Tuesday assorted links
1. Can a political candidate promise “no taxes”? (The culture that is Argentina)
2. Embryologists inundated with requests for sperm retrieval from the fallen and dead.
4. Does free play for kids lead to happier adults?
5. New science blog by Ulkar Aghaeva, first post on Merton and multiple discoveries. NB: Proper link here: https://measureformeasure.co/blog/multiple-discoveries/
The Effect of Organizations on Physician Prescribing Opioids
Here is one of the more important IO papers in recent times:
In theory, there are several reasons why physician organizational form might affect the price, quantity, and quality of physician services. In this paper, we examine the effect of three aspects of physician organizational form on opioid prescribing: the number of physicians in the physician’s group (if any); the physician’s integration with or employment by a hospital or hospital system; and the average age of the other physicians in the physician’s group. We present three key findings. First, all else held constant, group physicians prescribe far fewer opioids, and prescribe them more appropriately, than do solo physicians. Second, although physicians who are employed by a hospital or practice in a hospital-owned group prescribe fewer opioids than do independent physicians, there is evidence that this difference may be due to differences in the other characteristics of physicians who are hospital-integrated rather than a causal effect. Third, we find substantial peer effects on opioid prescribing. Physicians in groups with a higher average age (excluding the physician him- or herself) prescribe more intensively and are more likely to write inappropriate opioid prescriptions than physicians in younger groups – holding constant the physician’s own age and other characteristics of his or her group.
That is from a new NBER working paper by M. Kate Bundorf, Daniel Kessler, and Sahil Lalwani.
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.
Response functions for Israeli-Palestine conflict
A VAR is a clever way to model whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is tit-for-tat.
Here is much more by Cremiaux, with some simple statistics, controversial obviously. Via N.A.
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.
That is from Ben Smith. For the interested, here is some New Zealand election coverage.