Mineral and material commodities are essential inputs to economic production, but there have been periodical concerns about mineral scarcity

Pretis, Felix and Hepburn, Cameron and Pfeiffer, Alexander and Teytelboym, Alexander, Are We Running Out of Exhaustible Resources? (May 24, 2023). SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4457854

Abstract: Mineral and material commodities are essential inputs to economic production, but there have been periodical concerns about mineral scarcity. However, there has been no systematic recent study that has determined whether mineral commodities have become scarcer over the longer run. Here we provide systematic evidence that worldwide, near-term exhaustion of economically valuable commodities is unlikely. We construct and analyse a new database of 48 economically-relevant commodities from 1957–2015, including estimates of worldwide production, reserves and reserve bases, prices, and production, using publicly-available data and further data requested from the United States Geological Survey. We explore trends in prices, reserves-to-production ratios, and production itself, on a commodity-by-commodity basis, using econometric techniques allowing for structural changes, and further estimate overall trends robust to outlying observations. For almost all commodities, we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no trend in prices and exhaustion, while production has increased. Price signals appear to have guided consumption and provided incentives for innovation and substitution. Concerns about mineral depletion therefore appear to be less important than concerns about externalities, such as pollution and conflict, and ecosystem services (e.g. climate stability) where price signals are often absent.

Keywords: Resource extraction, resource price, reserves-to-production, trend, exhaustion

JEL Classification: Q02, Q30, Q32

Exposure to and engagement with partisan or unreliable news on Google Search are driven not primarily by algorithmic curation but by users’ own choices

Users choose to engage with more partisan news than they are exposed to on Google Search. Ronald E. Robertson, Jon Green, Damian J. Ruck, Katherine Ognyanova, Christo Wilson & David Lazer. Nature, May 24 2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06078-5

Abstract: If popular online platforms systematically expose their users to partisan and unreliable news, they could potentially contribute to societal issues such as rising political polarization1,2. This concern is central to the ‘echo chamber’3,4,5 and ‘filter bubble’6,7 debates, which critique the roles that user choice and algorithmic curation play in guiding users to different online information sources8,9,10. These roles can be measured as exposure, defined as the URLs shown to users by online platforms, and engagement, defined as the URLs selected by users. However, owing to the challenges of obtaining ecologically valid exposure data—what real users were shown during their typical platform use—research in this vein typically relies on engagement data4,8,11,12,13,14,15,16 or estimates of hypothetical exposure17,18,19,20,21,22,23. Studies involving ecological exposure have therefore been rare, and largely limited to social media platforms7,24, leaving open questions about web search engines. To address these gaps, we conducted a two-wave study pairing surveys with ecologically valid measures of both exposure and engagement on Google Search during the 2018 and 2020 US elections. In both waves, we found more identity-congruent and unreliable news sources in participants’ engagement choices, both within Google Search and overall, than they were exposed to in their Google Search results. These results indicate that exposure to and engagement with partisan or unreliable news on Google Search are driven not primarily by algorithmic curation but by users’ own choices.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has low correlation with gender and ethnic diversity in the boardroom, in senior management, and within the workforce; DEI exhibits no link with future stock returns

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Alex Edmans, Caroline Flammer & Simon Glossner. NBER Working Paper 31215. May 2023. DOI 10.3386/w31215

Abstract: This paper measures diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) using proprietary data on survey responses used to compile the Best Companies to Work For list. We identify 13 of the 58 questions as being related to DEI, and aggregate the responses to form our DEI measure. This variable has low correlation with gender and ethnic diversity in the boardroom, in senior management, and within the workforce, suggesting that DEI captures additional dimensions missing from traditional measures of demographic diversity. DEI is also unrelated to general workplace policies and practices, suggesting that DEI cannot be improved by generic initiatives. However, DEI is higher in small growth firms and firms with high financial strength. DEI is associated with higher future accounting performance across a range of measures, higher future earnings surprises, and higher valuation ratios, but demographic diversity is not. DEI perceptions among professional workers, such as R&D employees, are significantly correlated with the number and quality of patents. However, DEI exhibits no link with future stock returns.

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We also study future innovation performance, since one of the main financial arguments for DEI is that it allows for a broader consideration of perspectives and stimulation of ideas which, in turn, may be driving increased innovativeness and financial performance. We find that DEI is unrelated to either the number of future patents or patent citations. However, the granular nature of our data allows us to stratify the survey responses by job category. We find that DEI perceptions of professionals, a job category that includes R&D staff, are positively and significantly correlated with both innovation measures, but there is no positive link with the responses from the three other categories: executives, managers, and hourly workers. This is consistent with the fact that innovation is most likely to stem from professionals.

Finally, we study future stock returns. Somewhat surprisingly, given prior results on profitability, innovation, and earnings surprises, we find no link between DEI and stock returns, after controlling for either firm characteristics in firm-level regressions or risk in portfolio regressions. 

Manager quality in retail is generally hard to explain with the observables in our data, but is correlated with the ratio of full-time to part-time workers

Managers and Productivity in Retail. Robert D. Metcalfe, Alexandre B. Sollaci & Chad Syverson. NBER Working Paper 31192. April 2023. https://www.nber.org/papers/w31192

Abstract: Across many sectors, research has established that management explains a notable portion of productivity differences across organizations. A remaining question, however, is whether it is managers themselves or firm-wide management practices that matter. We shed light on this question by analyzing store-level data from two multibillion-dollar retail companies. In this setting, managers move between stores but management practices are set by firm policy and largely fixed, allowing us to hone in on managers’ personal roles in determining store performance. We find: (i) managers affect and explain a large share of the variance of store-level productivity; (ii) negative assortative matching between managers and stores, which may reflect both firms’ decisions and a selection-driven bias that we characterize and argue might apply in other settings using movers designs; (iii) managers who move do so on average from less productive to more productive stores; (iv) female managers are less likely to move stores than male managers; (v) manager quality is generally hard to explain with the observables in our data, but is correlated with the ratio of full-time to part-time workers; (vi) managers who obtain high labor productivity also tend to obtain high energy productivity, revealing some breadth in managers’ skills applicability; (vii) high-performing managers in stable growth times are also high-performing during turbulent times; and (viii) exogenous productivity shocks improve the quality of initially low quality managers, suggesting managers can learn. We explain implications of these findings for productivity research.