Category: Uncategorized
The Great Spanish Estancamiento (from my email)
I’ve read an interesting article over at “El Pais” on the Spanish stagnation ( https://cincodias.elpais.com/opinion/2023-10-10/por-que-no-cambia-el-modelo-productivo-espanol.html , paywalled). Some interesting bits:
– Spain’s GDP per capita, measured at constant prices in 2022, has shown minimal growth compared to 2007, with just a 0.8 per cent increase over 15 years. Meanwhile, other European countries have seen significant growth: France by 7 per cent, the Netherlands by 10.7 per cent, and Germany by 13.7 per cent.
– Spanish productivity is being dragged down by small businesses, while medium and large companies perform closer to the EU average.The article claims that “la particularidad española es que el peso relativo de estas empresas pequeñas en el tejido productivo es mucho mayor que en los países vecinos”.
My digression: some (https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/italys-productivity-conundrum-role-resource-misallocation) point out that in Italy TFP is declining because of large firms.
– In 2022, the rate of “early leavers from education and training” has reached 13.9 per cent. In the EU only Romania surpasses Spain in this regard. The authors point to tourism as the main culprit. But in the two EU countries where tourism contributes the largest share to GDP – Croatia and Greece – the percentage of such young people is the lowest ( https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:V2-early-leavers-230523.png ).
The authors support some sort of industrial policy for Spain as a way to overcome the stagnation. Even with the changing climate of opinion in Brussels and a more mercantilist mindset, I doubt that a full-blown, national industrial policy is possible within the EU. Probably, as with Italy (see: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09538259.2022.2091408 ), without constraints imposed by Brussels, the stagnation wouldn’t be as deep as it is.
It would be great to see a comparative analysis of TFP stagnation in the European South!
That is from Krzysztof Tyszka-Drozdowski.
That was then, this is now, Maori fashion edition
The outfit is distinctly Victorian. A high, vintage lace collar with ruffles cascades over the lapel of a black tailcoat. But it is not meant to be a throwback.
For Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, the co-leader of Te Pati Maori, a New Zealand political party, it is a reclamation of the era when her ancestors first engaged with the British, who began colonizing New Zealand in the early 1800s. She has worn this attire, plus a top hat, in Parliament.
“When you want to get a message out fast, fashion is a way to do it,” she said.
Here is the full NYT story. Here are further NZ fashion pictures. I told you the new world was going to be strange…
Monday assorted links
1. Those new service sector jobs. East vs. west coast money.
2. Scottish NIMBY vs. Stella McCartney. Environmental review is out of control.
3. 104-year-old woman jumps from plane, dies in her sleep a week later.
4. Why not look at fake views in your digital windows?
5. Should Britain “outsource” by sending prisoners abroad to other nations? If so, to which ones?
6. “One thing that the rise of social media (particularly Twitter) did is to suddenly put Americans in direct contact with people from all over the world, without Americans realizing this. A lot of the radicalization of Americans over the last decade came from overseas.” From Noah Smith.
A variety of very recent electoral results
From Australia (WSJ):
…voters in Australia easily rejected a proposal to give indigenous people a special place in the country’s constitution. The vote was about 60% in opposition, and the referendum lost in all six states. It had to win in four of six to prevail.
The referendum was pitched as an attempt at “reconciliation” with Australia’s Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander people, who make up about 3.8% of the population. Labour Prime Minister Anthony Albanese campaigned on the idea in 2022 and urged a yes vote. Most conservative politicians opposed it.
Opponents said that adding the indigenous Voice to Parliament into the constitution was divisive and would create a special racial status in advising Parliament on indigenous matters that would complicate the job of the elected executive government. The proposal is part of the identity politics that has become a preoccupation of the global left.
I do think Australia should treat its indigenous groups better, but not through that mechanism, so I am happy. The results in New Zealand were positive too. Ecuador opted for the pro-business candidate rather than the pro-Venezuelan socialist. And most importantly, in Poland it is likely that the liberal, pro-EU forces are going to win. So good news all around, and all just in a few days time.
From the comments, what will happen in New Zealand edition?
The economics of collegiate sports participation
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
As for the students themselves, recent research indicates that sports performance makes former student athletes more valuable in the workplace. Former college athletes are much more likely to enter the high-earning fields of business and finance, relative to their non-athlete classmates. That can benefit the former students, their alma mater and the overall economy.
The research also shows that student athletes are less likely to get a doctoral degree or become a medical doctor, or to enter STEM fields. Might it be that the STEM jobs will become the province of the less athletic?
Looking at just Ivy League graduates, former athletes do better in the labor market — that is, they earn more money — than non-athletes. This result holds even when controlled for school attended, year of graduation, field of study and first job. Those same athletes are also more likely to hold senior positions. That could be evidence of leadership skills, or of their ability to learn and improve over time, as indeed good athletes must do. After five years, the earnings of the former college athletes start to outperform their non-athletic peers.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that college athletes actually learn something useful. And what they learn, in many cases, is probably leadership skills. It is also possible that their athletic experiences sharpen their wits, their competitive sense, their problem-solving acumen and their ability to work with others.
Interestingly, the same study shows that athletes in more socioeconomically diverse sports, such as track and field, also earn more than their non-athletic peers. This suggests that their advantage comes not from having attended some fancy prep school.
Here is the original work by One broader lesson is that colleges and universities should encourage more “hands on projects.”
Sunday assorted links
Ross Douthat, telephone!
In the ancient city of Exeter, three women were hanged for practicing witchcraft in the late 17th century, the last of such executions in England. Now, merely a short walk from where the hangings occurred, the University of Exeter will offer a postgraduate degree in magic and occult science, which the school says is the first of its kind at a British university.
Prof. Emily Selove, the head of the new program and an associate professor in medieval Arabic literature, said the idea for the degree, which will be offered starting in September 2024, came out of the recent surge in interest in the history of witchcraft and a desire to create a space where research on magic could be studied across academic fields.
Coursework will include the study of Western dragons in lore, literature and art; archaeology theory; the depiction of women in the Middle Ages; the practice of deception and illusion; and the philosophy of psychedelics. Through the lenses of Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, lecturers will explore how magic has influenced society and science.
Christina Oakley Harrington, a retired academic of medieval history and the founder of Treadwell’s, a London bookstore specializing in literature on magic and spiritualism, said that many witches she knew were talking about the degree program, announced last week, and were thinking about enrolling.
Here is more from the NYT. The school has received hundreds of inquiries in the last few days.
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.
The Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Adults’ Subjective Wellbeing
Using four cross-sectional data files for the United States and Europe we show that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) have a significant impact on subjective wellbeing (SWB) in adulthood. Death of a parent, parental separation or divorce, financial difficulties, the prolonged absence of a parent, quarreling between parents, parental unemployment, sexual assault, experiencing long-term health problems, being bullied at school and being beaten or punched as a child all have long-term impacts on wellbeing. These experiences impact a wide range of wellbeing measures in adulthood including satisfaction with many aspects of everyday life, happiness and life satisfaction, self-assessed health, and are positively linked to measures of negative affect including the GHQ6. The evidence linking ACEs to lower SWB in adulthood is consistent across fifty different measures including sixteen positive affect and twenty-six negative affect measures relating to assessments of one’s one life, and eight variables capturing how the individual feels about the area she lives in, including unemployment, drugs, violence and vandalism plus democracy in their country. Trauma in childhood is long lasting.
That is from a new paper by David G. Blanchflower and Alex Bryson. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis. Perhaps those are not surprising results, but these are some of the most important questions for human welfare.
Might a few Kiwi reforms resume or be restored?
New Zealand’s next prime minister will be Christopher Luxon, a former chief executive of Air New Zealand, whose center-right National Party will lead a coalition with Act, a smaller libertarian party.
Here is the full NYT story. Jacinda Ardern is revered in many circles, but note support for her Labour Party collapsed to 27 percent, in part due to their inability to solve cost of living issues. Via tekl.
It is better that Elon bought Twitter
I have disagreed with most of his design decisions, do not like the name change or rebrand, and I have been disappointed by many of his tweets and points of view, often disagreeing vehemently. That said, allowing the videos to be seen on Twitter is the right decision, and it is a very, very important decision.
So I end up glad that he bought Twitter. I also very much like the general feed and also the “Community Notes” features, the latter supported but not initiated by Elon.
I am not sure how widely acknowledged this will be, but someone should say it, and I am happy to be the one. In general, more attention needs to be paid to “getting one big thing right.”
Saturday assorted links
2. Hezbollah’s arsenal of weapons.
3. Israeli billionaire quits Harvard board.
4. What might be in those scrolls.
5. Louise Gluck, RIP. She was one of our best poets, even if not the equal of Shakespeare.
Does alleviating poverty increase cognitive performance?
From an RCT by Barnabas Szaszi et.al, due to travel I have not yet had the chance to look at this one:
In this Registered Report, we investigated the impact of a cash transfer based poverty alleviation program on cognitive performance. We analyzed data from a randomized controlled trial conducted on low-income, high-risk individuals in Liberia where a random half of the participants (n=251) received a $200 lump-sum unconditional cash transfer – equivalent approximately to 300% of their monthly income – while the other half (n= 222) did not. We tested both the short-term (2-5 weeks) and the long-term (12-13 months) impact of the treatment via several executive function measures. The observed effect sizes of cash transfers on cognitive performance (b = 0.13 for the short- and b = 0.08 for the long-term) were roughly three and four times smaller than suggested by prior non-randomized research. Bayesian analyses revealed that the overall evidence supporting the existence of these effects is inconclusive. A multiverse analysis showed that neither alternative analytical specifications nor alternative processing of the dataset changed the results consistently. However cognitive performance varied between the executive function measures, suggesting that cash transfers may affect the subcomponents of executive function differently.
Via Michelle Dawson.
Some observations on universities and recent outrages
1. I feel stupid and unnecessary simply piling on with the usual observations and criticisms. Nonetheless they are mostly deserved, for a varying mix of administrators, faculty, and students.
2. The real black-pill is to realize that the structural equilibria behind the outrages also play a role in more usual affairs. Ultimately these cannot be entirely “segregated” incidents. Through invisible hand mechanisms, there is too much bias and too much groupthink conformity, even in the evaluation of ordinary scientific propositions.
3. This is true for the economics profession as well, though few will tell you this. They won’t tell you because they are the ones doing it, though often unintentionally or with genuine motives. They are laying bricks in the edifice of intellectual conformity, if only through what they do not talk about.
3b. I don’t think GMU economics differs in kind here, so politically speaking the situation is symmetric with respect to bias. Nonetheless mainstream policy views are far more prevalent than GMU-type policy views, so the actual net bias in practice is very much in the [fill in the blank ] direction. (What should I call it? The “Democratic Party direction”? That doesn’t seem quite right, but it is the closest descriptor I have found. Perhaps “the Democratic Party direction but passed through some intellectualizing filters”?) If you really think there are enough checks and balances in place to prevent this bias and conformity and lack of self-awareness from arising, I hope the recent outrages have black-pilled you just a bit.
4. Those who perform the outrageous acts of commission or omission are not usually evil people, just as most Irish-American IRA supporters in America were not evil people. Very often their failings stem from a mix of narcissism, mood affiliation, and fail to think through their professed views (perhaps they are indeed evil from a Randian point of view?). They frame political issues in personal, emotional terms, namely which values ought to be elevated (e.g., “sympathy for victimhood”), and that framing determines their response to daily events. Since their views on the personal and emotional side are held so strongly, it simply feels to them that they are right, even when they are glorifying groups and cultures that currently are failing badly and also performing some very bad and evil acts. They get caught up in such glorifications, including through the medium of apologetics, and through the other twists and turns they need to make to sustain their intellectual positions, even if they are not fundamentally malevolent as human beings.
I think about twenty percent of “the outrageous ones in academia” genuinely have evil, malevolent views, the rest are victims of their narcissistic mood affiliation.
4b. Keep in mind the eighty percent often have a deeper sense than you do of the humanity and vividness of the groups and cultures that currently are failing badly. That makes them all the more convinced that they are right and you are wrong. They can indeed feel that you do not “know what is going on.” In the meantime, you should try to acquire that deeper sense. As it stands, there is a pretty good chance you don’t have it, and that means you are deficient too. That is your own brand of narcissistic mood affiliation.
5. If you hear someone proclaiming a strong distinction between their “scientific views” and their “personal views,” usually they are in effect saying they don’t want their underlying “actual views on net” much challenged. It is fine to proclaim agnosticism about areas you don’t do research in, but then you should actually be agnostic about the areas you don’t do research in. I have never met such a person. Unwillingness to recognize these bad practices is a fundamental problem in academic economics discourse today. It cloaks so many of the current vices under the ostensible mantle of science.
6. The current backlash against academia is likely to remove or dampen the most egregious commissions and omissions on display, as we recently have been witnessing them, but without improving the underlying incentive structure more generally. Academics will more likely put on a better face, but without much reducing their biases on net. It might end up that such biases become more invisible and harder to detect and root out.
Have a nice day!
That is from Ben Smith. For the interested, here is some New Zealand election coverage.