12 Aralık 2013 Perşembe
A Harvard Victory
Congratulations to the Harvard Fed Challenge Team, which recently won the national title. Here is a picture of the team, together with a soon-to-be-unemployed Harvard alum.
11 Aralık 2013 Çarşamba
Meta-analysis of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution
The elasticity of intertemporal substitution is one of the most estimated parameters in Economics. Why is it estimated over and over again? Because some results are positive, some are negative and some are zero. To have a clearer idea of what its true value is, we have to keep estimating it. However, the econometricians also need to get their results published, and the publishing tournament has not only an impact on which results get published but also on which ones the econometricians submit for publication.
Tomáš Havránek performs a meta-analysis of estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. That is, he gathers 169 studies and looks at their 2735 estimates. He finds significant under-reporting of results close to zero or negative, because of this publication bias. While the published mean is 0.5, the true mean should somewhere at 0.3 to 0.4. Negative results make little sense, but they can happen with some draw of the data. If editors and referees systematically discard such results, and positive ones, no matter how large they are, get a pass, we have a bias. But given the distribution of published ones, and knowing this bias, one can infer the full distribution of estimates, and hence Havránek's new estimates.
Tomáš Havránek performs a meta-analysis of estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. That is, he gathers 169 studies and looks at their 2735 estimates. He finds significant under-reporting of results close to zero or negative, because of this publication bias. While the published mean is 0.5, the true mean should somewhere at 0.3 to 0.4. Negative results make little sense, but they can happen with some draw of the data. If editors and referees systematically discard such results, and positive ones, no matter how large they are, get a pass, we have a bias. But given the distribution of published ones, and knowing this bias, one can infer the full distribution of estimates, and hence Havránek's new estimates.
10 Aralık 2013 Salı
Mechanism design in attorney fees
When it comes to extracting money from clients, you cannot deny that attorneys have learned their Economics. You cannot say the same about the rest of the legal profession, though. So what makes attorneys so smart? Look at how they evaluate which cases to take. It is not about justice for the plaintiff, it is all about what will give them the highest expected return. And the fee schedule can change dramatically according to circumstances.
Take the paper by Winand Emons and Claude Fluet. They observe that defense attorneys use fixed fee contracts while those representing plaintiffs use contingent contracts with a smallish fixed fee. The latter are offered because it provides incentives to pursue strong cases only, they say. Defense attorneys fight all cases, while plaintiff ones can select, and they do it in a way that makes it worth their time. In addition the latter have privileged information: they can figure out the expected winnings, while the plaintiffs are in the dark. The attorneys thus adjust the schedule accordingly. With all this, I wonder whether there is a way to regulate the fees, say by allowing only particular fee structures, that would maximize the well-being of plaintiffs or some combination of plaintiffs, defense and attorneys, not attorneys only.
Take the paper by Winand Emons and Claude Fluet. They observe that defense attorneys use fixed fee contracts while those representing plaintiffs use contingent contracts with a smallish fixed fee. The latter are offered because it provides incentives to pursue strong cases only, they say. Defense attorneys fight all cases, while plaintiff ones can select, and they do it in a way that makes it worth their time. In addition the latter have privileged information: they can figure out the expected winnings, while the plaintiffs are in the dark. The attorneys thus adjust the schedule accordingly. With all this, I wonder whether there is a way to regulate the fees, say by allowing only particular fee structures, that would maximize the well-being of plaintiffs or some combination of plaintiffs, defense and attorneys, not attorneys only.
EITC is better than the Minimum Wage
From David Neumark:
Suggesting that federal policy addressing low-wage work and low-income families has somehow failed because the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation ignores the fact that we have moved away from a focus on the minimum wage — a policy with many flaws — and toward the earned-income tax credit. We shouldn’t be asking simply how much the real minimum wage has changed, but rather how much the combined income floor generated by the two policies has changed.
To provide an example, the blue line in the figure below shows the wages received by a single adult worker earning the minimum wage and working full time throughout the year. This can be interpreted as the income floor established by the minimum wage. The red line shows the level of family income when the earned-income tax credit for a family with two children is added (all in 2012 dollars). The lower line illustrates the income consequences of the real decline in the minimum wage. But the upper line shows that, because of the sharp increase in the generosity of the earned-income tax credit, the combined effect of the two policies is that the real income of this family is as high or higher than it was in past decades — when the real minimum wage was relatively high — and much higher than it was in most of the intervening years.
Suggesting that federal policy addressing low-wage work and low-income families has somehow failed because the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation ignores the fact that we have moved away from a focus on the minimum wage — a policy with many flaws — and toward the earned-income tax credit. We shouldn’t be asking simply how much the real minimum wage has changed, but rather how much the combined income floor generated by the two policies has changed.
To provide an example, the blue line in the figure below shows the wages received by a single adult worker earning the minimum wage and working full time throughout the year. This can be interpreted as the income floor established by the minimum wage. The red line shows the level of family income when the earned-income tax credit for a family with two children is added (all in 2012 dollars). The lower line illustrates the income consequences of the real decline in the minimum wage. But the upper line shows that, because of the sharp increase in the generosity of the earned-income tax credit, the combined effect of the two policies is that the real income of this family is as high or higher than it was in past decades — when the real minimum wage was relatively high — and much higher than it was in most of the intervening years.
Nonetheless, there are important differences between the earned-income tax credit and the minimum wage. The fundamental difference is that the earned-income tax credit aims benefits at low-income families with children, rather than simply low-wage workers. This is in large part its virtue, and it makes a lot more sense than the minimum wage’s focus on low-wage workers. Do we really care if a low-wage teenager in a middle-class family makes an extra dollar an hour? Economists of all persuasions in the minimum-wage debate agree that mandated wage floors do a bad job of directing benefits to low-income families. This is confirmed in recent research by my graduate student Sam Lundstrom, calculating who would be affected by increasing the current federal minimum to $8.25 from $7.25. He finds that only 21.3 percent of the affected workers would be in poor families, while 30.9 percent would be in families with incomes more than three times the poverty line.
I Wanna Riot...In Singapore [?!]
 |
| @#$% the Police, Singapore Edition |
Like many Asian nations, Singapore is highly inequitable and is becoming more and more so. Its Gini coefficient stands at 0.478. At the same time, the locals' very low birth rate results in few Singaporeans left to do blue-collar jobs...such as construction. Hence the elements for this year's sudden outburst as an Indian migrant construction worker was struck down by a wayward bus, resulting in that ever-so-rare event: a riot in Singapore.
A crowd of about 400 foreign workers, angered by a fatal road accident, set fire to vehicles and attacked police and emergency services workers late Sunday in Singapore's ethnic Indian district, injuring at least 18 people in a rare riot in the city-stateThe role of migrant workers has come under scrutiny:
Police and eyewitnesses say the riot, the first major outburst of public violence here in more than four decades, started at about 9:23 p.m. local time (1323 GMT) after a bus hit and killed an unnamed 33-year-old Indian man in the Little India neighborhood, prompting large groups of South Asian workers to attack the bus with sticks and garbage bins.
Authorities quelled the violence before 11 p.m. after deploying 300 police officers to the scene, including its riot-control squad and Gurkha unit, police officials said in a news briefing early Monday, adding that officers didn't use any firearms to end the riot...
Police officials said 10 officers were hurt, none seriously, while the bus driver involved in the fatal accident—a Singaporean—was hospitalized. Five vehicles were burned—including three police vehicles, an ambulance and a motorcycle, the Civil Defense Force said. Several other vehicles—including police, civil defense, and privately owned cars—also were damaged, officials said...
The riot has sparked concerns of festering unrest amid the large foreign workforce, numbering about 1.3 million as of June, in this island state of 5.3 million people. In recent years, some foreign laborers—particularly low-pay unskilled workers in construction—have resorted to protests against alleged exploitation by employers, including a rare and illegal strike last year by about 170 public-bus drivers hired from China.There is also, unfortunately, an element of racial profiling
Even so, police would "pay extra attention not just to Little India, but also to foreign-worker dormitories and known places of congregation, moving forward," Police Commissioner Ng Joo Hee said at the briefing. Police officials said they were treating the incident as a case of "rioting with dangerous weapons," an offense that carries penalties including up to 10 years' jail, as well as caning.Good ol' caning; would this be Singapore without it? Yes, Singapore is highly inequitable, but its claim to fame has been different races living in relative harmony in recent years. I guess the seams are beginning to show once more as inequality becomes more evident based on racial differences. Then again, demographic realities probably mean that flashpoints of this sort will continue to occur in the near future, especially as income and racial divides reinforce each other.
This ain't Disneyland, folks.
UPDATE: Racial profiling in "Little India" is not new, and these events may further inflame matters.
9 Aralık 2013 Pazartesi
Numbers Don't Lie: Catholicism is Growing
Over the past century, the number of Catholics around the globe has more than tripled, from an estimated 291 million in 1910 to nearly 1.1 billion as of 2010, according to a comprehensive demographic study by the Pew Research Center.Now, as then, the Catholic Church's critics are myriad. In the longer historical sweep, though, its geographic reach ostensibly in the business of saving souls is broader as stagnant-to-declining markets (North America, Europe) are supplanted by more dynamic ones (sub-Saharan Africa, Asia-Pacific), while holding on to saturated markets (Latin America).
But over the same period, the world’s overall population also has risen rapidly. As a result, Catholics have made up a remarkably stable share of all people on Earth. In 1910, Catholics comprised about half (48%) of all Christians and 17% of the world’s total population, according to historical estimates from the World Christian Database. A century later, the Pew Research study found, Catholics still comprise about half (50%) of Christians worldwide and 16% of the total global population.
What has changed substantially over the past century is the geographic distribution of the world’s Catholics. In 1910, Europe was home to about two-thirds of all Catholics, and nearly nine-in-ten lived either in Europe (65%) or Latin America (24%). By 2010, by contrast, only about a quarter of all Catholics (24%) were in Europe. The largest share (39%) were in Latin America and the Caribbean.
A Fun Quiz
For the holiday party for ec 10 section leaders, head section leader David Johnson prepared the following "quiz," which he has allowed me to share with blog readers. The quiz is open book, open internet. The winning team got 18 out of 20. Try your hand at it. I will post answers in a few days.
Good luck!
1. For 35 years, Bob Barker welcomed those who had "come on down" to this TV game show.
6. The result of Atlas's misplacing his celestial sphere.
10. Pushpins adorned with benzene rings.
13. Flo's employer.
14. Red Sox / Yankees: the most heated one in professional sports.
16. What we've made upon deciding which poem to use in our Super Bowl commercial.
18. If an MP were to suffer a heart attack during David Cameron's question time, it would be a _____________________________ .
19. The best comedians/comediennes reach the highest point on the ________________________.
20. Past, Present, or Future Perfect equivalent of the price of our bathroom basin .
Good luck!
Ec 10 -- End of Semester "Quiz"
[Hint: Each Answer Has a Certain Ec10 "Flavor"]
1. For 35 years, Bob Barker welcomed those who had "come on down" to this TV game show.
2. New Ec10 soap opera starring Luke, Laura, and Francis Edgeworth.
3. First U.S. car manufacturer to offer seat belts as an option.
4. Neurosis shared by bus rides and margarine .
5. One-word term for one's first apartment.
6. The result of Atlas's misplacing his celestial sphere.
7. "Careful! The Bayeux Tapestry's wall mounts are loose!"
8. Can we use this same phrase for the sensitivity of either crucifix or rosary bead demand to the cost of the crucifix?
9. Metropolis governed by U-boat captains.
10. Pushpins adorned with benzene rings.
11. My cousin Vinny is a sports reporter and is always asking coaches at press conferences, "May-a I-a ________________ you-a on-a that-a?"
12. Tony Award-winning Miss Saigon actor's hardwood entryway.
13. Flo's employer.
14. Red Sox / Yankees: the most heated one in professional sports.
15. What we might have when Pamela Ewing's rep is out of control.
16. What we've made upon deciding which poem to use in our Super Bowl commercial.
17. New Parker Brothers board game fashioned after Laurel & Hardy or Burns & Allen or Rodgers & Hammerstein or Marx & Engels or Masters & Johnson......
SCORE: _______ ( "correct" answers are worth 1 point each ! )
Kaydol:
Kayıtlar (Atom)
12 Aralık 2013 Perşembe
A Harvard Victory
Congratulations to the Harvard Fed Challenge Team, which recently won the national title. Here is a picture of the team, together with a soon-to-be-unemployed Harvard alum.
11 Aralık 2013 Çarşamba
Meta-analysis of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution
The elasticity of intertemporal substitution is one of the most estimated parameters in Economics. Why is it estimated over and over again? Because some results are positive, some are negative and some are zero. To have a clearer idea of what its true value is, we have to keep estimating it. However, the econometricians also need to get their results published, and the publishing tournament has not only an impact on which results get published but also on which ones the econometricians submit for publication.
Tomáš Havránek performs a meta-analysis of estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. That is, he gathers 169 studies and looks at their 2735 estimates. He finds significant under-reporting of results close to zero or negative, because of this publication bias. While the published mean is 0.5, the true mean should somewhere at 0.3 to 0.4. Negative results make little sense, but they can happen with some draw of the data. If editors and referees systematically discard such results, and positive ones, no matter how large they are, get a pass, we have a bias. But given the distribution of published ones, and knowing this bias, one can infer the full distribution of estimates, and hence Havránek's new estimates.
Tomáš Havránek performs a meta-analysis of estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. That is, he gathers 169 studies and looks at their 2735 estimates. He finds significant under-reporting of results close to zero or negative, because of this publication bias. While the published mean is 0.5, the true mean should somewhere at 0.3 to 0.4. Negative results make little sense, but they can happen with some draw of the data. If editors and referees systematically discard such results, and positive ones, no matter how large they are, get a pass, we have a bias. But given the distribution of published ones, and knowing this bias, one can infer the full distribution of estimates, and hence Havránek's new estimates.
10 Aralık 2013 Salı
Mechanism design in attorney fees
When it comes to extracting money from clients, you cannot deny that attorneys have learned their Economics. You cannot say the same about the rest of the legal profession, though. So what makes attorneys so smart? Look at how they evaluate which cases to take. It is not about justice for the plaintiff, it is all about what will give them the highest expected return. And the fee schedule can change dramatically according to circumstances.
Take the paper by Winand Emons and Claude Fluet. They observe that defense attorneys use fixed fee contracts while those representing plaintiffs use contingent contracts with a smallish fixed fee. The latter are offered because it provides incentives to pursue strong cases only, they say. Defense attorneys fight all cases, while plaintiff ones can select, and they do it in a way that makes it worth their time. In addition the latter have privileged information: they can figure out the expected winnings, while the plaintiffs are in the dark. The attorneys thus adjust the schedule accordingly. With all this, I wonder whether there is a way to regulate the fees, say by allowing only particular fee structures, that would maximize the well-being of plaintiffs or some combination of plaintiffs, defense and attorneys, not attorneys only.
Take the paper by Winand Emons and Claude Fluet. They observe that defense attorneys use fixed fee contracts while those representing plaintiffs use contingent contracts with a smallish fixed fee. The latter are offered because it provides incentives to pursue strong cases only, they say. Defense attorneys fight all cases, while plaintiff ones can select, and they do it in a way that makes it worth their time. In addition the latter have privileged information: they can figure out the expected winnings, while the plaintiffs are in the dark. The attorneys thus adjust the schedule accordingly. With all this, I wonder whether there is a way to regulate the fees, say by allowing only particular fee structures, that would maximize the well-being of plaintiffs or some combination of plaintiffs, defense and attorneys, not attorneys only.
EITC is better than the Minimum Wage
From David Neumark:
Suggesting that federal policy addressing low-wage work and low-income families has somehow failed because the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation ignores the fact that we have moved away from a focus on the minimum wage — a policy with many flaws — and toward the earned-income tax credit. We shouldn’t be asking simply how much the real minimum wage has changed, but rather how much the combined income floor generated by the two policies has changed.
To provide an example, the blue line in the figure below shows the wages received by a single adult worker earning the minimum wage and working full time throughout the year. This can be interpreted as the income floor established by the minimum wage. The red line shows the level of family income when the earned-income tax credit for a family with two children is added (all in 2012 dollars). The lower line illustrates the income consequences of the real decline in the minimum wage. But the upper line shows that, because of the sharp increase in the generosity of the earned-income tax credit, the combined effect of the two policies is that the real income of this family is as high or higher than it was in past decades — when the real minimum wage was relatively high — and much higher than it was in most of the intervening years.
Suggesting that federal policy addressing low-wage work and low-income families has somehow failed because the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation ignores the fact that we have moved away from a focus on the minimum wage — a policy with many flaws — and toward the earned-income tax credit. We shouldn’t be asking simply how much the real minimum wage has changed, but rather how much the combined income floor generated by the two policies has changed.
To provide an example, the blue line in the figure below shows the wages received by a single adult worker earning the minimum wage and working full time throughout the year. This can be interpreted as the income floor established by the minimum wage. The red line shows the level of family income when the earned-income tax credit for a family with two children is added (all in 2012 dollars). The lower line illustrates the income consequences of the real decline in the minimum wage. But the upper line shows that, because of the sharp increase in the generosity of the earned-income tax credit, the combined effect of the two policies is that the real income of this family is as high or higher than it was in past decades — when the real minimum wage was relatively high — and much higher than it was in most of the intervening years.
Nonetheless, there are important differences between the earned-income tax credit and the minimum wage. The fundamental difference is that the earned-income tax credit aims benefits at low-income families with children, rather than simply low-wage workers. This is in large part its virtue, and it makes a lot more sense than the minimum wage’s focus on low-wage workers. Do we really care if a low-wage teenager in a middle-class family makes an extra dollar an hour? Economists of all persuasions in the minimum-wage debate agree that mandated wage floors do a bad job of directing benefits to low-income families. This is confirmed in recent research by my graduate student Sam Lundstrom, calculating who would be affected by increasing the current federal minimum to $8.25 from $7.25. He finds that only 21.3 percent of the affected workers would be in poor families, while 30.9 percent would be in families with incomes more than three times the poverty line.
I Wanna Riot...In Singapore [?!]
|
| @#$% the Police, Singapore Edition |
Like many Asian nations, Singapore is highly inequitable and is becoming more and more so. Its Gini coefficient stands at 0.478. At the same time, the locals' very low birth rate results in few Singaporeans left to do blue-collar jobs...such as construction. Hence the elements for this year's sudden outburst as an Indian migrant construction worker was struck down by a wayward bus, resulting in that ever-so-rare event: a riot in Singapore.
A crowd of about 400 foreign workers, angered by a fatal road accident, set fire to vehicles and attacked police and emergency services workers late Sunday in Singapore's ethnic Indian district, injuring at least 18 people in a rare riot in the city-stateThe role of migrant workers has come under scrutiny:
Police and eyewitnesses say the riot, the first major outburst of public violence here in more than four decades, started at about 9:23 p.m. local time (1323 GMT) after a bus hit and killed an unnamed 33-year-old Indian man in the Little India neighborhood, prompting large groups of South Asian workers to attack the bus with sticks and garbage bins.
Authorities quelled the violence before 11 p.m. after deploying 300 police officers to the scene, including its riot-control squad and Gurkha unit, police officials said in a news briefing early Monday, adding that officers didn't use any firearms to end the riot...
Police officials said 10 officers were hurt, none seriously, while the bus driver involved in the fatal accident—a Singaporean—was hospitalized. Five vehicles were burned—including three police vehicles, an ambulance and a motorcycle, the Civil Defense Force said. Several other vehicles—including police, civil defense, and privately owned cars—also were damaged, officials said...
The riot has sparked concerns of festering unrest amid the large foreign workforce, numbering about 1.3 million as of June, in this island state of 5.3 million people. In recent years, some foreign laborers—particularly low-pay unskilled workers in construction—have resorted to protests against alleged exploitation by employers, including a rare and illegal strike last year by about 170 public-bus drivers hired from China.There is also, unfortunately, an element of racial profiling
Even so, police would "pay extra attention not just to Little India, but also to foreign-worker dormitories and known places of congregation, moving forward," Police Commissioner Ng Joo Hee said at the briefing. Police officials said they were treating the incident as a case of "rioting with dangerous weapons," an offense that carries penalties including up to 10 years' jail, as well as caning.Good ol' caning; would this be Singapore without it? Yes, Singapore is highly inequitable, but its claim to fame has been different races living in relative harmony in recent years. I guess the seams are beginning to show once more as inequality becomes more evident based on racial differences. Then again, demographic realities probably mean that flashpoints of this sort will continue to occur in the near future, especially as income and racial divides reinforce each other.
This ain't Disneyland, folks.
UPDATE: Racial profiling in "Little India" is not new, and these events may further inflame matters.
9 Aralık 2013 Pazartesi
Numbers Don't Lie: Catholicism is Growing
Over the past century, the number of Catholics around the globe has more than tripled, from an estimated 291 million in 1910 to nearly 1.1 billion as of 2010, according to a comprehensive demographic study by the Pew Research Center.Now, as then, the Catholic Church's critics are myriad. In the longer historical sweep, though, its geographic reach ostensibly in the business of saving souls is broader as stagnant-to-declining markets (North America, Europe) are supplanted by more dynamic ones (sub-Saharan Africa, Asia-Pacific), while holding on to saturated markets (Latin America).
But over the same period, the world’s overall population also has risen rapidly. As a result, Catholics have made up a remarkably stable share of all people on Earth. In 1910, Catholics comprised about half (48%) of all Christians and 17% of the world’s total population, according to historical estimates from the World Christian Database. A century later, the Pew Research study found, Catholics still comprise about half (50%) of Christians worldwide and 16% of the total global population.
What has changed substantially over the past century is the geographic distribution of the world’s Catholics. In 1910, Europe was home to about two-thirds of all Catholics, and nearly nine-in-ten lived either in Europe (65%) or Latin America (24%). By 2010, by contrast, only about a quarter of all Catholics (24%) were in Europe. The largest share (39%) were in Latin America and the Caribbean.
A Fun Quiz
For the holiday party for ec 10 section leaders, head section leader David Johnson prepared the following "quiz," which he has allowed me to share with blog readers. The quiz is open book, open internet. The winning team got 18 out of 20. Try your hand at it. I will post answers in a few days.
Good luck!
1. For 35 years, Bob Barker welcomed those who had "come on down" to this TV game show.
6. The result of Atlas's misplacing his celestial sphere.
10. Pushpins adorned with benzene rings.
13. Flo's employer.
14. Red Sox / Yankees: the most heated one in professional sports.
16. What we've made upon deciding which poem to use in our Super Bowl commercial.
18. If an MP were to suffer a heart attack during David Cameron's question time, it would be a _____________________________ .
19. The best comedians/comediennes reach the highest point on the ________________________.
20. Past, Present, or Future Perfect equivalent of the price of our bathroom basin .
Good luck!
Ec 10 -- End of Semester "Quiz"
[Hint: Each Answer Has a Certain Ec10 "Flavor"]
1. For 35 years, Bob Barker welcomed those who had "come on down" to this TV game show.
2. New Ec10 soap opera starring Luke, Laura, and Francis Edgeworth.
3. First U.S. car manufacturer to offer seat belts as an option.
4. Neurosis shared by bus rides and margarine .
5. One-word term for one's first apartment.
6. The result of Atlas's misplacing his celestial sphere.
7. "Careful! The Bayeux Tapestry's wall mounts are loose!"
8. Can we use this same phrase for the sensitivity of either crucifix or rosary bead demand to the cost of the crucifix?
9. Metropolis governed by U-boat captains.
10. Pushpins adorned with benzene rings.
11. My cousin Vinny is a sports reporter and is always asking coaches at press conferences, "May-a I-a ________________ you-a on-a that-a?"
12. Tony Award-winning Miss Saigon actor's hardwood entryway.
13. Flo's employer.
14. Red Sox / Yankees: the most heated one in professional sports.
15. What we might have when Pamela Ewing's rep is out of control.
16. What we've made upon deciding which poem to use in our Super Bowl commercial.
17. New Parker Brothers board game fashioned after Laurel & Hardy or Burns & Allen or Rodgers & Hammerstein or Marx & Engels or Masters & Johnson......
SCORE: _______ ( "correct" answers are worth 1 point each ! )
Kaydol:
Kayıtlar (Atom)