Kevin Drum has an interesting article on the possibility that lead poisoning may have generated a crime wave in the 90s. He reports Jessica Reyes’ work on the econometrics: If childhood lead exposure really did produce criminal behavior in adults, you’d expect that in states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime would decline […]
John Quiggin has re-opened the fiscal multiplier debate to advocate for fiscal stimulus. Quiggin, along with others such as Krugman, Summers and DeLong, and Blanchard claim that the effect of government spending on production will be greater than the government’s initial injection. The empirical evidence they use tends to rely on cross-country regressions, although some […]
The FT reports that university enrolments in the UK have dropped 6% over last year, following a similar fall in the previous year. It speculates that this may be, in part, because “the rise in fees from £3,375 to an average of more than £8,000 appears to be suppressing demand.” No doubt the reduced subsidy […]
Writing in the FT he says: I think forecasting in a complex world is a poor test of expertise because luck is the overwhelming success factor. … The wonderful thing about a forecast is that both the forecaster and his audience feel that something profound has been expressed. And nobody will remember the forecast anyway. […]
From the AER: …observable teacher characteristics like graduate education and experience are not typically correlated with increased productivity [among teachers]. Many researchers and policymakers have suggested that, under these conditions, the only way to adjust the teacher distribution for the better is to gather information on individual productivity through evaluation and then dismiss low performers. […]
Simon Wren-Lewis: …the long term unemployed typically do not think that at least they have more leisure time, so they are not so badly off. Instead they feel rejected, inadequate, despairing, and it scars them for life. Now that may not be in the microfounded models, but that does not make these feelings disappear, and […]