Category: Political Science
Chicago faculty recruiting in 1946 who is Roy Blough how well did these voters do?
In 1946 the University of Chicago economics department considered the following individuals for job offers: John Hicks, Paul Samuelson, Friedrich A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Lionel Robbins, A. G. Hart, and George Stigler.
The names making the final vote were Hicks, Hart, Stigler, Friedman, and Samuelson. The Borda point count method was used, and Hicks turned out to be the clear number one choice. Neither Friedman nor Samuelson were the number one choices of any departmental voter, while Stigler won three first-choice votes (see Table one in the paper).
The voters themselves were quite prestigious, including Hazel Kyrk, Lloyd Mints, Jacob Marschak, Henry Simons, Tjalling Koopmans, H. Gregg Lewis, Frank Knight, and T.W. Schultz. If you are wondering, Knight’s first choice was Stigler. Friedman and Samuelson came in fourth and fifth, respectively, with Samuelson as a distant last place pick. Schultz however put Friedman dead last.
The winner Hicks was not interested, and that year, Chicago ended up with Friedman and Roy Blough. Here is the NYT obituary for Roy Blough:
Roy Blough, an economist who served in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, died on Friday at a retirement home in Mitchellville, Md. He was 98.
From 1938 to 1946, Mr. Blough was director of tax research at the Treasury Department and assistant to the treasury secretary. From 1950 to 1952, he was a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Later in the 1950’s, he was principal director of the economic affairs department at the United Nations. He also taught at several universities, including the University of Chicago, from 1946 to 1952, and Columbia University, from 1955 to 1970, when he retired.
He wrote several books, including ”The Federal Taxing Process” and ”International Business: Environment and Adaptation.”
That is all catalogued in this fascinating David Mitch piece, in the latest JPE. Here are ungated copies and some related information.
Addendum, via Doug Irwin:
Arnold Harberger on Roy Blough: “he came to Chicago and he was a very boring professor. He didn’t inspire anybody to do anything, and he didn’t do very much himself. And he was a little pompous, but nice, a decent analyst, not very deep analytically, didn’t really command the theory of the subject. Then he was named a member of the Council of Economic Advisors and he left Chicago. And all the colleagues sighed a sigh of relief and said, “Gee, we found a way to get rid of him.”
To replace Blough, they hired Arnold Harberger, I am told.
My Bloomberg debate with Noah Smith on free trade
Here are a few sentences from me:
I take the contrarian view that the benefits of trade deals are more typically underappreciated.
And:
But Noah, you are my Exhibit A for my claim that many economists are still undervaluing the benefits of trade. You’ve written on losers from globalization, but not sufficiently stressed the point that tariffs are an especially regressive tax. They tend to be applied to food and clothing, which the poor spend a disproportionate share of their income on. A lot of the poor also have service jobs that aren’t hurt so much by trade with lower-wage nations. In other words, free trade is (usually) a good antipoverty remedy.
Noah had some sentences too.
THE CASE AGAINST DEMOCRACY
I am amazed that the latest New Yorker contains a fair, knowledgeable and informative review-essay of Jason Brennan’s Against Democracy, Ilya Somin’s Democracy and Political Ignorance, and Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter. The author, Caleb Crain, has done his homework and he engages seriously with the literature. Here is one bit but read the whole thing both for what it says and what its publication in the New Yorker says about our times.
Brennan has a bright, pugilistic style, and he takes a sportsman’s pleasure in upsetting pieties and demolishing weak logic. Voting rights may happen to signify human dignity to us, he writes, but corpse-eating once signified respect for the dead among the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. To him, our faith in the ennobling power of political debate is no more well grounded than the supposition that college fraternities build character.
TPP is exciting, let’s make the case for it
That is the title of my latest Bloomberg column. Here is one bit:
Some of the best arguments for the TPP are underwhelming as public rhetoric. “If we don’t pass this trade agreement, China will write the rules for the region,” is perhaps the most significant point. Yet it is framed as a negative, namely that something worse than TPP may happen. This focuses the public on the defects and weakness of American leadership, making the positive options on the table seem less than transformational.
It’s as if U.S. elites are saying: “We screwed this one up by letting Chinese influence get so far in the first place. Trust us now to set it straight.” However true that may be, few private companies would succeed with that kind of motivation in their advertising.
But if you read the rest of the column, you will see that the case for TPP is truly exciting indeed…
Public choice theories of the FBI
I can’t seem to find much on this topic, could it be a violation of Cowen’s Second Law? Here is one passage from Beverly Gate from 2012 (pdf):
Hoover’s bureaucratic skills gave him remarkable control over the FBI’s internal culture and policies. And yet his strategies for achieving that autonomy were often in conflict with each other. Autonomy was not a one-time event; it required constant care and rebalancing. In Hoover’s case, the impulse to maintain the FBI’s professional, nonpartisan image was frequently at odds with efforts to exert popular political and ideological influence. Throughout his career, Hoover’s cozy relationships with congressmen and presidents constantly threatened to undermine the Bureau’s reputation as a nonpartisan agency, divorced from the spoils system and power politics. Similarly, his outspoken anticommunist crusades—a key source of FBI cultural authority—were often in tension with his description of the FBI as purely reactive investigative agency.
The simplest model has the FBI as a bit like the Fed: seeking to promote some policy goals but also jealous of its independence and autonomy. Doing good policy work often promotes independence but not always, and the agency is not well set up to deal with instances where the two objectives conflict. Organizations of this kind also tend to be relatively underdeveloped when it comes to skills of media management and public relations, since they are counting on results and political support to do the job for them. In fact, if they tried to actively manage their PR well on a daily basis, they might find it hard to stay out of politics, as they would end up doing too much “day specific” posturing and not enough “general mood affiliation” posturing.
Hasn’t someone written a piece called something like “A Public Choice Theory of the FBI”? (Bob Tollison, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you…) Can anyone help with reading suggestions, comments of course are open.
Addendum: Here is analysis from David Warsh.
A new RCT on guaranteed annual income
Via Ben Southwood, from David J. Price and Jae Song (pdf):
We investigate the long-term effect of cash assistance for beneficiaries and their children by following up, after four decades, with participants in the Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. Treated families in this randomized experiment received thousands of dollars per year in extra government benefits for three or five years in the 1970s. Using administrative data from the Social Security Administration and the Washington State Department of Health, we find that treatment caused adults to earn an average of $1,800 less per year after the experiment ended. Most of this effect on earned income is concentrated between ages 50 and 60, suggesting that it is related to retirement. Treated adults were also 6.3 percentage points more likely to apply for disability benefits, but were not significantly more likely to receive them, or to have died. These effects on parents, however, do not appear to be passed down to their children: children in treated families experienced no significant effects in any of the main variables studied. These results for children are estimated precisely enough to rule out effects found in other contexts and inform the literature on intergenerational mobility. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that policymakers should consider the long-term effects of cash assistance as they formulate policies to combat poverty.
That’s basically a 40-year follow-up, which is nice to see. These results should be taken seriously, but they are also a good illustration of the limits of RCTs for some policy questions. In my recent piece, I argued UBI might be problematic for its interaction with immigration, politics, and the work ethic, all at the macro level. You may or may not agree, but a smaller-scale RCT won’t pick up those effects. It can be the case that a marginal move toward UBI makes sense for any small or mid-sized group, or for any particular in-kind benefit, without the full transformation necessarily being welfare-improving.
Here is a recent piece criticizing a guaranteed annual income. Here is Arnold Kling, mostly defending the idea relative to alternatives.
Will Wilkinson, in his response, doubles down on macro-macro:
I have some misgivings about the method by which Tyler comes to his conclusion that a UBI “would do more harm than good.” It seems that he’s holding the status quo constant, adding a UBI, and then imagining what might happen. But isn’t this a confusing way to proceed? A world in which a UBI were politically feasible would be different in many other ways.
Do read the whole thing.
Quote of the Day
I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself – that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating. But I am, it may be, a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes to suckers, tend to be coy. What I can’t make out is how any man can believe in democracy who feels for and with them, and is pained when they are debauched and made a show of.
Do shark attacks really influence presidential elections?
Maybe voters aren’t quite as irrational as we had thought, or at least not in some of the ways we had thought:
We reassess Achen and Bartels’ (2002, 2016) prominent claim that shark attacks influence presidential elections, and we find that the evidence is, at best, inconclusive. First, we assemble data on every fatal shark attack in U.S. history and county-level returns from every presidential election between 1872 and 2012, and we find little systematic evidence that shark attacks hurt incumbent presidents or their party. Second, we show that Achen and Bartels’ finding of fatal shark attacks hurting Woodrow Wilson’s vote share in the beach counties of New Jersey in 1916 becomes substantively smaller and statistically weaker under alternative specifications. Third, we find that their town-level result for beach townships in Ocean County significantly shrinks when we correct errors associated with changes in town borders and does not hold for the other beach counties in New Jersey. Lastly, implementing placebo tests in state-elections where there were no shark attacks, we demonstrate that Achen and Bartels’ result was likely to arise even if shark attacks do not influence elections. Overall, there is little compelling evidence that shark attacks influence presidential elections, and any such effect—if one exists—appears to be substantively negligible.
That is from a new paper by Anthony Fowler and Andrew B. Hall (pdf). Here is commentary from Andrew Gelman. Here is related work by Fowler and Montagnes on football games, here is a response.
Just don’t conclude that voters are so extremely rational, in my view focal, vote-moving irrationalities typically will be tied conflicts in social status across different groups.
United States fact of the day: who supports Trump?
Given how much Donald Trump talks about jobs leaving America, you might think that his supporters lost out more than others. In fact, the opposite appears to be true, according to a recent analysis from Gallup.
“No matter how you measure it, there’s not any evidence that Trump supporters are more likely to have lost their job in the manufacturing sector,” Gallup senior economist Jonathan Rothwell said in a call.
The study, which analyzed how various factors predict voters’ support for the Republican presidential nominee, linked living in a manufacturing-dominated area with a 1% lower probability of supporting Trump (after controlling for race, income, and other variables).
Living in a low-manufacturing area was linked to a 1% higher probability of supporting Trump.
That is from Gus Lubin at Business Insider.
The Coasean culture that is northern Virginia
A homeowner took to a message board Sunday to complain about her neighbor’s sign supporting the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump. The anonymous homeowner said his or her family lived in a liberal part of Northern Virginia and were putting their house up for sale. The homeowner feared that the Trump sign would scare away potential buyers, and asked on the message board whether it was appropriate to ask the neighbor to take down the sign.
…The question proved popular, and elicited 10 pages of responses. Some commenters, in more offensive terms, said the anonymous poster was being ridiculous to even think this was in issue; others suggested the homeowner wait until after the election to sell the house. Still others said they would not want to buy a house next to a Trump supporter.
And the denouement?
But somehow, amid this divisive election, peace was found. The homeowner reported back later Monday that she or he talked to the neighbor, and the neighbor seemed understanding of the predicament and removed the sign. The neighbor was an elderly woman who apparently didn’t even like Trump much. She was, however, married to a big Trump fan who was not home at the time. It is unclear how her husband felt about her decision to remove the sign.
Coasean or non-Coasean?, you tell me.
Here is the full story, via Dan R.
What should I ask Joseph Henrich?
The Steven Pinker podcast and transcript will be ready next week, November 7 is a live event with Joseph Henrich, a Conversation with Tyler, Arlington campus 6 p.m. If you don’t already know, here is Joseph Henrich:
Joseph Henrich…[is]…an expert on the evolution of human cooperation and culture…
Henrich’s research has challenged the typical narrative about human evolution to show how our collective brains – our ability to socially interconnect and learn from one another – is the driving factor behind our evolutionary success. Henrich presents these compelling arguments in his latest book, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (2015).
Co-author of Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation (2007), Henrich’s research seeks to discover the role of culture in shaping our evolution; how evolutionary theory can help us understand how we learn and transmit culture; the role of war and conflict in the evolution of cooperation and sociality; what factors drive innovation and cultural evolution; and ultimately what has allowed humankind to flourish over other species.
Henrich earned his MA and PhD in anthropology from University of California at Los Angeles. He currently teaches at Harvard University as a professor of human evolutionary biology.
So what should I ask Joseph Henrich?
*Unlikely Partners*, on the history of Chinese economic reform
The author is Julian Gewirtz and the subtitle is Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China. I loved this book. It is a tour de force on China, the theory of policy advising, and the history of economic thought, all rolled into one. Here is one bit:
The Chinese side, meanwhile, had learned the hard way about Friedman’s dual persona and that his expertise on inflation could not be separated from his ideological intensity [TC: circa 1980]…Yang Peixin remembered Friedman as “extraordinarily stubborn,” someone who “thinks the world socialist experiment has failed,” and “would not speak politely no matter how high your position.”
It turns out that Wlodzimierz Brus and Ota Šik were two of the most important economists of the twentieth century, mostly because of their influence on China. Both came from Eastern Europe and centrally planned economies, but urged China to find a workable mixed model. Šik was a proponent of the ideas of Oskar Lange.
From this book you also will learn about the significant roles of Gregory Chow, James Tobin, and Janos Kornai, all explained with intelligence and lucidity. I enjoyed this bit:
To the Chinese participants [in the seminar], Tobin’s presentation had an almost theatrical power — after all, they had never before seen an economist in action in this way. One participant recalled that Tobin’s seemingly magical ability to make policy recommendations from quickly looking at a set of high-level data astonished him and his peers.
At one point during Tobin’s talk, the interpreter burst into tears. The more influential Kornai instead said this:
“I had in a sense two different faces, one face for Hungary and one face for China.”
More concretely, he was recommending shock therapy for Hungary but not for China. Friedman, by the way, had more influence when he returned to China for a Cato conference in 1988. But still the Chinese thought Friedman did not sufficiently understand the special characteristics of the Chinese economy.
Strongly recommended, due out early next year. Gewirtz, by the way, is a Rhodes Scholar and still has not finished his Ph.d. I eagerly await his next work. You can follow him on Twitter here. He is also well-known as a poet.
Is ISDS reason to reject a trade agreement?
No, here is my latest Bloomberg column on that question. Here is one bit:
One criticism is that the tribunals could force governments to pay compensatory “takings” to foreign companies that incur costs as a result of safety or environmental regulations. But it has long been standard practice for trade treaties to protect foreign companies, for example by limiting the nationalization of foreign investment. Investors don’t always trust the courts of the nations they are investing in, and indeed from 1990 to 2013, at least 150 foreign-owned firms were nationalized, typically in emerging economies, or otherwise subjected to confiscation of value. Agreeing to refrain from such practices can attract more foreign investment and raise living standards.
And:
…the U.S. and Vietnam have had a bilateral investment agreement since 2001, and with few if any negative consequences. More generally, there are now more than 2,000 bilateral investment treaties worldwide, 41 with the U.S. at last measurement, and they typically have some form of investor-state dispute resolution. So does the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Over this same period, trade and investment have brought global living standards to unprecedented heights.
National sovereignty has not exactly disappeared. Trade treaties typically recognize that governments have a legitimate interest in regulating safety and the environment, and most of the world’s trading nations have made good progress in those areas.
Part of the discomfort over dispute-resolution panels is the notion that their private deliberations circumvent the democratic process. But it is a basic feature of most democratic governments that the legislature sets up legal institutions that subsequently act outside of direct democratic control.
I do readily grant that ISDS may be a bad idea for tactical reasons, simply because it is unpopular. But a good question to ask is this: if someone opposes a trade agreement because of ISDS, is that person a committed opponent of excess litigation more generally? Usually not.
The bargaining equilibrium in Washington journalism
The primary reason Washington operators can dictate the terms of engagement with Washington journalists is that the true insiders are few and the journalists are many. In medium-sized towns, the power dynamic is reversed, as the number of journalists is very small and sources are many. This means journalists need not ingratiate themselves in the same way to get a story. Until the Washington press corps is reduced by 90 percent—which won’t happen in our lifetimes—the mortifying dance we see in the Podesta emails will continue.
That is from Jack Shafer at Politico, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Duterte’s Coasean pivot away from the United States
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced his “separation” from the United States on Thursday, declaring that it had “lost” and he had realigned with China as the two agreed to resolve their South China Sea dispute through talks.
Duterte made his comments in China, where he is visiting with at least 200 business people to pave the way for what he calls a new commercial alliance as relations with longtime ally the United States deteriorate.
His trade secretary, Ramon Lopez, said $13.5 billion in deals would be signed
Duterte’s efforts to engage China, months after a tribunal ruling in the Hague over South China Sea disputes in favor of the Philippines, marks a reversal in foreign policy since the 71-year-old former mayor took office on June 30.
“America has lost now,” Duterte told Chinese and Philippine business people at a forum in the Great Hall of the People, attended by Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli.
“I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to (President Vladimir) Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world – China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way,” he added.
“With that, in this venue, your honors, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States,” Duterte said to applause. “I have separated from them. So I will be dependent on you for all time. But do not worry. We will also help as you help us.”
Here is the Reuters story.