Category: Uncategorized
Wednesday assorted links
Do not forget
Estimating real-world vaccine effectiveness is vital to assessing the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination program and informing the ongoing policy response. However, estimating vaccine effectiveness using observational data is inherently challenging because of the nonrandomized design and potential for unmeasured confounding. We used a regression discontinuity design to estimate vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 mortality in England using the fact that people aged 80 years or older were prioritized for the vaccine rollout. The prioritization led to a large discrepancy in vaccination rates among people aged 80–84 years compared with those aged 75–79 at the beginning of the vaccination campaign. We found a corresponding difference in COVID-19 mortality but not in non-COVID-19 mortality, suggesting that our approach appropriately addressed the issue of unmeasured confounding factors. Our results suggest that the first vaccine dose reduced the risk of COVID-19 death by 52.6% (95% confidence limits: 15.7, 73.4) in those aged 80 years, supporting existing evidence that a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine had a strong protective effect against COVID-19 mortality in older adults. The regression discontinuity model’s estimate of vaccine effectiveness is only slightly lower than those of previously published studies using different methods, suggesting that these estimates are unlikely to be substantially affected by unmeasured confounding factors.
From Charlotte Bermingham, et.al. There is plenty of other research yielding broadly similar conclusions. The Covid vaccines saved millions of lives, well over two million lives even from a conservative estimate.
For the pointer I thank Alex T.
Tuesday assorted links
1. “Almost everything is downstream of integrity.“
2. Two Edward Yang movies have been released by Criterion.
3. Massive haboob near Chandler, Arizona!
4. South Korean police hologram lowers crime?
5. Some points on the Lisa Cook firing. That said, I agree with Phil Magness. It was a mistake to appoint her in the first place, but given the current context it was bad to fire her as well. And here is David Beckworth. Here is Kalshi.
Is AI making it harder to enter the labor market?
There are new results from Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, and Ruyu Chen:
This paper examines changes in the labor market for occupations exposed to generative artificial intelligence using high-frequency administrative data from the largest payroll software provider in the United States. We present six facts that characterize these shifts. We find that since the widespread adoption of generative AI, early-career workers (ages 22-25) in the most AI-exposed occupations have experienced a 13 percent relative decline in employment even after controlling for firm-level shocks. In contrast, employment for workers in less exposed fields and more experienced workers in the same occupations has remained stable or continued to grow. We also find that adjustments occur primarily through employment rather than compensation. Furthermore, employment declines are concentrated in occupations where AI is more likely to automate, rather than augment, human labor. Our results are robust to alternative explanations, such as excluding technology-related firms and excluding occupations amenable to remote work. These six facts provide early, large-scale evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the AI revolution is beginning to have a significant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the American labor market.
Here is WSJ coverage from Justin Lahart.
USA counterfactual estimate of the day
With zero net immigration, Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok estimates, the U.S. economy would be able to sustainably add only about 24,000 nonfarm jobs a month, compared with an average 155,000 from 2015 through 2024.
Here is the full WSJ article. It really helps an economy to have both aggregate supply and aggregate demand increasing at the same time.
How Much Tax Do US Billionaires Pay?
We estimate income and taxes for the wealthiest group of US households by matching Forbes 400 data to the individual, business, estate, and gift tax returns of the corresponding group in 2010–2020. In our benchmark estimate, the total effective tax rate—all taxes paid relative to economic income—of the top 0.0002% (approximately the “top 400”) averaged 24% in 2018–2020 compared with 30% for the full population and 45% for top labor income earners. This lower total effective tax rate on the wealthiest is substantially driven by low taxable individual income relative to economic income. First, the C-corporations owned by the wealthiest distributed relatively little in dividends, limiting their individual income tax unless they sell their stocks. Second, top-owned passthrough businesses reported negative taxable income on average in spite of positive book income, further limiting their individual income tax. The top-400 effective tax rate fell from 30% in 2010–2017 to 24% in 2018–2020, explained both by a smaller share of business income being taxed and by that income being subject to lower tax rates. Estate and gift taxes contributed relatively little to their effective tax rate. Top-400 decedents paid 0.8% of their wealth in estate tax when married and 7% when single. Annual charitable contributions equalled 0.6% of wealth and 11% of economic income in 2018–20.
That is from a new NBER working paper by
Addendum: Here is a comment from David Splinter.
Monday assorted links
1. Some economics of AI subscription pricing.
2. “Cat food made by Michelin star chef is on sale… and people think it’s delicious.”
3. Is video to blame for gender polarization?
4. Those new service sector jobs?
5. “An innovative contest by a city in formerly communist east Germany to curb depopulation by offering a fortnight of free housing has stunned local officials with its success.” Link here.
6. Benjamin Yeoh visits Accra.
7. Banks are making a regulatory pushback against stablecoins (FT).
Is religion actually declining in emerging economies?
Building on large-scale survey data and recent scholarship, we document persistent and, in many regions, increasing levels of religiosity…we analyze the determinants and consequences of religious behavior, showing how income volatility, financial insecurity, and cultural transitions sustain demand for religion. Third, we explore the institutional and political dimensions of religion in EDCs, emphasizing the role of religious institutions as public goods providers and as politically influential actors. This discussion offers a framework for understanding religious organizations as adaptive, competing platforms in pluralistic religious marketplaces. Overall, our findings suggest that religious adaptation, rather than decline, is central to understanding the future of religion and its economic implications in the developing world.
That is from a new NBER working paper by Sara Lowes, Benjamin Marx, and Eduardo Montero.
What I’ve been reading
David Woodman, The First King of England: Aethelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom. An excellent work. One of the best books on early English history, and also one of the best books on how the Dark Ages morphed into early Medieval times. Usually I find treatments in both areas difficult to follow, but this one produces a coherent and also non-exaggerated narrative. It also will make you want to visit Northumbria.
Edmund Phelps, My Journeys in Economic Theory. A fascinating memoir, I had not known he was so obsessed with Rawls and Nagel. He also loved the tenor Franco Corelli, and was a Birgit Nilsson fan too. Recommended, for those who like this sort of thing, and who already are familiar with the cast of characters.
Bench Ansfield, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City. Whenever a book demonstrates what people in New Jersey have known for decades, usually it is a good book.
Andrew Sean Greer, Less: A Novel. I do not like much in contemporary American fiction, but so far I am quite enjoying this one.
Bernd Roeck, The World at First Light: A New History of the Renaissance. 934 pp. of text, covers too many topics in too desultory a fashion?
Pablo A. Pena, Human Capital for Humans: An Accessible Introduction to the Economic Science of the People, is a good popular-level introduction to human capital theory.
There is Carl Benedikt Frey, How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations.
Sunday assorted links
1. A defense of prediction markets.
2. Ezra on GPT-5 (NYT).
3. Is complex animal life much older than we had thought?
4. “How much have murder rates increased since 2000 in the four European countries that get the most attention for their immigrant crime — Sweden, France, Germany and UK? Answer: They haven’t increased. Murder rates have declined since 2000 in all four countries.” Link here.
Did the United States grow its way out of WWII debt?
Not as much as you might think:
ABSTRACT: The fall in the U.S. public debt/GDP ratio from 106% in 1946 to 23% in 1974 is often attributed to high rates of economic growth. This paper examines the roles of three other factors: primary budget surpluses, surprise inflation, and pegged interest rates before the Fed-Treasury Accord of 1951. Our central result is a simulation of the path that the debt/GDP ratio would have followed with primary budget balance and without the distortions in real interest rates caused by surprise inflation and the pre-Accord peg. In this counterfactual, debt/GDP declines only to 74% in 1974, not 23% as in actual history. Moreover, the ratio starts rising again in 1980 and in 2022 it is 84%. These findings imply that, over the last 76 years, only a small amount of debt reduction has been achieved through growth rates that exceed undistorted interest rates.
That is from a recent paper by Julien Acalin and Laurence Ball. Via the excellent Samir Varma.
What should I ask John Amaechi?
Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him. Here is Wikipedia on John:
John Uzoma Ekwugha Amaechi // ⓘ, OBE (/əˈmeɪtʃi/; born 26 November 1970) is an English psychologist, consultant and former professional basketball player. He played college basketball for the Vanderbilt Commodores and Penn State Nittany Lions, and professional basketball in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Amaechi also played in France, Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Since retiring from basketball, Amaechi has worked as a psychologist and consultant, establishing his company Amaechi Performance Systems.
In February 2007, Amaechi became the first former NBA player to publicly come out as gay after doing so in his memoir Man in the Middle.
John has a new book coming out, namely It’s Not Magic: The Ordinary Skills of Exceptional Leaders. So what should I ask him?
Saturday assorted links
Who gets into the best colleges and why?
We use anonymized admissions data from several colleges linked to income tax records and SAT and ACT test scores to study the determinants and causal effects of attending Ivy-Plus colleges (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago). Children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores. Two-thirds of this gap is due to higher admissions rates for students with comparable test scores from high-income families; the remaining third is due to differences in rates of application and matriculation. In contrast, children from high-income families have no admissions advantage at flagship public colleges. The high-income admissions advantage at Ivy-Plus colleges is driven by three factors: (1) preferences for children of alumni, (2) weight placed on non-academic credentials, and (3) athletic recruitment. Using a new research design that isolates idiosyncratic variation in admissions decisions for waitlisted applicants, we show that attending an Ivy-Plus college instead of the average flagship public college increases students’ chances of reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 50%, nearly doubles their chances of attending an elite graduate school, and almost triples their chances of working at a prestigious firm. The three factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas academic credentials such as SAT/ACT scores are highly predictive of post-college success.
That is from a new paper by Raj Chetty, David J. Deming, and John N. Friedman. One immediate conclusion is that standardized test scores help lower-income groups get into the best schools, compared to the alternatives.
Is it Possible to Raise National Happiness?
That is a new paper by Alberto Prati and Claudia Senik, here is the abstract:
We revisit the famous Easterlin paradox by considering that life evaluation scales refer to a changing context, hence they are regularly reinterpreted. We propose a simple model of rescaling based on both retrospective and current life evaluations, and apply it to unexploited archival data from the USA. When correcting for rescaling, we find that the well-being of Americans has substantially increased, on par with GDP, health, education, and liberal democracy, from the 1950s to the early 2000s. Using several datasets, we shed light on other happiness puzzles, including the apparent stability of life evaluations during COVID-19, why Ukrainians report similar levels of life satisfaction today as before the war, and the absence of parental happiness.
To give some intuition, the authors provide evidence that people are more likely engaging in rescaling than being stuck on a hedonic treadmill. I think they are mostly right.
Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.