Walker

Walker joined Difficult Run as an editor in August 2013. He graduated from the University of North Texas with an MBA in Strategic Management and a BBA in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management. He's currently a grad student in Government at Johns Hopkins University. He has been published in SquareTwo, BYU Studies Quarterly, Dialogue, Graziadio Business Review, and Economic Affairs. He also contributed to Julie Smith's (ed.) 'As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture'. His other online writing can be found at Worlds Without End and Times & Seasons. He lives in Denton, Texas, with his wife.

Simonian Economics

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Image result for julian simon

A few years ago, I had a post about the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which economist Julian Simon won his bet against professional fearmonger Paul Ehrlich (who still won’t shut up). The evidence continues to mount that Simon was correct. Recently GMU economist Bryan Caplan reported on his own Simonian bet with Tyler Cowen and David Balan. “In July of 2008,” he writes, “the average U.S. price of regular gasoline was $4.062.” He bet “$100, even odds, that the U.S. price of gas (including taxes) in the first week of January, 2018 will be $3.00 or less in 2008 dollars.”

A subsequent clarification specified that the bet was on the price of regular gasoline.

Today, the January CPI arrived, allowing us to finally resolve this ten-year bet.  In 2008, the US CPI stood at 215.3.  In the third quarter of 2017, it hit 244.7.  Since then, there has been further inflation of 0.3%, bringing us to 245.3, for a grand total of 13.9% inflation during this period.  For me to win, then, the average price of regular gasoline in January 2017 must be less than $3.417.

So where are we now?  In January of 2018, the average price was a mere $2.555.  I have therefore won this bet by a margin of over 25%.  (Indeed, even if we count all gasoline, the average price is only $2.671).  I would have prevailed if there’d been 0% inflation – or as much as 14% cumulative deflation.

…For as long as we’ve had data, gas prices have shown frequent spikes, followed by gradual declines back to long-run trend.  So when prices spiked to over $4.00, I expected the past to repeat itself.  And repeat itself it did.

I expect that Tyler will insist that I just got lucky.  And if I lost roughly half my bets, that would be a wise reaction.  However, this latest victory brings my betting record to 17 wins and 0 losses.  Yes, pride goeth before the fall.  There’s at least one outstanding bet that I now expect to lose.  Still, the only reasonable explanation for my 17-and-0 record is that my judgment is exceptionally good.

…As always, my opponents have my respect – and deserve yours.  They stuck out their necks and made clear claims.  If every pundit would do the same, this would be a far better – and far quieter – world.

Who Are the Most Analytical Voters?

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From Tyler Cowen at Bloomberg:

Related imageYou might think that politics is an area where being analytical is especially useful. If you do, well, I have news for you: Libertarians measure as being the most analytical political group. That’s according to something called the cognitive reflection test, which is designed to measure whether an individual will override his or her immediate emotional responses and give a question further consideration. So if you aren’t a libertarian, maybe you ought to give that philosophy another look. It’s a relatively exclusive club, replete with people who are politically engaged, able to handle abstract arguments and capable of deeper reflection.

What else can we learn from this new study of political and analytical tendencies, conducted by Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand of Yale University?

For the 2016 election, one group that measured as especially nonanalytical was Democrats who crossed party lines and voted for Donald Trump. There is a stereotype of a less well-educated voter, perhaps both white and male, who reacts negatively and emotionally to Hillary Clinton, who decided to vote for Trump even if Trump’s actual policies will not prove in his best interest. For all the dangers of stereotyping, the study’s data are consistent with that picture.

Both nonvoters and independents do poorly on the analytic dimension. There is a myth of a reasonable, rational politically independent America, sitting in the middle of the spectrum, weighing arguments carefully and seeing which candidate or party has the better ideas and platform. In reality, that group measures as relatively impulsive and prone to less informed judgments.

If you are a Democrat, you might take some cheer in the fact that Democrats/liberals measure as somewhat more analytical than Republicans/conservatives. But if you take being analytic as a positive mark, you might feel at least a slight tug toward the libertarians. At the very least, you might find it harder to attack or make fun of the Republicans for being intellectually backward, because you as a Democratic liberal no longer sit atop of the totem pole of reason. Note that individuals who are conservative along economic dimensions measure as more analytical than those who are not, again on average. That is a slightly uncomfortable result for those on the left. The opposite is true for social conservatives, by the way: They are less analytical on average.

Cowen is quick to point out that there are analytical people in all camps. He also notes that being analytical can put “you out of touch with the American citizenry…Extremely analytical leaders might be best for managing an organization of predominantly analytical people, but that doesn’t mean they will be good national politicians.”

Check out the full study.

Are Most Millennials Pro-Gun Control?

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Not really. From Reason,

Image result for enough time magazineCNN ran an article detailing how student activists “led” the Washington, D.C., March for Our Lives rally on Saturday, downplaying the heavy organizational support they received from adult gun control advocates. Recent survey data show that only 10 percent of rally attendees were under 18 and the average age of the adults present was 49. And while most of the press coverage has implied that young people are overwhelmingly in favor of more gun control, comments from actual young people suggest their views are not quite so monolithic.

…A 2015 Pew poll[ref]A more recent poll finds that 58% of 18-to-29-year-olds want to “control gun ownership” (which is vaguer than “assault weapons ban”) as of April 2017. This is the highest it has been since 2009, though there appears to be an overall downward trend in this age group since 1993. See Pew’s 2017 study on gun demographics here. Also, check this out from Vox.[/ref] found that only 49 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds favored an “assault weapons” ban, compared to 55 percent of those aged 30 to 49 and 63 percent of those 65 or older. A March 6 Quinnipiac poll, taken several weeks after the Parkland shooting, found that only 46 percent of 18-to-34 year olds support an assault weapons ban, rising to 51 percent for those aged 35 to 49, 68 percent for those aged 50-to-64, and 80 percent for those over 65.

…Millennials who support the Second Amendment are themselves surprised at the pro-gun leanings of their peers. When an NPR reporter cited polling data indicating that young people tend to be skeptical of gun control, 19-year-old gun rights activist Abigail Kaye responded, “That’s surprising, because I feel like we’re a more progressive generation…We’ve grown up more, I think, with this kind of gun violence, so you’d think maybe we’d push for more regulations.”

No wonder she’s surprised. Contrary to the impression left by most of the press coverage, the gun control battle is being fought within generational cohorts, not just between them.

A slightly different picture than one might suppose given recent events.

Does Diversity Lead to Distrust?

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My article on the LDS Church and immigration should be out–hopefully by the end of the month–in the next issue of BYU Studies Quarterly. In it, I tackle five common objections to immigration:

  • Immigrants “steal” native jobs.
  • Immigrants depress native wages.
  • Immigrants undermine host country culture and institutions.
  • Immigrants are a fiscal burden and increase the welfare state.
  • Immigrants are criminals and terrorists.

But one objection that is gaining more steam is that diversity leads to distrust. This isn’t without some empirical backing (though this is likely unknown to most of those making the argument). According Bloomberg‘s Noah Smith, famed political scientist Robert Putnam found evidence over a decade ago that ethnic diversity via immigration leads to a decrease in trust (social capital).[ref]A later analysis of Putnam’s study found that it was only white people whose trust decreased.[/ref] Smith continues,

Image result for distrustPutnam isn’t alone in his finding — studies in Denmark, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Europe have found similar results.

But this doesn’t mean that it’s a scientific fact that diversity decreases trust. There are plenty of studies that don’t support Putnam’s conclusion — or even find the opposite. For example, another study in the UK found no correlation between diversity and trust, while a third found that the negative relationship disappears after controlling for economic variables. Another Europe-wide study found no correlation, while yet another found that diversity is actually associated with a long-term increase in trust.

A casual look at international survey measures will show that — as [Megan] McArdle notes — ethnic homogeneity is no guarantee of a trusting society. Among rich countries, Scandinavia is the most trusting region, but diverse, immigrant-friendly places like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore actually score higher than homogeneous, low-immigration countries like South Korea, Russia, Japan and Poland…What’s more, even if diversity does decrease trust, the effect might not be that strong. Economist Bryan Caplan examined Putnam’s research and found that even if the sociologist’s numbers are completely correct, huge changes in diversity would reduce measures of trust only by a few percent.

An economist would also note that aside from simply asking people survey questions, researchers should look at how people actually behave. Ethnic diversity in Southern California has been linked to lower crime and higher home values. Studies reliably find that immigration reduces crime in the U.S., and this also appears to be true in Canada. Meanwhile, recent evidence on migration patterns show that Americans have tended to move to diverse neighborhoods since around 1990 — voting with their feet rather than their survey answers.

Furthermore, there is “a theory that prolonged, positive contact with people of other races reduces racial tensions. This “contact hypothesis” has plenty of support in the literature — studies show that having college dorm-mates of a different race, or serving in an integrated military, reduces discrimination. This suggests that over the long term, diverse neighborhoods will have a positive impact on society-wide trust. A recent survey of 90 papers found…[that] an increase in diversity might initially cause people to avoid interacting with their strange new neighbors, [but] over the long term it makes them realize that people of other races aren’t so scary after all.” Elsewhere, Smith points to research that

seems to show that Americans are increasingly open to living in diverse neighborhoods. A 2016 paper by the National University of Singapore’s Kwan Ok Lee finds that since 1990, white flight and white avoidance of black neighborhoods has decreased dramatically. In fact, white Americans in recent decades have tended to move toward diversity rather than away from it.

Urban economist Joe Cortright, blogging at City Observatory, summarizes the results. Lee looks at U.S. Census tracts, neighborhoods that on average have about 4,000 residents. In addition to the racial makeup of neighborhoods, she was able to track where individuals moved to and from.

Lee’s first finding is that American neighborhoods are becoming more diverse. Majority-white neighborhoods were about two-thirds of the total from 1970 to 1990, but during the next two decades that number was only 57 percent. The probability of single-race neighborhoods becoming mixed increased substantially. Meanwhile, a small but growing number of neighborhoods have a substantial numbers of whites, blacks and Hispanics or Asians.

…From 1990 to 2010, only one-fifth of mixed black-white neighborhoods became segregated — only half the rate of re-segregation that prevailed in earlier decades. White flight is still happening in some places, but much less than before. Meanwhile, multiracial neighborhoods tend to be the most stable — once a neighborhood becomes multiracial, Lee found that it had a 90 percent chance of remaining that way for at least 20 years.

Lee’s final finding is the most striking. She found that once Americans move to a mixed-race neighborhood, they tend to either stay there, or move to another mixed neighborhood. This is true for both white and black Americans. In other words, neighborhood diversity isn’t just a result of changing demographics, but of Americans choosing to live near people of other races.

Lee’s finding confirms the results of other studies. Despite much alarm over gentrification, it turns out that gentrified neighborhoods don’t lose their poor and minority populations. According to a 2009 study by Columbia University urban planning professor Lance Freeman, gentrification actually tends to increase diversity in the long term.

What about at the state level? There, diversity is increasing as well. Demographer William H. Frey has chronicled how both whites and minorities have been moving to diverse states like Virginia, Nevada, North Carolina, Colorado, Georgia and Washington. Texas, a majority-minority state, is still a leading destination for white migration.

Residential diversity isn’t the only kind of integration, of course. On other measures, the evidence is mixed — interracial marriage has climbed dramatically, but public schools have become more segregated by race. Meanwhile, the average numbers described in studies like Lee’s and Freeman’s mask considerable white flight in some areas.

And the most important caveat is the political one. Fear of increasing diversity at the national level was strongly correlated with support for President Donald Trump. Even if a majority of Americans are embracing the country’s increasingly diverse demographics, a strong and vocal minority is resisting the change with every weapon at its disposal.

Regarding this last point, I write in my upcoming paper,

A particularly interesting aspect of public attitudes toward immigration is that of political ignorance. Multiple studies have shown that political ignorance is rampant among average voters, and this holds true when it comes to immigration policy. As legal scholar Ilya Somin explains, “Immigration restriction . . . is one that has long-standing associations with political ignorance. In both the United States and Europe, survey data suggest that it is strongly correlated with overestimation of the proportion of immigrants in the population, lack of sophistication in making judgments about the economic costs and benefits of immigration, and general xenophobic attitudes toward foreigners. By contrast, studies show that there is little correlation between opposition to immigration and exposure to labor market competition from recent immigrants.” One pair of economists found that those voting to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum, who were motivated largely by a desire to restrict immigration, “were overwhelmingly more likely to live in areas with very low levels of migration.” Similarly, voters who supported Donald Trump during the US election were more likely to oppose liberalizing immigration laws (even compared to other Republicans), but least likely to live in racially diverse neighborhoods. In short, both political ignorance and lack of interaction with foreigners tend to inflame anti-immigration sentiments. These sentiments are what George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan refers to as antiforeign bias: “a tendency to underestimate the economic benefits of interaction with foreigners.” In fact, economists take nearly the opposite view from the general public on immigration.

Does an Increase in the Minimum Wage Decrease Teen Employment?

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Image result for teenagers unemployed

Yes, according to previous research and according to a new working paper out of GMU’s Mercatus Center.[ref]Which has published other good work on the effects of the minimum wage.[/ref] The authors report,

First, we sought to understand the sources of the decline in teen employment that began around 2000—in particular, the decline in employment among those age 16–17—as well as, more generally, changes in teen employment and school enrollment behavior. Second, we wanted to explore the implications of these changes for human capital, given that the decline in employment consisted of fewer teens in school and employed, and more teens in school exclusively, suggesting a greater focus on schooling. We have considered three explanatory factors: (1) a rising minimum wage that could reduce employment opportunities for teens and potentially also increase the value of investing in schooling; (2) rising returns to schooling; and (3) increasing competition from immigrants that, like the minimum wage, could reduce employment opportunities but also raise the returns to human capital investment. 

With respect to the first question, we find some evidence of the expected effects of all three explanatory factors on teen employment and school enrollment—and in particular for those age 16–17. However, in terms of explaining changes in the behavior of teens age 16–17 since 2000, the role of the minimum wage is predominant. Increases in the returns to schooling appear to have played almost no role, and immigrant competition a minor role. In contrast, our simulation results suggest that minimum wages explain about a quarter of the shift, since 2000, from being simultaneously employed and enrolled in school to being exclusively enrolled in school.

Turning to the second question, our examination of the longer-term effects of these three factors uncovers no evidence that higher minimum wages, which underlie teens shifting from combining work and schooling to being in school exclusively, led to greater human capital investment. If anything, the evidence is in the other direction. Thus, it is more likely that the principal effect of higher minimum wages in the 2000s, in terms of human capital, was to reduce employment opportunities that could enhance labor market experience. Further, we find no evidence of net-positive human capital effects of rising returns to schooling or increased immigration in this period, even though these latter two factors—more so immigration—played at least a minor role in the changes in teen employment and school enrollment.

Based on this evidence, then, it appears that the changes in teen labor market and schooling behavior since 2000—stemming in part from adverse effects of minimum wages on employment opportunities, and to a lesser extent from immigration—did not reflect greater human capital investment that would raise future earnings. It is not clear that immigration delivered any other short-term benefits to teens. In contrast, some teens surely benefited directly in the short run from higher minimum wages. But there appear to have been either no effects or adverse effects on longer-run earnings for those exposed to these higher minimum wages as teenagers (pgs. 47-48).

New RAND Report: Gun Control

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From Vox,

RAND’s extensive report does not make any sweeping declarations about gun policy. It does, however, make clear that gun control research is very limited, calling on Congress to lift the NRA-backed funding freeze. It argues that this freeze has, by making it difficult to conduct better studies, led to a confusing empirical environment, where it’s easy for groups on both sides of the debate to cite shoddy work that supports their prior beliefs.

“The studies that have been done often reach opposite conclusions to each other,” Andrew Morral, the head of RAND’s gun policy initiative, told me. The lack of thorough research, he added, “creates this kind of fact-free environment in which people can cherry-pick any study that happens to support what their priors are on the effects of the law.”

Morral’s team spent two years reviewing US-based studies published over the past several decades, pulling out the most rigorous to try to find some “incontrovertible truths.” RAND concluded that, first and foremost, far more research is necessary. “Many of the matters that people disagree on when they disagree on gun policy have not been rigorously studied in ways that produce reasonably unambiguous results,” Morral said.

But there were some things that could be gleaned from the available evidence. While RAND as a nonpartisan group avoided any sweeping policy conclusions in its analysis, its review does seem to point in a direction, based on my own reading: More permissive gun policies lead to more gun deaths, while more restrictive policies lead to fewer gun deaths. Coupled with other evidence in this area, that supports the idea that more guns lead to more gun deaths.

A chart, based on RAND data, looking at the studied outcomes of different gun policies.

Vox summarizes,

On the gun control front, there’s moderate evidence that background checks reduce suicide and violent crime, limited evidence that prohibitions associated with mental illness reduce suicide, moderate evidence that those prohibitions reduce violent crime, and supportive evidence that child-access prevention laws reduce suicides and unintentional injuries and deaths.

Meanwhile, there’s limited evidence that concealed carry laws increase violent crime and unintentional injuries and deaths. And there’s moderate evidence that “stand your ground” laws — NRA-backed measures that expand when someone can use a gun or other weapons to defend himself — increase violent crime.

If you put this all together, it suggests that restrictive laws seem to lead to fewer gun deaths, while the permissive laws seem to lead to more gun deaths.

…The think tank found supportive evidence for child access prevention laws reducing suicide and unintentional injuries and deaths. And Morral agreed that the evidence is stronger on background checks and prohibitions associated with mental illness than other gun policies.

As for the correlation between gun availability and gun deaths, “RAND takes a more skeptical view. The report argued that it can be hard to disentangle the relationship between more guns and more gun deaths: Is it the abundance of guns leading to more gun deaths, or are people seeing a lot of violence in their communities and reacting to it by stocking up on guns to protect themselves? RAND concluded that there’s just not enough in the research it reviewed to solve this chicken-or-egg scenario.” In short, “more research is needed…Federal funding could go to surveys and on-the-ground research that could help address the gaps. The funding is something, however, that pro-gun groups like the NRA have worked against for years. And so far, their tactics have worked — keeping the federal freeze in place. So although there’s evidence that some gun control measures could work, we by and large remain blind to what specific solutions would work best and what all of their effects would be.”

Wright vs. Hart: Which Translation is Better?

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Translating the N. T. Wright and David Bentley Hart Tussle

I’m a big fan of both Anglican New Testament scholar N.T. Wright and Eastern Orthodox theologian David B. Hart and have read a number of books by both. A few years ago, Wright published his translation of the New Testament. Hart recently published his own translation through Yale University. And apparently, the two have been sparring over Hart’s translation. According to Christianity Today,

One notable scholar who does not appear to be particularly impressed by Hart’s translation is Wright, who is probably the closest thing current New Testament scholarship comes to having a celebrity. His review of Hart’s New Testament, published January 15 in The Christian Century, details a lengthy list of disagreements with Hart’s translation choices, and ends with the backhanded compliment that Hart’s translation is “as idiosyncratic as it is bold.”

Wright’s primary concern seems to be Hart’s understanding and use of language—both Greek and English. Hart claims his translation will in many parts be “an almost pitilessly literal translation,” intending to “make the original text visible through as thin a layer of translation as I can contrive to superimpose upon it.”

While Wright seems to respect what Hart is trying to accomplish, he nevertheless argues that instead of making the original text visible, Hart may actually be obscuring it by trying to render Greek syntax and idioms in English. “Greek and English, as Hart knows well, do not work the same way,” Wright argues. “… The strange English here has nothing to do with a cultural clash between the first Christians and ourselves.”

Hart didn’t waste any time in his response:

Hart’s rejoinder is, like Wright’s initial review, full of zingers and jabs and worth a full read. Hart grants Wright a few basic premises, then wades right into the details of Wright’s critique—meeting him point for point, and then some. Hart notes in the comments on the blog post that he was “annoyed … that Wright wrote any review at all … because he has a competing version out there [published in 2011], and it’s an old rule that one doesn’t write reviews—especially caustic reviews—of competing books.”

Hart characterizes Wright’s review as a “catalogue of complaints,” and thinks that Wright’s own work “suffers from a dangerous combination of the conventional and the idiosyncratic, with a few significant historical misconceptions mixed in … imposing meanings on the text that best conform to his own convictions, plausible or not.” Hart concludes one particular point about how to translate a noun in Greek that lacks an article by saying, “Here I am right and Wright is wrong,” but it would not be a stretch to say that this statement characterizes much of Hart’s response.

So what’s the heart of the issue? The article concludes,

Where Wright is trying to translate the Greek of the New Testament (replete with its Greco-Roman and Second Temple Jewish valences) into modern English, Hart instead is attempting to translate the Greek of the New Testament (in all of its original “mysteries and uncertainties and surprises”) in modern English.

For Hart, the focus is communicating the “strangeness” of the Greek words and phrases themselves, which occasionally requires dips into esoteric vocabulary in order to find just the right word and a willingness to forgo normal syntax in order to allow the “Greekness” to come through. By contrast, for Wright the focus is communicating the strangeness of what those Greek words were conveying, meaning removing as many barriers to receiving and understanding the difference between a first-century viewpoint and our contemporary one.

They are both aiming at very similar goals, but their methods are starkly different. They both want the original to shine through as much as possible, to give, as Wright puts it, “a first-hand … understanding of what the New Testament said in its own world.” For Hart, this means making English say things as “Greekly” as he can manage; for Wright, it means making English mean Greek things as much as he can.

The translations of both of these scholars are impressive achievements, and both deserve praise and appreciation for their careful and dedicated work to produce them. Neither is necessarily “better” or “more faithful” than the other; they are simply aimed at different things (as their acrimonious repartee displays). Likewise, as both scholars attest in their introductions, neither of these translations is intended nor fit for regular use in church or for devotion. Rather, they both serve as valuable and faithful opportunities to encounter the text of the Bible anew and afresh.[ref]Understanding these contrasting approaches may be useful to Mormons when it comes to Joseph Smith’s “translations” of the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, and the Bible.[/ref]

Read the whole thing.

How Skewed Is My Blogging?

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All Generalizations Are False

 

About a year ago, Monica had a post on liberal bias in the media. Drawing on this Business Insider article (amongst others),[ref]Nathaniel drew on the same data years earlier.[/ref] she pointed out that those “who work in newspapers and print media are almost exclusively liberal.”

 

Last month, Monica had a follow-up post in which she introduced MediaBiasFactCheck.com. Reading these posts piqued my interest in analyzing my own media consumption and, therefore, my own biases. So, in the name of transparency, I have combed through every single one of my blog posts here at Difficult Run. I checked every single link, ran that link by MediaBiasFactCheck, and properly categorized it.[ref]Here is the site’s methodology.[/ref] I then counted how many times a source was linked.

Now, as fun and insightful as this may be, it’s highly unscientific. Here’s why:

  • MediaBiasFactCheck.com is not a verified, academic source: It’s simply a useful internet tool with its own biases. For example, it labels the BioLogos Foundation–a Christian group established by Francis Collins, the former Director of the Human Genome Project–as “Conspiracy-Pseudoscience” because “they ascribe evolution to the hand and workings of God, which is not known or provable[.]” The problem with this label is that BioLogos isn’t doing science. It’s doing theology (which is why you have so many articles dedicated to scriptural interpretation by biblical scholars). Or, more accurately, it’s thinking about science theologically. If someone is citing it as a scientific source, they misunderstand the nature of the group.
  • Every link is counted equally: I could be trashing a Washington Post article, praising one by Vox, and having a good-natured debate with the National Review. The content could also be very different. One could be reporting a new scientific study, while the other provides an opinion on the current political climate. Doesn’t matter. Every link counts the same.
  • Not every link is registered at MediaBiasFactCheck.com: Several sources I link to multiple times were not included on the site. This ranges from institutions like the World Bank, academic centers like Greater Good Science Center, think-tanks like the Mercatus Center or the Center for Economic and Policy Research, or libertarian blogs like Bleeding-Heart Libertarians or Marginal Revolution. Not to mention the numerous studies I cite. The absence of these sources will obviously skew the results a bit.
  • Oft-cited sources tend to be a handful of authors: For example, the conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) makes it into my top 10 cited sources (see below). However, this consists of largely three authors: James Pethokoukis, Mark Perry, and W. Braford Wilcox. While not always the case with Reason, the bulk of my citations come from their science correspondent Ronald Bailey. This means a good chunk of the Reason citations are summaries of new scientific studies rather than libertarian screeds. Finally, some citations of partisan sources feature their token other partisan (e.g., Megan McArdle or Tyler Cowen in Bloomberg). So the partisanship of some sources may only be surface level.
  • Links/quotations are incestuous: I use a lot of quotes in my posts. These quotations are often self-referential. Washington Post articles link to other Washington Post articles. Same with the New York Times. Same with Reason. Even though I may be quoting only one article, those quotations may have five other links to the same source. And those links get counted (see above).
  • The Left/Right dichotomy is flawed: I read a lot of what would be considered libertarian material (e.g., Reason). Libertarians are often seen as conservatives, yet libertarians tend to oppose conservatives on issues like immigration, trade, same-sex marriage, drug laws, military intervention, etc. This makes the lumping of libertarian sources with “the Right” problematic.

So, after all those caveats, here is what my blogging at Difficult Run looks like:

List of Sources[ref]Only includes those registered at MediaBiasFactCheck.com.[/ref]

Left Bias

Left-Center Bias

Least Biased

Right-Center Bias

Right Bias

Extreme Right

Pro-Science

Conspiracy-Pseudoscience

 

Number of Citations by Partisanship

Extreme Left Bias Left Bias Left-Center Bias Least Bias Right-Center Bias Right Bias Extreme Right Bias Total Pro-Science Pseudoscience Total
0 114 454 269 284 120 4 1245 71 2 73
0% 9.2% 36.50% 21.61% 22.81% 9.64% 0.32% 97.30% 2.74%

If Left-Center, Least, and Right-Center are considered “Centrist,” then 80.88% of my links are Centrist with only 9.2% being Leftist and 10% being to the Right. However, if I consider Left-Center as part of the Left and Right-Center as part of the Right, then 45.62% of my links are Leftist, 21.61% are Centrist, and 32.77% are to the Right.

Top 10 Most Cited

  1. The New York Times (10%)
  2. The Washington Post (6.35%)
  3. Reason (6.02%)
  4. The Economist (5.54%)
  5. Brookings Institute (4.58%)
  6. National Bureau of Economic Research (4.34%)
  7. American Enterprise Institute (4.26%)
  8. Vox (3.45%)
  9. The Atlantic (3.37%; tie)
  10. The Wall Street Journal (3.37%; tie)

 

 

Overall, not a bad mix.

Does Government Stimulus Actually Stimulate?

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Image result for government spendingIn an interview in the Regional Economist, St. Louis Fed Assistant Vice President Bill Dupor lays out the competing views of economists:

According to one view, purchases by the government cause a chain reaction of spending. That is, when the government buys $1 worth of goods and services, people who receive that $1 will save some of the money and spend the rest, and so on. This theory suggests that the “government spending multiplier” is greater than 1, meaning that the government’s spending of $1 leads to an increase in gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $1.

The other view suggests that government spending may “crowd out” economic activity in the private sector. For example, government spending might be used to hire workers who would otherwise be employed in the private sector. As another example, if the government pays for its purchases by issuing debt, that debt could lead to a reduction in private investment (due to an increase in interest rates). In this case, the $1 increase in government spending leads to an increase in GDP of less than $1 because of the decline in private investment. Therefore, the government spending multiplier is less than 1.

His own research

examined the impact of defense spending on the U.S. economy in the post-World War II period. Our results suggest that the multiplier is less than 1, meaning that the government spending causes some crowding out of private economic activity. In particular, we found that an additional $1 in defense spending leads to a reduction of about 50 cents from some other part of the economy.

He also “studied the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, with a primary focus on employment. My general finding is that the government was able to create jobs but at a fairly expensive cost. For example, in one study I worked on, I found that creating a job lasting one year cost the government about $100,000, whereas the median compensation for a U.S. worker was roughly $40,000.” In short, “government spending does not seem to be a very cost-effective way to stimulate the economy and create jobs. However, economists have a lot more to learn on this topic.”

Doing Business 2018

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The World Bank’s latest Doing Business report is out (check out last year’s). The report “measures regulations affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures labor market regulation, which is not included in this year’s ranking.”

Its main findings:

  • Brunei Darussalam, Thailand, Malawi, Kosovo, India, Uzbekistan, Zambia, Nigeria,  Djibouti and El Salvador were the most improved economies in 2016/17 in areas tracked by Doing Business. Together, these 10 top improvers implemented 53 regulatory reforms making it easier to do business.
  • Economies in all regions are implementing reforms easing the process of doing business, but Europe and Central Asia continues to be the region with the highest share of economies implementing at least one reform—79% of economies in the region have implemented at least one business regulatory reform, followed by South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • The report features four case studies in the areas of starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering property and resolving insolvency, as well as an annex on labor market regulation. See all case studies.

The report finds that

one of the mechanisms through which business regulation can impact employment directly is the simplification of business start-up regulations. Across economies there is a significant positive association between employment growth and the distance to frontier score (figure 1.5).[ref]”Doing Business measures many different dimensions of business regulation. To combine measures with different units such as the number of days to obtain a construction permit and the number of procedures to start a business into a single score, Doing Business computes the distance to frontier score. The distance to frontier score captures the gap between an economy’s current performance and the best practice across the entire sample of 41 indicators across 10 Doing Business indicator sets. For example, according to the Doing Business database across all economies and over time, the least time to start a business is 0.5 days while in the worst 5% of cases it takes more than 100 days to incorporate a company. Half a day is, therefore, considered the frontier of best performance, while 100 days is the worst. Higher distance to frontier scores show absolute better ease of doing business (as the frontier is set at 100 percentage points), while lower scores show absolute poorer ease of doing business (the worst performance is set at 0 percentage points). The percentage point distance to frontier scores of an economy on different indicators are averaged to obtain an overall distance to frontier score” (pg. 5).[/ref]While this result shows an association, and cannot be interpreted in a causal fashion, it is reassuring to see that economies with better business regulation, as measured by Doing Business, also tend to be the economies that are creating more job opportunities. When it comes to unemployment, the expected opposite result is evident. Economies with less streamlined business regulation are those with higher levels of unemployment on average. In fact, a one-point improvement in the distance to frontier score is associated with a 0.02 percentage point decline in unemployment growth rate.

…The data support this interpretation as there is a strong association between inequality, poverty and business regulation. In fact, economies with better business regulation have lower levels of poverty on average. Indeed, a 10 percentage point improvement in the distance to frontier is associated with a 2 percentage point reduction in the poverty rate, measured as the percentage of people earning less than $1.90 a day. Fragility is also a factor linked to poverty. However, even fragile economies can improve in areas that ultimately reduce poverty levels (pg. 7-8).

Check out the full report.