Politics – Page 4 – Difficult Run

Stuff I Say at School – Part XII: The ‘Why’ of Political Ignorance

May 23, 2019 by Walker

This is part of the Stuff I Say at School series.

The Assignment

A critical literature review of political ignorance among the public. This section summarizes the scholarly explanations for the lack of political knowledge among the average citizen.

The Stuff I Said

Though political ignorance is rampant among American citizens, scholars are quick to distinguish between ignorance and stupidity. Despite rising educational attainment and IQ scores, political knowledge among the general public has remained largely stagnant since the 1930s.[ref]Ilya Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, 2nd ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), 21, 73.[/ref] In fact, Somin determines (in agreement with previous economic theories of democracy) that most political ignorance is rational.[ref]Ibid., Ch. 3. Brennan follows suit. See Against Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), Ch. 2.[/ref] Political knowledge is costly in time and effort with little payoff in terms of political influence. At best, an American voter has a 1-in-10 million chance of changing the outcome of a presidential election. This optimistic number occurs only within a few swing states and only if the voter votes for one of the candidates in the two major parties. On average, however, the chance is 1-in-60 million.[ref]Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, Aaron Edlin, “What is the Probability Your Vote Will Make a Difference?” Economic Inquiry 50:2 (2012): 321-326.[/ref] Numbers improve when it comes to U.S. Congressional elections (1-in-89,000) and state legislator elections (1-in-15,000), but the probability of changing the outcome still remains insanely low.[ref]Casey B. Mulligan, Charles G. Hunter, “The Empirical Frequency of a Pivotal Vote,” Public Choice 116:1-2 (2003): 31-54.[/ref] Brennan argues that, from a strictly mathematical standpoint, the disutility of merely driving to the polls (i.e., the probability and cost of getting into an auto accident) is higher than the utility of the vote cast upon arrival.[ref]Jason Brennan, The Ethics of Voting (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 19-20.[/ref] Given these hard data, political ignorance appears to be a rational trade-off. As Somin puts it, “Even a 100 percent altruistic person—someone who always chooses to prioritize the welfare of others over his own whenever the two conflict—would not rationally devote much of his time to acquiring political information for the sake of casting an informed vote. No matter how great the benefits to others of a “correct” electoral outcome, the altruist’s ballot has almost no chance of bringing it about; in a large electorate the change that his vote will be decisive is vanishingly small.”[ref]Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, 77.[/ref]

Caplan’s explanation for voter ignorance extends beyond rational ignorance to what he calls rational irrationality: “Since delusional political beliefs are free, the voter consumes until he reaches his “satiation point,” believing whatever makes him feel best. When a person puts on his voting hat, he does not have to give up practical efficacy in exchange for self-image, because he has no practical efficacy to give up in the first place.”[ref]Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 132 (italics original).[/ref] Not only does the acquisition of political knowledge provide a low return on investment, but irrationality can provide self-satisfaction at virtually no cost. This makes the choice to be seemingly irrational when it comes to politics understandable and arguably—if paradoxically—rational.

Image result for the case against education

Caplan elsewhere provides another likely explanation for voter ignorance: poor information retention. Drawing on literature in educational psychology, Caplan finds the “transfer of learning” in our educational systems to be less than impressive. Most students are unable to retain or apply their newfound methodological reasoning outside of the classroom and can usually only do so within the classroom after being instructed to apply a particular principle to their problem-solving.[ref]Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 51-59.[/ref] “Telling subjects to use a principle is not transfer,” says psychologist Douglas Detterman. “It is following instructions.”[ref]Ibid., 51.[/ref] This insight complements the rational ignorance theory by demonstrating the difficult and costly nature of true education. This lack of transfer in learning shows up in various surveys of American adults who typically received public K-12 education:

The American Revolution Center tested 1,001 adult Americans’ knowledge of the American Revolution. Eighty-three percent earned failing grades. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute tested over 2,500 adult Americans’ knowledge of American government and American history. Seventy-one percent earned failing grades. Newsweek magazine gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. Citizenship Test. Thirty-eight percent scored too low to become citizens of their own country. On the 2000 American National Election Study, the typical person got 48% of the factual questions right; you would expect 28% by guessing…How many American adults know the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution? The American Revolution Center reports a dismal 57%, but the truth is far worse. Since there were only four response options, you would expect roughly 25% of the ignorant to guess the right answer by chance…Not knowing the three branches of government isn’t like not knowing Hamlet; it’s like not knowing the letter “h.” If you don’t know that the Civil War came after the Declaration of Independence, you don’t understand American history. If you don’t know which parties control the House and the Senate, you don’t understand American politics.[ref]Ibid., 44.[/ref]

Ian Anson of the University of Maryland introduces a more disturbing angle on the persistence of voter ignorance. In a 2018 study, Anson points to what is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect: “[a] widely cited phenomenon in social psychology [that] holds that individuals with low levels of competence will judge themselves to be more competent than they really are, while those with high levels of competence will underestimate their excellence.”[ref]Ian G. Anson, “Partisanship, Political Knowledge, and the Dunning-Kruger Effect,” Political Psychology 39:5 (2018): 1173.[/ref] This overestimation of one’s abilities and/or knowledge “affect[s] the ability of low achievers to overcome their incompetence because they are unaware that they lag behind others until their objective performance is measured and reported to them.”[ref]Ibid.: 1174.[/ref] After surveying two groups (a total of 2,606 American adults) on political knowledge, Anson had participants evaluate their performance after priming them with partisan cues. The results showed that the worst performers (i.e., the most politically ignorant) were more likely to overestimate their performance. What’s worse, this overconfidence was exacerbated by partisanship. “This result is normatively worrying from the perspective of citizens’ ability to self-correct,” writes Anson, “as it may be that rationally ignorant Americans are especially confident that they are better informed than many of their (partisan) peers. The rationally ignorant fail to overcome their ignorance not just because they face steep costs and lack incentives to improve, but because they are unaware that they are relatively ignorant. They become increasingly hardened to the possibility that they are uninformed when partisan identities are activated, a commonplace feature of most contemporary political discussion.”[ref]Ibid.: 1187.[/ref] Anson’s findings are bolstered by a recent study, which found that (1) “people choose to hear from those who are politically like-minded on topics that have nothing to do with politics…in preference to those with greater expertise on the topic but have different political views,” (2) “all else being equal, people are more influenced by politically like-minded others on nonpolitical issues,” and (3) “people are biased to believe that others who share their political opinions are better at tasks that have nothing to do with politics, even when they have all information they need to make an accurate assessment about who is the expert in the room.”[ref]Joseph Marks, Eloise Copland, Eleanor Loh, Cass R. Sunstein, Tali Sharot, “Epistemic Spillovers: Learning Others’ Political Views Reduces the Ability to Assess and Use Their Expertise in Nonpolitical Domains,” Cognition (forthcoming), 10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.10.003.[/ref] This partisan selection process lowers the quality of the obtained information, further inflaming voter tendency toward ignorance and misinformation. Most scholars adhere to a theory of rational ignorance among voters: due to the poor incentives provided by a democratic system, most citizens determine that the costs of political knowledge (including the difficulty of making it stick) outweigh its benefits. Furthermore, the poorly informed suffer from “the double burden of incompetence”[ref]Anson, “Partisanship, Political Knowledge, and the Dunning-Kruger Effect,” 1187.[/ref] due to ignorance of their own ignorance, making change unlikely.

Stuff I Say at School – Part XI: The Extent of Political Ignorance

June 8, 2019May 22, 2019 by Walker

This is part of the Stuff I Say at School series.

The Assignment

A critical literature review of political ignorance among the public. This section specifically explores the academic literature on the extent of political ignorance, demonstrating that Americans know very little when it comes to politics and policy.

The Stuff I Said

What makes this particular skit humorous is how much it reflects reality. According to political scientists Christopher Achens and Larry Bartels, there is a “folk theory” of democracy that is widespread in American culture. This theory paints average citizens as engaged, well-informed participants in the political process, deliberating policies and selecting leaders who represent their well-reasoned preferences. “Unfortunately,” write Achens and Bartels, “while the folk theory of democracy has flourished as an ideal, its credibility has been severely undercut by a growing body of scientific evidence…That evidence demonstrates that the great majority of citizens pay little attention to politics.”[ref]Christopher H. Achen, Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 1.[/ref]

Image result for michael delli carpini and scott keeter

Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter have defined political knowledge as “the range of factual information about politics that is stored in long-term memory.”[ref]Michael Delli Carpini, Scott Keeter, What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 10.[/ref] Most of the surveys on which claims about political knowledge are based consist of recall questions, which “are designed to measure whether or not a person has selected declarative memory.”[ref]Arthur Lupia, Uninformed: Why People Know So Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 191.[/ref] Drawing on Carpini and Keeter’s work, Achens and Bartels display the ignorance of the typical American on these kinds of questions. For example, in 1952, “only 44% of Americans could name at least one branch of government. In 1972, only 22% knew something about Watergate. In 1985, only 59% knew whether their own state’s governor was a Democrat or a Republican. In 1986, only 49% knew which one nation in the world had used nuclear weapons.”[ref]Achens & Bartels, Democracy for Realists, 35.[/ref] Recent survey evidence continues to support these findings. A 2018 poll found that 67% of Americans cannot name all three branches of government. Another poll found that a sizeable minority (39%) of Americans think or are not sure if low GDP is better for the country than high GDP. The Woodrow Wilson Foundation recently found that only 1-in-3 Americans can pass the U.S. Citizenship Test, with less than half the population of all but one state (Vermont) being able to pass it. A 2014 Barna survey found that 84% of Americans are unaware that extreme poverty worldwide has decreased by more than half in the past three decades. Sixty-seven percent said they thought global poverty was actually increasing during that time. Similarly, a 2016 study found that only 8% of Americans believe extreme global poverty has decreased in the last 20 years.[ref]Martijn Lampert, Panos Papadongonas, Towards 2030 Without Poverty: Increasing Knowledge of Progress Made and Opportunities for Engaging Frontrunners in the World Population with the Global Goals (Amsterdam: Glocalities, 2016), 8.[/ref] (A 2017 study placed the percentage slightly higher at fifteen.) The late statistician Hans Rosling often tested his audience’s knowledge of the state of the world. Overall, he found that only 5% of Americans could answer a multiple-choice question about global poverty correctly: worse than chimpanzees picking at random.[ref]Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (New York: Flatiron Books, 2018), 6-9.[/ref] This ignorance not only extends to basic facts about government, politics, and the economy, but to party makeup as well. A 2018 study found that “Republicans, Democrats, and independents, all overestimate the share of party-stereotypical groups in both the major parties.”[ref]Douglas J. Ahler, Gaurav Sood, “The Parties in Our Heads: Misperceptions about Party Composition and Their Consequences,” The Journal of Politics 80:3 (2018): 979.[/ref] For example, respondents thought 39.3% of Democrats belonged to a labor union (actual: 10.5%), 38.2% of Republicans earned over $250,000 a year (actual: 2.2%), and 31.7% of Democrats were gay, lesbian, or bisexual (actual: 6.3%).[ref]Ibid.: 966.[/ref]

Georgetown political philosopher Jason Brennan divides the spread of political knowledge into four quartiles: “the top 25 percent of voters are well informed, the next 25 percent are badly informed, the next 25 percent are know-nothings, and bottom 25 percent are systematically misinformed.”[ref]Jason Brennan, Against Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 188.[/ref] According to data from the 1992 American National Election Studies, “93.4 percent of people in the top quartile, but only 13.1 percent of people in the bottom quartile, know that Republicans tend to be more conservative than Democrats. Among people in the lowest knowledge quartile, only 12.2 percent and 9.7 percent knew which party controlled the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively. The bottom 25 percent of citizens does worse than a coin flip when it comes to political knowledge—they are systematically in error.”[ref]Jason Brennan, The Ethics of Voting (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 164.[/ref] When it comes to the demographics of these quartiles, political knowledge within the U.S.

is strongly positively correlated with having a college degree, but negatively correlated with having a high school diploma or less. It is positively correlated with being in the top half of income earners, but negatively correlated with being in the bottom half. It is strongly positively correlated with being in the top quarter of income earners, and strongly negatively correlated with being in the bottom quarter. It is positively correlated with living in the western United States, and negatively correlated with living in the South. Political knowledge is positively correlated with being or leaning Republican, but negatively correlated with being a Democrat or leaning independent. It is positively correlated with being between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-four, but negatively correlated with other ages. It is negatively correlated with being black, and strongly negatively correlated with being female.[ref]Brennan, Against Democracy, 33.[/ref]

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Legal scholar Ilya Somin’s work scours both the academic literature as well as a sweeping array of public surveys, including (but not limited to) the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, Pew Research Center, Bloomberg, Public Policy Research Institute, Reason-Rupe, and American National Election Studies. Voter ignorance is not merely in regards to “specific policy issues but about the basic structure of government and how it operates.”[ref]Ilya Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, 2^nd ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), 20.[/ref] He concludes, “Extensive evidence suggests that most Americans have little political knowledge. That ignorance covers knowledge of specific issues, knowledge of political leaders and parties, and knowledge of political institutions. The evidence extends to many of the crucial issues at stake in recent elections from 2000 to 2014. Moreover, much of the widespread ignorance relate to fairly basic issues about the politicians, parties, issues, and the structure of politics.”[ref]Ibid., 46.[/ref]

Relying on the 1996 Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy (SAEE), GMU economist Bryan Caplan compares (1) the average belief of the general public on economic issues, (2) the average belief of Ph.D. economists, and (3) the estimated belief of a category Caplan labels the Enlightened Public. This latter category is the result of Caplan testing for both “self-serving” and “ideological” bias among economists by controlling for family income, job security, race, gender, age, and income growth. The Enlightened Public essentially are the answers to the questions “What would the average person believe if he had a Ph.D. in economics?” or “What would Ph.D. economists believe if their finances and political ideology matched those of the average person?”[ref]Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 55.[/ref] Caplan discovers that the answers of economists/Enlightened Public differ greatly from the general public on most economic issues. For example, the general public is far more concerned about the supposed negative economic effects of taxes, foreign aid, immigration, business tax breaks, the number of people on welfare, affirmative action, business profits, executive compensation, technology in the workplace, job outsourcing, and corporate downsizing.[ref]Ibid., Ch. 3.[/ref] Caplan’s controls and comparisons indicate that (1) economic information and education changes one’s views about economic issues and (2) the general public is lacking in these qualifications. This gap between economists and the general public is further confirmed by a 2013 study by Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales.[ref]Paola Sapienza, Luigi Zingales, “Economic Experts versus Average Americans,” American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 103:3 (2013): 636-642.[/ref] Drawing on the Economic Expert Panel (EEP) and Financial Trust Index (FTI)—both from the University of Chicago—the researchers find that, “[o]n average, the percentage of agreement with a statement differs 35 percentage points between the two groups.”[ref]Ibid.: 637.[/ref]

Despite the strong consensus on the typical American’s political ignorance, Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan is skeptical of the explanatory power of these survey data. He argues that in many cases, it is “not demonstrate[d] that recalling the items on [the] survey is a necessary condition for achieving high-value social outcomes”[ref]Lupia, Uninformed, 204.[/ref] and, therefore, not a good standard for measuring relevant political knowledge. He also questions the legitimacy of the American National Election Studies, showing that obviously correct answers were sometimes marked as incorrect due to an overly-rigid grading system.[ref]Ibid., 206-212.[/ref] Finally, he notes that “decades of surveys and experiments provide evidence that “don’t know” responses are mixtures of several factors. Ignorance is one such factor. Low motivation, personality, and gender also affect responses.”[ref]Ibid., 216.[/ref] However, Achens and Bartels point out that “insufficient motivation is endemic to mass politics, not an artifact of opinion surveys[.]”[ref]Achens & Bartels, Democracy for Realists, 37.[/ref] Furthermore, they hold Lupia’s feet to the fire for the vagueness of statements like “high-quality decisions” or “high-value social outcomes.”[ref]Ibid., 72-78.[/ref] Uninformed voters are supposedly capable of these things, yet Lupia provides no concrete examples. Brennan also argues that public polls actually overstate how much Americans really know about politics and policy. The first reason is because these polls “usually take the form of a multiple-choice test. When many citizens do not know the answer to a question, they guess. Some of them get lucky, and the surveys mark them as knowledgeable.” These polls “count a citizen as knowledgeable if they know that we spend more on social security than defense, but they typically don’t check if they know how much more we spend.” Finally, these questions are about “easily verifiable facts…While most voting Americans cannot answer such questions, these questions do not require specialized social scientific knowledge.”[ref]Jason Brennan, Against Democracy, 28.[/ref] Unfortunately, greater question complexity is associated with greater ignorance. According to Carpini and Keeter, “as the amount of detail requested increases and as less visible institutions or processes are asked about, the percentage of the public able to correctly answer questions declines.”[ref]Carpini & Keeter, What Americans Know, 72.[/ref]

In sum, the scholarly consensus appears to recognize that the average American citizen knows very little about the major players, institutions, and processes of their government. What’s more, there is a significant gap between expert views on policy-related issues and that of the average American.

Stuff I Say at School – Part VIII: The Impact of Openness

May 1, 2019 by Walker

This is part of the Stuff I Say at School series.

The Assignment

1. Do you feel that a country can thrive in an insular or isolated capacity? Is exchanges needed for a country to be successful? Do you see any examples of countries who have been reluctant to adopt new ideologies or integration?
2. What did we learn from the Columbian exchange that would be applicable to modern day society?

The Stuff I Said

1. While I think a country can thrive to some extent in isolation depending on a number of factors, it will not thrive as much as it could have had it been integrated into a larger exchange network. An extreme historical case is Tasmania: when the island was cut off from the mainland by rising sea levels, the population not only failed to progress, but actually regressed. Anthropologist Joseph Henrich surveyed the archaeological evidence and found that the isolation caused Tasmanians to lose a number of skills and technologies they had once possessed, including bone tools, cold-weather clothing, nets, fishing spears, barbed spears, etc. Even their canoeing skills and technologies worsened. Beyond comparative advantage, trade leads to innovation (what author Matt Ridley calls “ideas having sex”). And it is innovation–technological innovation in particular–that truly transforms standards of living.

Protectionism and isolationism have had a bit of a global resurgence lately, but these positions fly in the face of the expert consensus as far as economic welfare is concerned (check out the survey data on tariffs at the bottom of the post). This populist backlash to globalization led to a string of recent academic books empirically and philosophically defending economic openness:

2. I’ll rely on Nobel laureate Angus Deaton for the next question:

The historian Ian Morris has described how increased trade around the second century CE merged previously separate disease pools that, since the beginning of agriculture, had evolved in the West, South Asia, and East Asia, “as if they were on different planets.” Catastrophic plagues broke out in China and in the eastern outposts of the Roman Empire. The Columbian exchange after 1492 is an even better-known example. Many historical epidemics started from new trade routes or new conquests.
…Yet globalization also opens its routes to the enemies of disease. We have already seen how the germ theory of disease–a set of ideas and practices developed in the North–spread rapidly to the rest of the world after 1945. Knowledge about drugs to control high blood pressure spread rapidly across the world after 1970, producing…synchronized declines in mortality…That cigarette smoking caused cancer did not have to be rediscovered country by country. While the origins of HIV/AIDS are in dispute, there is no dispute about its rapid spread from one continent to another. The scientific response–the discovery of the virus, the deduction of its means of transmission, and the development of chemotherapy that is transforming the disease from a fatal to a chronic condition–was extraordinarily rapid by historical standards, although hardly rapid enough for the millions who died as they waited. Today’s understanding of the disease, although still incomplete, has underpinned the response–not just in the rich world–and in the worst affected African countries rates of new infection have fallen in the past few years, and life expectancy is beginning to rise again (The Great Escape, pg. 150-151).

From Gregory Mankiw’s *Principles of Economics*, 7th ed. (pg. 32).

From the IGM Economic Experts Panel, University of Chicago

Stuff I Say at School – Part VII: The Importance of Institutions

April 30, 2019 by Walker

This is part of the Stuff I Say at School series.

Summary & Commentary on Week’s Readings

Acemoglu et al argue that inefficient institutions persist for a number of major reasons. First, the lack of third-party enforcement of commitments prevents elites from relinquishing their monopoly on political power. Furthermore, the beneficiaries of the economic status quo are usually unwilling to risk their economic welfare through competition. This leads them to promote protectionism and further engage in rent-seeking activities. Institutions that encourage these kinds of activities fail to grow. We see this kind of conflict manifest in various areas of the economy, from labor and financial markets to regulations in pricing. The more institutions concentrate political power in the hands of the few, the more incentives are warped and distort paths to economic growth.

In their book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson distinguish between inclusive and extractive institutions, with the former creating the conditions for prosperity. “Inclusive economic institutions,” they write,

…are those that allow and encourage participants by the great mass of people in economic activities that make best use of their talents and skills and that enable individuals to make the choices they wish. To be inclusive, economic institutions must feature secure private property, an unbiased system of law, and a provision of public services that provides a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract; it also must permit the entry of new business and allow people to choose their careers…Inclusive economic institutions foster economic activity, productivity growth, and economic prosperity (pg. 74-75).

On the other hand, extractive economic institutions lack these properties and instead “extract incomes and wealth from one subset of society to benefit a different subset,” empowering the few at the expense of the many (pg. 76).

The importance of getting institutions right is highlighted by Rodrik and Subramanian’s study. Three theoretical culprits have been blamed for the vast income inequality between countries: (1) geography, (2) integration (globalization, international trade), and (3) institutions. Regression analyses indicate that institutions trump all other explanations. This is also shown from the outset of Acemoglu and Robinson’s Why Nations Fail, in their story of Nogales, Arizona (United States of America) and Nogales, Sonora, (Mexico). Acemoglu and Robinson lay out their archetype story of two towns with the same essential culture, geography, and relative free trade (NAFTA), in most ways they are the same place. The only reason they are two towns is an institutional barrier between two separate countries. Yet one is rich and one is poor because of institutions. The direct effects of geography are weak at best, while there were no direct effects from integration. However, there were indirect effects of integration: institutions have significant, positive effects on integration, while integration has a positive impact on institutions. This, in some sense, creates a virtuous, growth-enhancing cycle. Rodrik and Subramanian point out that the institutional factors emphasized the most have largely been market-oriented (e.g., property rights, enforceable contracts). Yet, factors such as regulation, financial stabilization, and social insurance also matter in getting institutions right.

The interaction between political and economic institutions is an important insight. For example, even though most research finds that seemingly liberal political institutions like democracy have no direct impact on economic growth, more recent evidence from Acemoglu and colleagues suggests that they may in fact contribute to growth. What’s more, the evidence strongly suggests that economic openness—particularly international trade—contributes to growth.[ref]David N. Weil, Economic Growth, 3rd ed. (New York: Pearson, 2013), Ch. 11.[/ref] A 2010 study used data from 131 developed and developing countries and found that reductions in trade protections led to higher levels of income per capita. A World Bank study found that between 1950 and 1998, “countries that liberalized their trade regimes experienced average annual growth rates that were about 1.5 percentage points higher than before liberalization. Postliberalization investment rates rose 1.5-2.0 percentage points, confirming past findings that liberalization fosters growth in part through its effect on physical capital accumulation…Trade-centered reforms thus have significant effects on economic growth within countries” (pg. 212). A 2016 IMF paper found that trade liberalization boosts productivity through increased competition and greater variety and quality of inputs. All this suggests that Sachs and Warner were correct when they found “that open policies together with other correlated policies were sufficient for growth in excess of 2 percent during 1970-89” (pg. 45; fn. 61). Their findings also suggest “that property rights, freedom, and safety from violence are additional determinants of growth” (pg. 50). Acemoglu and Robinson in a 2005 paper found “robust evidence that property rights institutions have a major influence on long-run economic growth, investment, and financial development, while contracting institutions appear to affect the form of financial intermediation but have a more limited impact on growth, investment, and the total amount of credit in the economy” (pg. 988).

In short, inclusive institutions are necessary to fully reap the benefits of an open economy.

Is Student Loan Forgiveness for the Marginalized?

April 29, 2019April 29, 2019 by Walker

I saw this floating around Facebook recently with the news of Elizabeth Warren’s student loan plan. For those unfamiliar with what Mayfield is referencing, here’s the entry from the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary:

As another Bible dictionary clarifies, “Though Leviticus 25 does not explicitly discuss debt cancellation, the return of an Israelite to his land plus the release of slaves implies the cancellation of debts that led to slavery or the loss of land.”

So does Warren’s plan benefit “the marginalized”?

According to Adam Looney at the Brookings Institution, Warren’s proposal is “regressive, expensive, and full of uncertainties…[T]he top 20 percent of households receive about 27 percent of all annual savings, and the top 40 percent about 66 percent. The bottom 20 percent of borrowers by income get only 4 percent of the savings. Borrowers with advanced degrees represent 27 percent of borrowers, but would claim 37 percent of the annual benefit.”

He continues,

Debt relief for student loan borrowers, of course, only benefits those who have gone to college, and those who have gone to college generally fare much better in our economy than those who don’t. So any student-loan debt relief proposal needs first to confront a simple question: Why are those who went to college more deserving of aid than those who didn’t? More than 90 percent of children from the highest-income families have attended college by age 22 versus 35 percent from the lowest-income families. Workers with bachelor’s degrees earn about $500,000 more over the course of their careers than individuals with high school diplomas. That’s why about 50 percent of all student debt is owed by borrowers in the top quartile of the income distribution and only 10 percent owed by the bottom 25 percent. Indeed, the majority of all student debt is owed by borrowers with graduate degrees.

Drawing on 2016 data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, Looney’s final analysis

shows that low-income borrowers save about $569 in annual payments under the proposal, compared to $900 in the top 10 percent and $2,653 in the 80^th to 90^th percentiles. Examining the distribution of benefits, top-quintile households receive about 27 percent of all annual savings, and the top 40 percent about 66 percent. The bottom 20 percent of borrowers by income get 4 percent of the savings…[W]hile households headed by individuals with advanced degrees represent only 27 percent of student borrowers, they would claim 37 percent of the annual savings. White-collar workers claim roughly half of all savings from the proposal. While the Survey of Consumer Finances does not publish detailed occupational classification data, the occupational group receiving the largest average (and total) amount of loan forgiveness is the category that includes lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects, managers, and executives. Non-working borrowers are, by and large, already insured against having to make payments through income-based repayment or forbearances; most have already suspended their loan payments. While debt relief may improve their future finances or provide peace of mind, it doesn’t offer these borrowers much more relief than that available today.

The Urban Institute’s analysis has similar findings (though their tone is more optimistic):

I’m not sure whether or not Warren’s plan is a good one (I’m skeptical, especially given some of the results abroad). But I’m not big on acting like college graduates in a rich country are the marginalized of society.

Is Contract Enforcement Important for Firm Productivity?

April 13, 2019 by Walker

Contract enforcement is a major player in measuring the ease of doing business in a country. A new working paper demonstrates the importance of enforceable contracts to firm productivity:

In Boehm and Oberfield (2018) we study the use of intermediate inputs (materials) by manufacturing plants in India and link the patterns we find to a major institutional failure: the long delays that petitioners face when trying to enforce contracts in a court of justice. India has long struggled with the sluggishness of its judicial system. Since the 1950’s, the Law Commission of India has repeatedly highlighted the enormous backlogs and suggested policies to alleviate the problem, but with little success. Some of these delays make international headlines, such as in 2010, when eight executives were convicted in the first instance for culpability in the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster. One of them had already passed away, and the other seven appealed the conviction (Financial Times 2010)

These delays are not only a social problem, but also an economic problem. When enforcement is weak, firms may choose to purchase from suppliers that they trust (relatives, or long-standing business partners), or avoid purchasing the inputs altogether such as by vertically integrating and making the components themselves, or by switching to a different production process. These decisions can be costly. Components that are tailored specifically to the buyer (‘relationship-specific’ intermediate inputs) are more prone to hold-up problems, and are therefore more dependent on formal court enforcement.

…Our results suggest that courts may be important in shaping aggregate productivity. For each state we ask how much aggregate productivity of the manufacturing sector would rise if court congestion were reduced to be in line with the least congested state. On average across states, the boost to productivity is roughly 5%, and the gains for the states with the most congested courts are roughly 10% (Figure 3).

Are Immigrants a Threat?

April 5, 2019 by Walker

From a new working paper:

The empirical evidence comes down decidedly on the side of immigrants being less likely to commit crimes. A large body of empirical research concludes that immigrants are less likely than similar US natives to commit crimes, and the incarceration rate is lower among the foreign-born than among the native-born (see, for example, Butcher and Piehl 1998a, 1998b, 2007; Hagan and Palloni 1999; Rumbaut et al. 2006). Among men ages 18 to 39—prime ages for engaging in criminal behavior—the incarceration rate among immigrants is one-fourth the rate among US natives (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2015).
…There is some evidence that the lower propensity of immigrants to commit crimes does not carry over to immigrants’ children. The US-born children of immigrants—often called the “second generation”— appear to engage in criminal behavior at rates similar to other US natives (Bersani 2014a, 2014b). This 4 “downward assimilation” may be surprising, since the second generation tends to considerably outperform their immigrant parents in terms of education and labor-market outcomes and therefore might be expected to have even lower rates of criminal behavior (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2015). Instead, immigrants’ children are much like their peers in terms of criminal behavior. This evidence mirrors findings that the immigrant advantage over US natives in terms of health tends to not carry over to the second generation (e.g., Acevedo-Garcia et al. 2010).
Although immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than similar US natives, they are disproportionately male and relatively young—characteristics associated with crime. Does this difference in demographic composition mean that the average immigrant is more likely than the average US native to commit crimes? Studies comparing immigrants’ and US natives’ criminal behavior and incarceration rates tend to focus on relatively young men, leaving the broader question unanswered. However, indirect evidence is available from looking at the relationship between immigration and crime rates. If the average immigrant is more likely than the average US native to commit crimes, areas with more immigrants should have higher crime rates than areas with fewer immigrants. The evidence here is clear: crime rates are no higher, and are perhaps lower, in areas with more immigrants. An extensive body of research examines how changes in the foreign-born share of the population affect changes in crime rates. Focusing on changes allows researchers to control for unobservable differences across areas. The finding of either a null relationship or a small negative relationship holds in raw comparisons, in studies that control for other variables that could underlie the results from raw comparisons, and in studies that use instrumental variables to identify immigrant inflows that are independent of factors that also affect crime rates, such as underlying economic conditions (see, for example, Butcher and Piehl 1998b; Lee, Martinez, and Rosenfeld 2001; Reid et al. 2005; Graif and Sampson 2009; Ousey and Kubrin 2009; Stowell et al. 2009; Wadsworth 2010; MacDonald, Hipp, and Gill 2013; Adelman et al. 2017). The lack of a positive relationship is generally robust to using different measures of immigration, looking at different types of crimes, and examining different geographic levels.2 Further, the lack of a positive relationship suggests that immigration does not cause US natives to commit more crimes. This might occur if immigration worsens natives’ labor market opportunities, for example.
The few studies that examine crime among unauthorized immigrants have findings that are consistent with the broader pattern among immigrants—namely, unauthorized immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than similar US natives (apart from immigration-related offenses).4 Likewise, studies that examine the link between the estimated number of unauthorized immigrants as a share of an area’s population and crime rates in that area typically find evidence of null or negative effects (pg. 3-5).

Comparatively, the effects of border control on crime is mixed. The authors conclude,

A crucial fact seems to have been forgotten by some policy makers as they have ramped up immigration enforcement over the last two decades: immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than similar US natives. This is not to say that immigrants never commit crimes. But the evidence is clear that they are not more likely to do so than US natives. The comprehensive 2015 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report on immigration integration concludes that the finding that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than US natives “seems to apply to all racial and ethnic groups of immigrants, as well as applying over different decades and across varying historical contexts” (328). Unauthorized immigrants may be slightly more likely than legal immigrants to commit crimes, but they are still less likely than their US-born peers to do so. Further, areas with more immigrants tend to have lower rates of violent and property crimes. In the face of such evidence, policies aimed at reducing the number of immigrants, including unauthorized immigrants, seem unlikely to reduce crime and increase public safety (pg. 11).

Stuff I Say at School – Part VI: Economic Freedom & Corruption

April 29, 2019March 18, 2019 by Walker

This is part of the Stuff I Say at School series.

The Assignment

Response to a group’s summary of Jakob Svensson’s “Eight Questions About Corruption.”

The Stuff I Said

The Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) Index, published in its annual Economic Freedom of the World reports, defines economic freedom based on five major areas: (1) size of the central government, (2) legal system and the security of property rights, (3) stability of the currency, (4) freedom to trade internationally, and (5) regulation of labour, credit, and business. According to its 2018 report (which looks at data from 2016), countries with more economic freedom have substantially higher per-capita incomes, greater economic growth, and lower rates of poverty. Drawing on the EFW Index, Georgetown political philosophers Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski point to a strong positive correlation between a country’s degree of economic freedom and its lack of public sector corruption.

Granted, a lack of corruption could very well give rise to market reforms and increased economic freedom instead of the other way around. However, recent research on China’s anti-corruption reforms suggests that markets may actually pave the way for anti-corruption reforms. Summarizing the implications of this research, Lin et al. explain,

Reducing corruption creates more value where market reforms are already more fully implemented. If officials, rather than markets, allocate resources, bribes can be essential to grease bureaucratic gears to get anything done. Thus, non-[state owned enterprises’] stocks actually decline in China’s least liberalised provinces – e.g. Tibet and Tsinghai – on news of reduced expected corruption. These very real costs of reducing corruption can stymie reforms, and may explain why anticorruption reforms often have little traction in low-income countries where markets also work poorly. China has shown the world something interesting: prior market reforms clear away the defensible part of opposition to anticorruption reforms.Once market forces are functioning, bribe-soliciting officials become a nuisance rather than tools for getting things done. Eliminating pests is more popular than taking tools away … A virtuous cycle ensues – persistent anticorruption efforts encourage market-oriented behaviour, which makes anticorruption reforms more effective, which further encourages market oriented behaviour.

Interesting enough, there is some evidence that suggests that more government hands in the pies increases corruption. For example, a 2017 study found that larger municipality councils in Sweden result in more corruption problems. A 2009 study found that more government tiers and more public employees lead to more bribery. Finally, a 2015 study showed that high levels of regulation are associated with higher levels of corruption (likely because of regulatory capture).

Do Most Americans Really Want What They Say They Want?

March 16, 2019 by Walker

I hear a lot about how “most Americans” are in favor of “Policy XYZ.” The problem is that the social science shows that most Americans don’t know what they’re talking about. Do opinions change with more information or when costs are introduced? Two surveys from the Cato Institute seem to answer this in the affirmative.

The first is on federal paid leave. Seventy-four percent of the 1,700 Americans surveyed “a new federal government program to provide 12 weeks of paid leave to new parents or to people to deal with their own or a family member’s serious medical condition…Support slips and consensus fractures for a federal paid leave program, however, after costs are considered.” A 20 percentage point drop in support occurs when a $200 price tag is attached. Less than half are willing to pay $450 more in taxes for the program. When other potential costs are introduced (e.g., smaller future raises, reduction in other benefits, women less likely to be promoted,[ref]Ekins writes, “Research has found that government-provided paid leave programs may slow the pace of women’s career trajectories. Studies have found that government-provided paid leave may lead to fewer women getting promoted and becoming managers because they take longer leaves than they otherwise would. Other studies have noted that employers, particularly smaller companies that have difficulty accommodating workers taking leave, may be less willing to hire female employees to begin with. Some argue that American women’s corporate success is due to the fact that the United States does not provide generous family leave policies. Consistent with these findings, American women are more likely to rise up the corporate ladder than their European counterparts who have access to generous family social welfare programs. An analysis of OECD countries reveals that American women are 3 to 14 times as likely as Scandinavian women to be employed as managers with 14.6% of American women who are managers compared to 4.6% of Norwegian, 4.2% of Swedish, and 1% of Danish women. Americans women are also more likely than women in France (5.1%), the United Kingdom (7.8%), Germany (2.7%), and the Netherlands (3.6%) to hold managerial positions. The 20-First’s 2018 Global Gender Balance Scorecard finds that 53% of American companies compared to 14% of European companies have three or more women on company executive committees-the individuals who report directly to the CEO.”[/ref] cut funding to other government programs), the majority of Americans find themselves opposing the program.

Less than half of men would be willing to pay even $200 more, while 55% of women would still be willing to pay $450 more. Support for the program drops across all political parties as costs are introduced, with 60% of Democrats still willing to fork over $1,200 a year to implement it (but only 22% of Republicans and 45% of Independents). “In sum,” writes Cato researcher Emily Ekins, “Democrats have a much higher tolerance threshold for taxes than the average American.”

Another survey looked at support for the Affordable Care Act’s pre-existing condition regulation. Out of the 2,498 Americans questioned, 65% support this aspect of the ACA. However, when costs are introduced, support drops. Furthermore, wealthier Americans are more willing to entertain trade-offs than lower-income ones.

Thomas Sowell has written, “There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.”[ref]Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 142.[/ref] What “most Americans” want depends on whether or not trade-offs are kept in the dark.

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