such a wide range of settings, from communism dictatorships through to very liberal systems and with all different kinds of industrial — on every dimension, there’s a huge range of variables.
Excellent and interesting throughout.
The Burial
I loved The Burial on Amazon Prime. Not because it’s a great movie but because it serves as a cinematic representation of my academic paper with Eric Helland, Race, Poverty, and American Tort Awards. Be warned—this isn’t a spoiler-free discussion, but the plot points are largely predictable.
The Burial is a legal drama based on real events starring Jamie Foxx as Willie Gary, a flashy personal injury lawyer who takes the case of Jeremiah O’Keefe, a staid funeral home operator played by Tommy Lee Jones. O’Keefe is suing a Canadian conglomerate over a contract dispute and he hires Gary because he’s suing in a majority black district where Gary has been extremely successful at bringing cases (always black clients against big corporations).
As a drama, I’d rate the film a B-. The major failing is the implausible friendship between the young, black, flamboyant Willie Gary and the older, white subdued Jeremiah O’Keefe. Frankly, the pair lack chemistry and the viewer is left puzzled about the foundation of their friendship. The standout performance belongs to Jurnee Smollett, who excels as the whip-smart opposing counsel.
What makes The Burial interesting, however, is that it tells two stories about Willie Gary and the lawsuits. The veneer is that Gary is a crusading lawyer who uncovers abuse to bring justice. Most reviews review the veneer. Hence we are told this is a David versus Goliath story, a Rousing True Story and a story about the “dogged pursuit of justice.” The veneer is there to appease the simple minded, an interpretation solidified by The Telegraph which writes, without hint of irony:
The audience at the showing was basically adult and they applauded at the end which you often see in children’s movies but rarely in adult films.
The real story is that Gary is a huckster who wins cases in poor, black districts using a combination of racial resentment and homespun black-church preaching to persuade juries to redistribute the wealth from out-of-state big corporations to local knuckleheads. I use the latter term without approbation. Indeed, Gary says as much in his opening trial where he persuades the jury to give his “drunk”, “tanked” “wasted”, “no-good”, “depressed,” “suicidal” client, $75 million dollars for being hit by a truck! Why award damages against the corporation? Because, “they got the bank.” (He adds that his client had a green light–this is obviously a lie. Use your common sense.)
My paper with Helland, Race, Poverty, and American Tort Awards, finds that tort awards during this period were indeed much higher in counties with lots of poverty, especially black poverty. We find, for example, that the average tort award in a county with 0-5% poverty was $398 thousand but rose to a whopping $2.6 million in counties with poverty rates of 35% or greater! The Burial is very open about all of this. The movie goes out of its way to explain, for example, that 2/3rds of the population of Hinds county, the county in which the trial will take place, is black and that is why Willie Gary is hired.
The case on which the movie turns is as absurd as the opening teaser about the drunk, suicidal no-good who collects $75 million. Indeed, the two trials parallel one another. The funeral home conglomerate, the Loewen group, offered to buy three of O’Keefe’s funeral homes but after shaking on a deal they didn’t sign the contract. That’s it. That’s the dispute. The whole premise is bizarre as Loewen could have walked away at any time. Moreover, O’Keefe claims huge damages–$100 million!–when it’s obvious that O’Keefe’s entire failing business isn’t worth anywhere near as much. So why the large claim of damages? Have you not being paying attention? Because the Loewen group, “they got the bank.”
Furthermore, and in parallel with the earlier case, it’s O’Keefe who is the no-gooder. O’Keefe’s business is failing because he has taken money from burial insurance premiums–money that didn’t belong to him and that should have been invested conservatively to pay out awards–and lost it all in a high-risk venture run by a scam artist. Negligence at best and potential fraud at worst. Moreover, in a strange scene motivated by what actually happened, O’Keefe agrees to sell to Loewen only if he gets to keep a monopoly on the burial insurance market. Thus, it’s O’Keefe who is the one scheming to maintain high prices.
Indeed, the whole point of both of Gary’s cases is that he is such a great lawyer that he can win huge awards even for no-good clients. As if this wasn’t obvious enough, there is an extended discussion of Willie Gary’s hero….the great Johnnie Cochran, most famous for getting a murderer set free.
Loewen should have won the case easily on summary judgment but, of course, [spoiler alert!] the charismatic Gary wows the judge and the jury with entirely irrelevant tales of racial resentment and envy. The jury eats it up and reward O’Keefe with $100 million in compensatory damages and $400 million in punitive damages! The awards are entirely without reason or merit. The awards drive the noble Canadians of the Loewen group out of business.
The Burial is a courtroom drama surfaced with only the thinnest of veneers to let the credulous walk away feeling that justice was done. But for anyone with willing eyes, the interplay of racism, poverty, and resentment is truthfully presented and the resulting miscarriage of justice is plain to see. I enjoyed it.
Addendum: My legal commentary pertains only to the case as presented in the movie although in that respect the movie hews reasonably close to the facts.
Denmark takes forceful measures to integrate immigrants
After they fled Iran decades ago, Nasrin Bahrampour and her husband settled in a bright public housing apartment overlooking the university city of Aarhus, Denmark. They filled it with potted plants, family photographs and Persian carpets, and raised two children there.
Now they are being forced to leave their home under a government program that effectively mandates integration in certain low-income neighborhoods where many “non-Western” immigrants live.
In practice, that means thousands of apartments will be demolished, sold to private investors or replaced with new housing catering to wealthier (and often nonimmigrant) residents, to increase the social mix.
The Danish news media has called the program “the biggest social experiment of this century.” Critics say it is “social policy with a bulldozer.”
The government says the plan is meant to dismantle “parallel societies” — which officials describe as segregated enclaves where immigrants do not participate in the wider society or learn Danish, even as they benefit from the country’s generous welfare system.
Here is more from the NYT, and do note that Singapore has its own version of this policy. I would make a few observations:
1. Putting aside the normative, analyzing the effects of such policies will be increasingly important. Economists are not especially well-suited to do this, nor is anyone else. I am well aware of the Chetty “Moving to Opportunity” results. That is good work, but a) it probably doesn’t apply to coercive Danish resettlements, and b) cultural context is likely important for the results. At least for the countries that migrants wish to move to, most will have their own versions of this dilemma.
2. “Open Borders” as a sustainable political equilibrium is looking much weaker than it did a month ago. The key question in immigration policy is not “how many migrants should we take in?” (a lot, I would say), but rather “how can we make continuing immigration a politically sustainable proposition?” Many immigration advocates are in a fog about their inability to offer better answers to that question.
3. Will this Danish action, once the entire political economy is worked through, increase or decrease the allowed number of migrants to the country? Looking at the demand side to migrate, will this policy end up attracting a higher or lower quality of migrants to Denmark? Is Denmark even attractive enough as a destination to get away with this? Or will it send a better signal to would-be migrants and thus raise quality?
I would not be too confident about my answers to those questions, nor should you be so confident.
“Does Paid Sick Leave Facilitate Reproductive Choice?”
I might give the paper a slightly different title, but:
Unlike most advanced countries, the U.S. does not have a federal paid sick leave (PSL) policy; however, multiple states have adopted PSL mandates. PSL can facilitate healthcare use among women of child−bearing ages, including use of family planning services such as contraception, in−vitro fertilization, or abortion services. Use of these services, in turn, can increase or decrease birth rates. We combine administrative and survey data with difference-in-differences methods to shed light on these possibilities. Our findings indicate that state PSL mandates reduce birth rates, potentially through increased use of contraception but not changes in abortion services. We offer suggestive evidence of heterogeneity in birth rate effects by age, education, and race. Our findings imply that PSL policies may help women balance family and work responsibilities, and facilitate their reproductive choices.
That is a new NBER working paper by Johanna Catherine, Maclean, Ioana Popovici, and Christopher J. Ruhm.
A Taxonomy of Methods for Discriminating, Revisited
Twenty years ago, GMU law professor Lloyd Cohen (RIP) guest blogged at MR. His taxonomy of methods of discrimination in university admissions remains timely. What follow is from Lloyd (I have added only the two links). No indent.
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Not all procedures for engaging in racial discrimination are equal. They differ in their legal standing, their social meaning, and their “economic” efficiency. The Supreme Court in distinguishing Grutter and Graatz, and the admissions regimes of the various state universities suggest a useful taxonomy.
There are three generic forms of racial discrimination not merely in admissions decisions but in other practices and policies as well: (1) express and objective (i.e., points and quotas); (2) facially neutral and objective (e.g., the top 10% of graduates from each high school); and (3) implied and subjective (“we look at the whole person”). From an efficiency perspective the first form of discrimination is the least harmful. It does not corrupt the measure of merit, it only sets a different standard for “minorities.” Its shortcomings are twofold. First, as the Supreme Court decisions in Grutter and Grattz makes abundantly clear it is the one method most likely to be found illegal. This is implicitly related to its second shortcoming, it is so barefaced. It makes clear to both those favored and those harmed that the favored are otherwise inferior in their qualifications.
The second method, using a facially neutral operational measure to achieve a suspect theoretical goal, now favored by the state universities of California, Texas and Florida, in granting admission to those who finish in the top X% of their high school class and by the United Network for Organ Sharing in granting more “points” in the organ allocation scheme for time on the waiting list, has the virtue of being an objective measure, and the virtue (?) of a disguise that reduces shame. Its shortcoming is that its effectiveness in bringing about the preferred ethnic distribution is tied to its inefficiency. It employs an objective measure of merit that substantially distorts. Thus, the rankings of both the favored and the unfavored groups are mis-aligned.
The third measure, a subjective, ad-hoc eclectic judgment, can in practice be a mimic of the first, the second, or anything else. The process becomes a beclouded mystery. This is both its virtue and its vice. There is no clear trail, evidence or standards that mark the favored as inferior–feelings are spared. On the other hand the absence of an objective measure means that the decisionmakers are effectively unanswerable and may indulge in any form of corruption.
Method (1) is clearly falling by the wayside. Is there likely to be a clear political winner between (2) and (3)?
They are solving for the equilibrium
The Affordable Care Act of 2010 limited the profits of health insurers to between 15% and 20% of collected premiums, depending on the size of the health plan. But it imposed no restrictions on what physicians or other intermediaries can earn. The law created an incentive for insurers to buy clinics, pharmacies and the like, and to steer customers to them rather than rival providers. The strategy channels revenue from the profit-capped insurance business to uncapped subsidiaries, which in theory could let insurers keep more of the premiums paid by patients.
According to Irving Levin Associates, a research firm, between 2013 and August 2023 the nine health-care giants spent around $325bn on over 130 mergers and acquisitions.
Here is more from The Economist.
Is Tokyo really a YIMBY success story?
It is common lore in YIMBY circles that Tokyo is such an inexpensive city because Tokyo/Japan has allowed so much freedom to build. Sometimes it is mentioned that Japanese building and regulatory decisions are made at higher levels than the strictly local, which lowers the power of the NIMBYs to restrict building.
I don’t doubt the key elements of this story, namely that Tokyo real estate is relatively cheap, and also that it is relatively easy to get a certain kind of construction through, including vertical construction, both up and underground.
Yet the more I think about it, the more I tend to believe a very different proposition: Japan is in key ways a very NIMBY country, and its brand of NIMBYism has keeps real estate prices down.
A corollary is this: YIMBYism gets much less credit for low Tokyo real estate prices, and furthermore the low real estate prices are a sign of something having gone wrong on the productivity side, in large part due to regulation.
As a piece of background information, note that Japanese productivity levels are about 60 percent of the United States. And few have claimed that is because the Japanese do not work hard, or cannot coordinate well. It is not a low-trust society.
Here are some key ways that Japan has been a NIMBY country, noting that I am not referring so much to construction per se, but rather to high-value, high-productivity construction:
1. Japan has had very tough immigration restrictions. This has eased considerably, but a) the stock matters not just the flow, and b) current Japanese migrants often are from countries such as Thailand and the Philippines, which fills in for some mid-level jobs, but does not massively boost rents.
2. It is extremely difficult to learn written Japanese. Among its other effects, this discourages high-value immigrants from settling into very high productivity service jobs in Tokyo or in Japan more generally.
3. Various regulatory and legal decisions have prevented Tokyo from developing into the financial capital of Asia (haven’t you wondered about this?). I won’t go into all the detail here, this is the modern world so just ask ChatGPT. I’m sure you all know that major financial centers usually lead to exorbitant rents, due to the opportunity cost of the land.
4. So, so much of Japanese regulatory policy and culture is geared toward maintaining small retail businesses, super small in scale, and low in productivity. They do not place much upward pressure on rents. By the way, this is one reason why tourists find Tokyo so wonderful, but those enterprises lower productivity considerably relative to say Walmarts. It is no accident that so many Japanese examples populate “Markets in Everything,” that they have cat and furry cafes, and so on.
Now, those are not building restrictions in the sense of passing a law “no such new building may be placed here.” But they are significant — yes very significant — legal, institutional, and cultural restrictions on building out high productivity, high rent real estate options. (Are you reminded of the 1980s debates on trade restrictions, when it was pointed out that so many of the Japanese trade barriers were indirect rather than upfront tariffs? History is repeating itself here.)
The YIMBY movement just doesn’t talk about those indirect NIMBY-like Japanese restrictions so very much, at least not in the context of how they affect rent levels. Instead, YIMBY wants to take credit for low Tokyo rents, but a much less regulated Tokyo market would in fact be considerably more expensive, not less expensive.
One accurate way to describe Tokyo would be: “They allow a lot of construction, yes. But they make high value, high productivity construction extremely difficult to pull off. They have their own Japanese unique blend of YIMBY + NIMBY, where the NIMBY parts of that equation are really a very important reason why Tokyo real estate prices stay so low. So many factors push construction toward lower productivity construction options.”
And there you go. Again we see that true YIMBY adds value, or can add value, but it very often raises rather than lowers rents.
*China’s World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict*
That is a forthcoming book by David Daokiu Li. Perhaps it is the very best book explaining “how China works today?”
“What should I read on China? Which single book?” — those are two of the most common questions I receive. There are plenty of perfectly fine history books, but I am never sure what I should recommend. Now I have an answer to that question. Here is one short excerpt from the text:
Many people in China are concerned with the side effects of the massive anticorruption campaign. The first side effect is that government officials, especially those dealing with economic affairs, have now become inert. The reason is that active officials almost surely create enemies or grumbling groups, such as through the demolition of an old building to make room for new investments. These groups would bring their cases, and perhaps even historical cases, to the party discipline committee. On their path to promotion and their current positions, most officials have either intentionally or unintentionally engaged in practices that are not in compliance with today’s tighter government rules. In the Chinese reform process, laws and regulations are gradually implemented and then tightened. The anticorruption campaign is using today’s tighter regulations to judge the past conduct of officials, which occurred when the rules were either looser or entirely unclear. As a result, officials today are extremely hesitant to take any action that would make them stand out or draw extra attention, even if those actions are in the best interests of the locale or department they serve.
The author covers much more, including the importance of history, how the CCP works, local governments, SOEs, education, media and the internet, the environment, population, and much more.
There should be a book like this about every country.
I should note that the author lives in Beijing, so he soft pedals some of the more negative interpretations of the data, but ultimately I think this is much more fruitful than the books by journalist outsiders. The analysis is here, and you can do the moralizing on your own, if that is how you want it.
Definitely recommended, a very real contribution.
The Calverts Cliff Decision
By the early 1970s, Atomic Age dreams of ubiquitous nuclear power were evaporating as fast as those Space Age fantasies of humanity soon spreading out into the solar system. The data show a clear break in nuclear reactor construction in 1971 and 1972, which suggests the decline in reactor construction is likely attributable to a confluence of regulatory events, perhaps creating uncertainty about the future cost of safety regulations. Two of the most important events happened in 1971: the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Calvert Cliffs decision, in which the DC Circuit Court ordered federal regulators to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, widely considered the “Magna Carta” of federal environmental laws. Basically, NEPA and related executive orders require federal agencies to investigate and assess the potential environmental costs, if any, of its projects and solicit public input. (At least twenty states and localities have their own such statutes, known as “little NEPAs.”) The following passage from the Calvert decision gives a good feel for the era’s Down Wing attitude: “These cases are only the beginning of what promises to become a flood of new litigation…seeking judicial assistance in protecting our natural environment. Several recently enacted statutes attest to the commitment of the Government to control, at long last, the destructive engine of material ‘progress.’”
Wow. They wanted to stop the the engine of material progress and they did. Right out of Atlas Shrugged.
This is from The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised, James Pethokoukis’s cheery introduction to ending the great stagnation. Pethokoukis ably covers all the big debates about the causes, consequences and solutions to the great stagnation and does so briskly, with optimism and covering culture as well as economics. Recommended as a one-stop shop for ending the great stagnation and as a pick-me-up.
Upzoning with Strings Attached
The subtitle of this paper is: “Evidence from Seattle’s Affordable Housing Mandate.” Here is the abstract:
This paper analyzes the effects of a major municipal residential land use reform on new home construction and developer behavior. We examine Seattle’s Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) program, which relaxed zoning regulations while also encouraging affordable housing construction in 33 neighborhoods in 2017 and 2019. The reforms allowed for more dense new development (‘upzoning’), but they also required developers to either reserve some units of each project as below market rate rentals or pay into a citywide affordable housing fund. Using a difference-in-differences estimation comparing areas the reforms affected versus those not affected, we show new construction differentially fell in the upzoned, affordability-mandated census blocks. Our quasi-experimental border design finds strong evidence of developers strategically siting projects away from MHA-zoned plots – despite their upzoning – and instead to nearby blocks and parcels not subject to the program’s affordability requirements. The differential reduction from MHA to non-MHA zones could be as large as 70% of average permitting activity at the border. Lowrise multifamily and mixed-use development. Our findings speak to the mixed results of allowing for more density while simultaneously mandating affordable housing for the same project.
That is by Betty Xiao Wang and Jacob Krimmel. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
What is an Emergency? The Case for Rapid Malaria Vaccination
Compare two otherwise similar towns. In Town A there have always been 1000 deaths every month from disease X. In contrast, Town B has been free of disease X for as long as anyone can remember until very recently when disease X suddenly started to kill 1000 people per month. A vaccine for disease X is developed. Which town should receive expedited vaccinations?
From a utilitarian perspective, both towns present equally compelling cases for immediate vaccination (1). Vaccination will avert 1,000 deaths per month in either location. The ethical imperative is thus to act swiftly in both instances. Lives are lives. However, given human psychology and societal norms, Town B is more likely to be perceived as facing an “emergency,” whereas Town A’s situation may be erroneously dismissed as less dire because deaths are the status quo.
A case in point. The WHO just approved a malaria vaccine for use in children, the R21/Matrix-M vaccine. Great! There are still some 247 million malaria cases globally every year causing 619,000 deaths including 476 thousand deaths of children under the age of 5. That’s not 1000 deaths a month but more than 1000 deaths of children every day. The WHO, however, is planning on rolling out the vaccine next year.
Adrian Hill, one of the key scientists behind the vaccine is dismayed by the lack of urgency:
“Why would you allow children to die instead of distributing the vaccine? There’s no sensible answer to that — of course you wouldn’t,” Hill told the Financial Times. The SII said it “already” had capacity to produce 100mn doses annually.
…“There’s plenty of vaccine, let’s get it out there this year. We’ve done our best to answer huge amounts of questions, none of which a mother with a child at risk of malaria would be interested in.”
Hill is correct: the case for urgency is strong. More than a thousand children are dying daily and the Serum Institute already has 20 million doses on ice and is capable of producing 100 million doses a year. Why not treat this as an emergency?! Implicitly, however, people think that the case for urgency in Africa is weak because “what will another few months matter?” The benefits of vaccination in Africa are treated as small because they are measured relative to the total deaths that have already occurred. In contrast, vaccination for say COVID in the developed world (Town B) ended the emergency and restored normality thus saving a large percent of the deaths that might have occurred. But the percentages are irrelevant. This is a base rate fallacy, albeit the opposite of the one usually considered. Lives are lives, irrespective of the historical context.
Hill, director of the university’s Jenner Institute, compared the timeframe with the swift rollout of the first Covid vaccines, which were distributed “within weeks” of approval.
“We’d like to see the same importance given to the malaria vaccine for children in Africa. We don’t want them sitting in a fridge in India,” he said. “We don’t think this would be fair to rural African countries if they were not provided with the same rapidity of review and supply.”
The term “emergency” inherently embodies the conundrum I highlight. Emergency is defined as an unexpected set of events or the resulting state that calls for immediate action. When formulating a response to an emergency, however, the focus should not be on whether the events were unexpected but on the resulting state. The resulting state is what is important. The resulting state is the end that legitimizes the means. The unexpected draws our attention–our emotional systems, like our visual systems, alert on change and movement–but what matters is not what draws our attention but the situational reality.
Lives are lives and we should act with all justifiable speed to save lives. The WHO should accelerate malaria vaccination for children in Africa.
(1) You might argue that in Town B the 1000 deaths are more unusual and thus more disruptive but you might also argue that Town A has undergone the deaths for so much longer that the case for speed as matter of justice is even greater. These are quibbles.