Why Elites Love Authentic Lowbrow Culture: Overcoming High-Status Denigration with Outsider Art. By Oliver Hahl, Ezra W. Zuckerman, Minjae Kim
American Sociological Review
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417710642
Abstract: We develop and test the idea that public appreciation for authentic lowbrow culture affords an effective way for certain elites to address feelings of authenticity-insecurity arising from “high status denigration” (Hahl and Zuckerman 2014). This argument, which builds on recent sociological research on the “search for authenticity” (e.g., Grazian 2005) and on Bourdieu’s (1993) notion of artistic “disinterestedness,” is validated through experiments with U.S. subjects in the context of “outsider” art (Fine 2004). The first study demonstrates that preference for lowbrow culture perceived to be authentic is higher when individuals feel insecure in their authenticity because they attained status in a context where extrinsic incentives are salient. The second study demonstrates that audiences perceive the members of erstwhile denigrated high-status categories to be more authentic if they consume lowbrow culture, but only if the cultural producer is perceived as authentic. We conclude by noting how this “authenticity-by-appreciation” effect might be complementary to distinction-seeking as a motivation for elite cultural omnivorousness, and we draw broader implications for when and why particular forms of culture are in demand.
Mi resumen de lo que los autores defienden: el aprecio por el arte lowbrow* proporciona a ciertas élites un modo eficaz de abordar la inseguridad sobre su autenticidad, dudas que emanan del la denigración del status alto (“high status denigration,” Hahl and Zuckerman 2014). La búsqueda de la autenticidad y el carácter desinteresado, no enfocado en lo lucrativo, de ciertas muestras artísticas, se someten a experimentos con sujetos estadounidenses. El primer estudio muestra que la preferencia por cultura lowbrow percibida como auténtica es alta cuando los sujetos se sienten inseguros sobre su autenticidad. El segundo estudio muestra que los otros perciben a miembros de las categorias denigradas (alto standing) como más auténticos si consumen cultura lowbrow, pero solo si el productor cultural se percibe como auténtico. Este efecto de autenticidad es complementario a la búsqueda de carácter único en la motivación del carácter omnívoro cultural de la élite.
* lowbrow art: An underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other California subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Most lowbrow artworks are paintings, but there are also toys, and sculptures. Many of the creators of lowbrow art are influenced by Acid house flyers, Advertising, Animated cartoons, Circus and Sideshow culture, Commercial art, Comic books, Erotica, Graffiti and Street art, Kitsch, Kustom Kulture, Mail art, Pop culture, Psychedelic art, Punk rock culture, Retro Illustration, Religious art, Pulp magazine art, Surf culture, Tattoo art, Tiki culture, Toys for adults, notably vinyl figurines, anti-political views, among many other things.
Friday, June 9, 2017
Are the ethnically tolerant free of discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance? They aren't.
Bizumic, B., Kenny, A., Iyer, R., Tanuwira, J., and Huxley, E. (2017) Are the ethnically tolerant free of discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance? Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2263
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2263/abstract
Abstract: We hypothesized that the ethnically tolerant (i.e., people who are anti-ethnocentric and score very low on a measure of ethnocentrism) would perceive people with extremely incompatible values and beliefs as out-groups and would engage in discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance against them. Experiments among Australian citizens in Studies 1 (N = 224) and 2 (N = 283) showed that the ethnically tolerant perceived supporters of a message in favour of mandatory detention of asylum seekers as out-groups and consequently exhibited discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance against them. Study 3 with 265 U.S. citizens showed that, controlling for liberalism, ethnic tolerance led to prejudice against out-groups. This was replicated with 522 UK citizens in Study 4, which also showed that social identity, and not moral conviction, mediated the link between ethnic tolerance and prejudice. The findings suggest that the ethnically tolerant can be discriminatory, prejudiced and politically intolerant against fellow humans.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2263/abstract
Abstract: We hypothesized that the ethnically tolerant (i.e., people who are anti-ethnocentric and score very low on a measure of ethnocentrism) would perceive people with extremely incompatible values and beliefs as out-groups and would engage in discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance against them. Experiments among Australian citizens in Studies 1 (N = 224) and 2 (N = 283) showed that the ethnically tolerant perceived supporters of a message in favour of mandatory detention of asylum seekers as out-groups and consequently exhibited discrimination, prejudice and political intolerance against them. Study 3 with 265 U.S. citizens showed that, controlling for liberalism, ethnic tolerance led to prejudice against out-groups. This was replicated with 522 UK citizens in Study 4, which also showed that social identity, and not moral conviction, mediated the link between ethnic tolerance and prejudice. The findings suggest that the ethnically tolerant can be discriminatory, prejudiced and politically intolerant against fellow humans.
The self and autobiographical memories of immoral actions
I’m not the person I used to be: The self and autobiographical memories of immoral actions. By Stanley, Matthew L.; Henne, Paul; Iyengar, Vijeth; Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter; De Brigard, Felipe
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 146(6), Jun 2017, 884-895
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000317
Abstract: People maintain a positive identity in at least two ways: They evaluate themselves more favorably than other people, and they judge themselves to be better now than they were in the past. Both strategies rely on autobiographical memories. The authors investigate the role of autobiographical memories of lying and emotional harm in maintaining a positive identity. For memories of lying to or emotionally harming others, participants judge their own actions as less morally wrong and less negative than those in which other people lied to or emotionally harmed them. Furthermore, people judge those actions that happened further in the past to be more morally wrong than those that happened more recently. Finally, for periods of the past when they believed that they were very different people than they are now, participants judge their actions to be more morally wrong and more negative than those actions from periods of their pasts when they believed that they were very similar to who they are now. The authors discuss these findings in relation to theories about the function of autobiographical memory and moral cognition in constructing and perceiving the self over time.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 146(6), Jun 2017, 884-895
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000317
Abstract: People maintain a positive identity in at least two ways: They evaluate themselves more favorably than other people, and they judge themselves to be better now than they were in the past. Both strategies rely on autobiographical memories. The authors investigate the role of autobiographical memories of lying and emotional harm in maintaining a positive identity. For memories of lying to or emotionally harming others, participants judge their own actions as less morally wrong and less negative than those in which other people lied to or emotionally harmed them. Furthermore, people judge those actions that happened further in the past to be more morally wrong than those that happened more recently. Finally, for periods of the past when they believed that they were very different people than they are now, participants judge their actions to be more morally wrong and more negative than those actions from periods of their pasts when they believed that they were very similar to who they are now. The authors discuss these findings in relation to theories about the function of autobiographical memory and moral cognition in constructing and perceiving the self over time.
Thursday, June 8, 2017
How much information to sample before making a decision? It's a matter of psychological distance
How much information to sample before making a decision? It's a matter of psychological distance. By Vered Halamish & Nira Liberman
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2017, Pages 111–116
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103116307089
Abstract:: When facing a decision, people look for relevant information to guide their choice. But how much information do they seek to obtain? Based on Construal Level Theory, we predicted that psychological distance from a decision would make participants seek more information prior to making a decision. Five experiments supported this prediction. When facing a decision between two decks of cards or two urns with marbles, participants preferred to sample more units of information for the purpose of making this decision in the distant future or for a friend (vs. in the near future or for themselves). These results suggest that expanding the scope of sampled experience is yet another way by which psychological distance affects decision making.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2017, Pages 111–116
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103116307089
Abstract:: When facing a decision, people look for relevant information to guide their choice. But how much information do they seek to obtain? Based on Construal Level Theory, we predicted that psychological distance from a decision would make participants seek more information prior to making a decision. Five experiments supported this prediction. When facing a decision between two decks of cards or two urns with marbles, participants preferred to sample more units of information for the purpose of making this decision in the distant future or for a friend (vs. in the near future or for themselves). These results suggest that expanding the scope of sampled experience is yet another way by which psychological distance affects decision making.
The Benefits of Forced Experimentation: Striking Evidence from the London Underground Network
The Benefits of Forced Experimentation: Striking Evidence from the London Underground Network. By Ferdinand Rauch, Shaun Larcom, Tim Willems
https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/Department-of-Economics-Discussion-Paper-Series/the-benefits-of-forced-experimentation-striking-evidence-from-the-london-underground-network
Abstract: We estimate that a significant fraction of commuters on the London underground do not travel their optimal route. Consequently, a tube strike (which forced many commuters to experiment with new routes) taught commuters about the existence of superior journeys -- bringing about lasting changes in behaviour. This effect is stronger for commuters who live in areas where the tube map is more distorted, thereby pointing towards the importance of informational imperfections. We argue that the information produced by the strike improved network-efficiency. Search costs are unlikely to explain the suboptimal behaviour. Instead, individuals seem to under-experiment in normal times, as a result of which constraints can be welfare-improving.
Part of the series Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series (Ref: 755 )
JEL Reference: D83,L91,R41
Keywords: Experimentation, Learning, Optimization, Rationality, Search
https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/Department-of-Economics-Discussion-Paper-Series/the-benefits-of-forced-experimentation-striking-evidence-from-the-london-underground-network
Abstract: We estimate that a significant fraction of commuters on the London underground do not travel their optimal route. Consequently, a tube strike (which forced many commuters to experiment with new routes) taught commuters about the existence of superior journeys -- bringing about lasting changes in behaviour. This effect is stronger for commuters who live in areas where the tube map is more distorted, thereby pointing towards the importance of informational imperfections. We argue that the information produced by the strike improved network-efficiency. Search costs are unlikely to explain the suboptimal behaviour. Instead, individuals seem to under-experiment in normal times, as a result of which constraints can be welfare-improving.
Part of the series Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series (Ref: 755 )
JEL Reference: D83,L91,R41
Keywords: Experimentation, Learning, Optimization, Rationality, Search
Need for uniqueness motivates conspiracy beliefs
Imhoff, R., and Lamberty, P. K. (2017) Too special to be duped: Need for uniqueness motivates conspiracy beliefs. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2265
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2265/full
Abstract: Adding to the growing literature on the antecedents of conspiracy beliefs, this paper argues that a small part in motivating the endorsement of such seemingly irrational beliefs is the desire to stick out from the crowd, the need for uniqueness. Across three studies, we establish a modest but robust association between the self-attributed need for uniqueness and a general conspirational mindset (conspiracy mentality) as well as the endorsement of specific conspiracy beliefs. Following up on previous findings that people high in need for uniqueness resist majority and yield to minority influence, Study 3 experimentally shows that a fictitious conspiracy theory received more support by people high in conspiracy mentality when this theory was said to be supported by only a minority (vs. majority) of survey respondents. Together, these findings support the notion that conspiracy beliefs can be adopted as a means to attain a sense of uniqueness.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.2265/full
Abstract: Adding to the growing literature on the antecedents of conspiracy beliefs, this paper argues that a small part in motivating the endorsement of such seemingly irrational beliefs is the desire to stick out from the crowd, the need for uniqueness. Across three studies, we establish a modest but robust association between the self-attributed need for uniqueness and a general conspirational mindset (conspiracy mentality) as well as the endorsement of specific conspiracy beliefs. Following up on previous findings that people high in need for uniqueness resist majority and yield to minority influence, Study 3 experimentally shows that a fictitious conspiracy theory received more support by people high in conspiracy mentality when this theory was said to be supported by only a minority (vs. majority) of survey respondents. Together, these findings support the notion that conspiracy beliefs can be adopted as a means to attain a sense of uniqueness.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Perceived social presence reduces fact-checking
Perceived social presence reduces fact-checking. By Youjung Jun, Rachel Meng, and Gita Venkataramani Johar
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences vol. 114 no. 23
DOI 10.1073/pnas.1700175114, http://www.pnas.org/content/114/23/5976.abstract
Significance: The dissemination of unverified content (e.g., “fake” news) is a societal problem with influence that can acquire tremendous reach when propagated through social networks. This article examines how evaluating information in a social context affects fact-checking behavior. Across eight experiments, people fact-checked less often when they evaluated claims in a collective (e.g., group or social media) compared with an individual setting. Inducing momentary vigilance increased the rate of fact-checking. These findings advance our understanding of whether and when people scrutinize information in social environments. In an era of rapid information diffusion, identifying the conditions under which people are less likely to verify the content that they consume is both conceptually important and practically relevant.
Abstract: Today’s media landscape affords people access to richer information than ever before, with many individuals opting to consume content through social channels rather than traditional news sources. Although people frequent social platforms for a variety of reasons, we understand little about the consequences of encountering new information in these contexts, particularly with respect to how content is scrutinized. This research tests how perceiving the presence of others (as on social media platforms) affects the way that individuals evaluate information—in particular, the extent to which they verify ambiguous claims. Eight experiments using incentivized real effort tasks found that people are less likely to fact-check statements when they feel that they are evaluating them in the presence of others compared with when they are evaluating them alone. Inducing vigilance immediately before evaluation increased fact-checking under social settings.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences vol. 114 no. 23
DOI 10.1073/pnas.1700175114, http://www.pnas.org/content/114/23/5976.abstract
Significance: The dissemination of unverified content (e.g., “fake” news) is a societal problem with influence that can acquire tremendous reach when propagated through social networks. This article examines how evaluating information in a social context affects fact-checking behavior. Across eight experiments, people fact-checked less often when they evaluated claims in a collective (e.g., group or social media) compared with an individual setting. Inducing momentary vigilance increased the rate of fact-checking. These findings advance our understanding of whether and when people scrutinize information in social environments. In an era of rapid information diffusion, identifying the conditions under which people are less likely to verify the content that they consume is both conceptually important and practically relevant.
Abstract: Today’s media landscape affords people access to richer information than ever before, with many individuals opting to consume content through social channels rather than traditional news sources. Although people frequent social platforms for a variety of reasons, we understand little about the consequences of encountering new information in these contexts, particularly with respect to how content is scrutinized. This research tests how perceiving the presence of others (as on social media platforms) affects the way that individuals evaluate information—in particular, the extent to which they verify ambiguous claims. Eight experiments using incentivized real effort tasks found that people are less likely to fact-check statements when they feel that they are evaluating them in the presence of others compared with when they are evaluating them alone. Inducing vigilance immediately before evaluation increased fact-checking under social settings.
Call My Rep! How Unions Overcame the Free-Rider Problem
Murphy, Richard John: Call My Rep! How Unions Overcame the Free-Rider Problem (March 01, 2017). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 6362. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2941381
Abstract: This paper proposes an explanation of why union membership has been increasing in some occupations, despite the opportunity to freeride on traditional union benefits. I model membership as legal insurance whose demand increases with the perceived risk of allegations. Using media reports on allegations against teachers as shocks to perceived risk, I find for every five reports occurring in a region, teachers are 2.5 percentage points more likely to be members in the subsequent year. These effects are larger when teachers share characteristics with the news story and explain 45 percent of the growth in teacher union membership since 1992.
Keywords: unions, teachers, media, insurance
JEL Classification: J510, J450, J320
Abstract: This paper proposes an explanation of why union membership has been increasing in some occupations, despite the opportunity to freeride on traditional union benefits. I model membership as legal insurance whose demand increases with the perceived risk of allegations. Using media reports on allegations against teachers as shocks to perceived risk, I find for every five reports occurring in a region, teachers are 2.5 percentage points more likely to be members in the subsequent year. These effects are larger when teachers share characteristics with the news story and explain 45 percent of the growth in teacher union membership since 1992.
Keywords: unions, teachers, media, insurance
JEL Classification: J510, J450, J320
Increase in own state's minimum wage increases frequency with which low-wage workers commute out of the state
Cross-state differences in the minimum wage and out-of-state commuting by low-wage workers. By Terra McKinnish
Regional Science and Urban Economics, Volume 64, May 2017, Pages 137–147
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2017.02.006
Highlights
• The federal minimum wage hike compressed cross-border minimum wage differentials.
• Low wage workers responded by commuting out of states that increased their minimum wage.
• Results are consistent with a disemployment effect of minimum wage increases.
Abstract: The 2009 federal minimum wage increase, which compressed cross-state differences in the minimum wage, is used to investigate the claim that low-wage workers are attracted to commute out of state to neighboring states that have higher minimum wages. The analysis focuses on Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) that experience commuting flows with one or more neighboring state. A difference-in-differences-in-differences model compares PUMAs that experienced a sizeable increase or decrease in their cross-border minimum wage differential to those that experience smaller change in the cross-border differential. Out-of-state commuting of low wage workers (less than 10 dollars an hour) is then compared to that of moderate wage workers (10–13 dollars an hour). The results suggest that an increase in own state's minimum wage, relative to neighbor's, increases the frequency with which low-wage workers commute out of the state. The analysis is replicated on the subset of PUMAs that experience commuting flows with more than one neighboring state, so that the estimates are identified entirely within PUMA. As a whole, the results suggest that low-wage workers tend to commute away from minimum wage increases rather than towards them.
Regional Science and Urban Economics, Volume 64, May 2017, Pages 137–147
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2017.02.006
Highlights
• The federal minimum wage hike compressed cross-border minimum wage differentials.
• Low wage workers responded by commuting out of states that increased their minimum wage.
• Results are consistent with a disemployment effect of minimum wage increases.
Abstract: The 2009 federal minimum wage increase, which compressed cross-state differences in the minimum wage, is used to investigate the claim that low-wage workers are attracted to commute out of state to neighboring states that have higher minimum wages. The analysis focuses on Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) that experience commuting flows with one or more neighboring state. A difference-in-differences-in-differences model compares PUMAs that experienced a sizeable increase or decrease in their cross-border minimum wage differential to those that experience smaller change in the cross-border differential. Out-of-state commuting of low wage workers (less than 10 dollars an hour) is then compared to that of moderate wage workers (10–13 dollars an hour). The results suggest that an increase in own state's minimum wage, relative to neighbor's, increases the frequency with which low-wage workers commute out of the state. The analysis is replicated on the subset of PUMAs that experience commuting flows with more than one neighboring state, so that the estimates are identified entirely within PUMA. As a whole, the results suggest that low-wage workers tend to commute away from minimum wage increases rather than towards them.
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
Rethinking the Benefits of Youth Employment Programs: The Heterogeneous Effects of Summer Jobs
Rethinking the Benefits of Youth Employment Programs: The Heterogeneous Effects of Summer Jobs
Jonathan Davis & Sara Heller
NBER Working Paper, May 2017
http://www.nber.org/papers/
Abstract: his paper reports the results of two randomized field experiments, each offering different populations of youth a supported summer job in Chicago. In both experiments, the program dramatically reduces violent-crime arrests, even after the summer. It does so without improving employment, schooling, or other types of crime; if anything, property crime increases over 2-3 post-program years. To explore mechanisms, we implement a machine learning method that predicts treatment heterogeneity using observables. The method identifies a subgroup of youth with positive employment impacts, whose characteristics differ from the disconnected youth served in most employment programs. We find that employment benefiters commit more property crime than their control counterparts, and non-benefiters also show a decline in violent crime. These results do not seem consistent with typical theory about improved human capital and better labor market opportunities creating a higher opportunity cost of crime, or even with the idea that these programs just keep youth busy. We discuss several alternative mechanisms, concluding that brief youth employment programs can generate substantively important behavioral change, but for different outcomes, different youth, and different reasons than those most often considered in the literature.
Jonathan Davis & Sara Heller
NBER Working Paper, May 2017
http://www.nber.org/papers/
Abstract: his paper reports the results of two randomized field experiments, each offering different populations of youth a supported summer job in Chicago. In both experiments, the program dramatically reduces violent-crime arrests, even after the summer. It does so without improving employment, schooling, or other types of crime; if anything, property crime increases over 2-3 post-program years. To explore mechanisms, we implement a machine learning method that predicts treatment heterogeneity using observables. The method identifies a subgroup of youth with positive employment impacts, whose characteristics differ from the disconnected youth served in most employment programs. We find that employment benefiters commit more property crime than their control counterparts, and non-benefiters also show a decline in violent crime. These results do not seem consistent with typical theory about improved human capital and better labor market opportunities creating a higher opportunity cost of crime, or even with the idea that these programs just keep youth busy. We discuss several alternative mechanisms, concluding that brief youth employment programs can generate substantively important behavioral change, but for different outcomes, different youth, and different reasons than those most often considered in the literature.
Monday, June 5, 2017
Increase in deployment & combat injuries for white and Hispanic soldiers relative to black ones & for soldiers from high-income neighborhoods relative to those from low-income ones
Who Will Fight? The All-Volunteer Army after 9/11. By Susan Payne Carter, Alexander Smith & Carl Wojtaszek
American Economic Review, May 2017, Pages 415-419
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20171082
Abstract: Who fought the War on Terror? We find that as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan progressed, there was an increase in the fraction of active-duty Army enlistees who were white or from high-income neighborhoods and that these two groups selected combat occupations more often. Among men, we find an increase in deployment and combat injuries for white and Hispanic soldiers relative to black soldiers and for soldiers from high-income neighborhoods relative to those from low-income neighborhoods. This finding suggests that an all-volunteer force does not compel a disproportionate number of non-white and low socio-economic men to fight America's wars.
IV. Discussion
Today's all-volunteer force represents a diverse group of individuals serving for both patriotic and economic reasons. For those with fewer economic opportunities, a steady job may be the deciding factor in their enlistment decision; while for those with more outside options, wartime service may shape their deci- sion. Concerns over equity could arise under the all-volunteer system if these enlistment motivations are differentially distributed across demographic groups. While we cannot uncover the distribution of these motivations, we can observe which groups bear the burden of war. Were the first sustained conflicts of the AVF.Iraq and Afghanistan..poor man.s fights.? To the contrary, during this time period it does not appear that there was an undue burden placed on blacks or individuals from low-income neighborhoods. The percentages of black and low-income enlistees decreased as fighting intensified, with these trends stopping when outside labor market opportunities diminished during the Great Recession and combat risk decreased. These trends were the same for men and women, although black women continued to be over-represented in the Army relative to the general population. Furthermore, black and low-income enlisted men were less likely than their white and high-income peers to be deployed or injured in combat. These differences are driven primarily by the military occupation an individual enters: black and low-income men were less likely to choose combat-intensive occupations than their white and high-income peers with the same eligibility.
American Economic Review, May 2017, Pages 415-419
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20171082
Abstract: Who fought the War on Terror? We find that as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan progressed, there was an increase in the fraction of active-duty Army enlistees who were white or from high-income neighborhoods and that these two groups selected combat occupations more often. Among men, we find an increase in deployment and combat injuries for white and Hispanic soldiers relative to black soldiers and for soldiers from high-income neighborhoods relative to those from low-income neighborhoods. This finding suggests that an all-volunteer force does not compel a disproportionate number of non-white and low socio-economic men to fight America's wars.
IV. Discussion
Today's all-volunteer force represents a diverse group of individuals serving for both patriotic and economic reasons. For those with fewer economic opportunities, a steady job may be the deciding factor in their enlistment decision; while for those with more outside options, wartime service may shape their deci- sion. Concerns over equity could arise under the all-volunteer system if these enlistment motivations are differentially distributed across demographic groups. While we cannot uncover the distribution of these motivations, we can observe which groups bear the burden of war. Were the first sustained conflicts of the AVF.Iraq and Afghanistan..poor man.s fights.? To the contrary, during this time period it does not appear that there was an undue burden placed on blacks or individuals from low-income neighborhoods. The percentages of black and low-income enlistees decreased as fighting intensified, with these trends stopping when outside labor market opportunities diminished during the Great Recession and combat risk decreased. These trends were the same for men and women, although black women continued to be over-represented in the Army relative to the general population. Furthermore, black and low-income enlisted men were less likely than their white and high-income peers to be deployed or injured in combat. These differences are driven primarily by the military occupation an individual enters: black and low-income men were less likely to choose combat-intensive occupations than their white and high-income peers with the same eligibility.
Will the high-tech cities of the future be utterly lonely?
Will the high-tech cities of the future be utterly lonely? By Jessica Brown
The Week, April 24, 2017
http://theweek.com/articles/689527/hightech-cities-future-utterly-lonely
In Britain, more than one in eight people say they don't consider anyone a close friend, and the number of Americans who say they have no close friends has roughly tripled in recent decades. A large proportion of the lonely are young; almost two-thirds of 16- to 24-year-old Brits said they feel lonely at least some of the time, while almost a third are lonely often or all the time.
The Week, April 24, 2017
http://theweek.com/articles/689527/hightech-cities-future-utterly-lonely
In Britain, more than one in eight people say they don't consider anyone a close friend, and the number of Americans who say they have no close friends has roughly tripled in recent decades. A large proportion of the lonely are young; almost two-thirds of 16- to 24-year-old Brits said they feel lonely at least some of the time, while almost a third are lonely often or all the time.
Healthy offspring from freeze-dried mouse spermatozoa held on the International Space Station for 9 months
Healthy offspring from freeze-dried mouse spermatozoa held on the International Space Station for 9 months. Sayaka Wakayama et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 22 2017. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/05/16/1701425114.full
Abstract: If humans ever start to live permanently in space, assisted reproductive technology using preserved spermatozoa will be important for producing offspring; however, radiation on the International Space Station (ISS) is more than 100 times stronger than that on Earth, and irradiation causes DNA damage in cells and gametes. Here we examined the effect of space radiation on freeze-dried mouse spermatozoa held on the ISS for 9 mo at –95 °C, with launch and recovery at room temperature. DNA damage to the spermatozoa and male pronuclei was slightly increased, but the fertilization and birth rates were similar to those of controls. Next-generation sequencing showed only minor genomic differences between offspring derived from space-preserved spermatozoa and controls, and all offspring grew to adulthood and had normal fertility. Thus, we demonstrate that although space radiation can damage sperm DNA, it does not affect the production of viable offspring after at least 9 mo of storage on the ISS.
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Distress disclosure, depression, life satisfaction, and cultural differences
Distress disclosure and psychological functioning among Taiwanese
nationals and European Americans: The moderating roles of mindfulness
and nationality.
Kahn, Jeffrey H.; Wei, Meifen; Su, Jenny C.; Han, Suejung; Strojewska, Agnes
Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol 64(3), Apr 2017, 292-301. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cou0
Abstract: Research using Western samples shows that talking about unpleasant emotions—distress disclosure—is associated with fewer psychological symptoms and higher well-being. These benefits of distress disclosure may or may not be observed in East Asia where emotional control is valued. Instead, mindfulness may be more relevant to emotion regulation in East Asia (e.g., Taiwan). In the present study, cultural context (Taiwanese nationals vs. European Americans) and mindfulness were examined as moderators of the relation between distress disclosure and both depression symptoms and life satisfaction. A sample of 256 Taiwanese college students and a sample of 209 European American college students completed self-report measures in their native language. Moderated multiple regression analyses revealed significant interaction effects of mindfulness and distress disclosure on both depression symptoms and life satisfaction for Taiwanese participants but not for European Americans. Specifically, distress disclosure was negatively associated with depression symptoms and positively associated with life satisfaction for Taiwanese low in mindfulness but not for Taiwanese high in mindfulness. For European Americans, distress disclosure was not associated with depression symptoms but was associated with higher life satisfaction, regardless of one’s level of mindfulness. These findings suggest that the potential benefits of disclosing distress are a function of one’s cultural context as well as, for those from Taiwan, one’s mindfulness.
Kahn, Jeffrey H.; Wei, Meifen; Su, Jenny C.; Han, Suejung; Strojewska, Agnes
Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol 64(3), Apr 2017, 292-301. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cou0
Abstract: Research using Western samples shows that talking about unpleasant emotions—distress disclosure—is associated with fewer psychological symptoms and higher well-being. These benefits of distress disclosure may or may not be observed in East Asia where emotional control is valued. Instead, mindfulness may be more relevant to emotion regulation in East Asia (e.g., Taiwan). In the present study, cultural context (Taiwanese nationals vs. European Americans) and mindfulness were examined as moderators of the relation between distress disclosure and both depression symptoms and life satisfaction. A sample of 256 Taiwanese college students and a sample of 209 European American college students completed self-report measures in their native language. Moderated multiple regression analyses revealed significant interaction effects of mindfulness and distress disclosure on both depression symptoms and life satisfaction for Taiwanese participants but not for European Americans. Specifically, distress disclosure was negatively associated with depression symptoms and positively associated with life satisfaction for Taiwanese low in mindfulness but not for Taiwanese high in mindfulness. For European Americans, distress disclosure was not associated with depression symptoms but was associated with higher life satisfaction, regardless of one’s level of mindfulness. These findings suggest that the potential benefits of disclosing distress are a function of one’s cultural context as well as, for those from Taiwan, one’s mindfulness.
Unintended Consequences: The Regressive Effects of Increased Access to Courts
Unintended Consequences: The Regressive Effects of Increased Access to Courts. By Anthony Niblett & Albert Yoon, University
of Toronto - Faculty of Law
Small claims courts enable parties to
resolve their disputes relatively quickly and cheaply. The court’s
limiting feature, by design, is that alleged damages must be small, in
accordance with the jurisdictional limit at that time. Accordingly, one
might expect that a large increase in the upper limit of claim size
would increase the court’s accessibility to a larger and potentially
more diverse pool of litigants.
We examine this proposition by studying the effect of an increase in the jurisdictional limit of the Ontario Small Claims Court. Prior to January 2010, claims up to $10,000 could be litigated in the small claims court. After January 2010, this jurisdictional limit increased to include all claims up to $25,000. We study patterns in nearly 625,000 disputes over the period 2006-2013.
In this paper, we investigate plaintiff behavior. Interestingly, the total number of claims filed by plaintiffs does not increase significantly with the increased jurisdictional limit. We do find, however, changes to the composition of plaintiffs. Following the jurisdictional change, we find that plaintiffs using the small claims court are, on average, from richer neighborhoods. We also find that proportion of plaintiffs from poorer neighborhoods drops. The drop-off is most pronounced in plaintiffs from the poorest 10% of neighborhoods.
We explore potential explanations for this regressive effect, including crowding out, congestion, increased legal representation, and behavioral influences. Our findings suggest that legislative attempts to make the courts more accessible may have unintended regressive consequences.
Keywords: Courts, Regressive effects, Small claims court, Access to justice, Litigant behavior, Public goods, Empirical law and economics, Jurisdiction
We examine this proposition by studying the effect of an increase in the jurisdictional limit of the Ontario Small Claims Court. Prior to January 2010, claims up to $10,000 could be litigated in the small claims court. After January 2010, this jurisdictional limit increased to include all claims up to $25,000. We study patterns in nearly 625,000 disputes over the period 2006-2013.
In this paper, we investigate plaintiff behavior. Interestingly, the total number of claims filed by plaintiffs does not increase significantly with the increased jurisdictional limit. We do find, however, changes to the composition of plaintiffs. Following the jurisdictional change, we find that plaintiffs using the small claims court are, on average, from richer neighborhoods. We also find that proportion of plaintiffs from poorer neighborhoods drops. The drop-off is most pronounced in plaintiffs from the poorest 10% of neighborhoods.
We explore potential explanations for this regressive effect, including crowding out, congestion, increased legal representation, and behavioral influences. Our findings suggest that legislative attempts to make the courts more accessible may have unintended regressive consequences.
Keywords: Courts, Regressive effects, Small claims court, Access to justice, Litigant behavior, Public goods, Empirical law and economics, Jurisdiction
From Existential to Social Understandings of Risk - Examining Gender Differences in Nonreligion
From
Existential to Social Understandings of Risk - Examining Gender
Differences in Nonreligion. By Penny Edgell, Jacqui Frost, Evan Stewart
http://journals.sagepub.com/do
Abstract: Across many social contexts, women are found to be more religious than men. Risk preference theory proposes that women are less likely than men to accept the existential risks associated with nonbelief. Building on previous critiques of this theory, we argue that the idea of risk is relevant to understanding the relationship between gender and religiosity if risk is understood not as existential, but as social. The research on existential risk focuses on religious identification as solely a matter of belief; as part of the movement away from this cognitivist bias, we develop the concept of social risk to theorize the ways that social location and differential levels of power and privilege influence women’s nonreligious choices. We show that women’s nonreligious preferences in many ways mirror those of other marginalized groups, including nonwhites and the less educated. We argue that nonreligion is socially risky, that atheism is more socially risky than other forms of nonreligion, and that women and members of other marginalized groups avoid the most socially risky forms of nonreligion.
http://journals.sagepub.com/do
Abstract: Across many social contexts, women are found to be more religious than men. Risk preference theory proposes that women are less likely than men to accept the existential risks associated with nonbelief. Building on previous critiques of this theory, we argue that the idea of risk is relevant to understanding the relationship between gender and religiosity if risk is understood not as existential, but as social. The research on existential risk focuses on religious identification as solely a matter of belief; as part of the movement away from this cognitivist bias, we develop the concept of social risk to theorize the ways that social location and differential levels of power and privilege influence women’s nonreligious choices. We show that women’s nonreligious preferences in many ways mirror those of other marginalized groups, including nonwhites and the less educated. We argue that nonreligion is socially risky, that atheism is more socially risky than other forms of nonreligion, and that women and members of other marginalized groups avoid the most socially risky forms of nonreligion.
When Children Rule: Parenting in Modern Families
When Children Rule: Parenting in Modern Families. By Sebastian Galiani, Matthew Staiger, Gustavo Torrens
NBER Working Paper No. 23087
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23
NBER Program(s): ED
During the 20th century there was a secular transformation within American families from a household dominated by the father to a more egalitarian one in which the wife and the children have been empowered. This transformation coincided with two major economic and demographic changes, namely the increase in economic opportunities for women and a decline in family size. To explain the connection between these trends and the transformation in family relationships we develop a novel model of parenting styles that highlights the importance of competition within the family. The key intuition is that the rise in relative earnings of wives increased competition between spouses for the love and affection of their children while the decline in family size reduced competition between children for resources from their parents. The combined effect has empowered children within the household and allowed them to capture an increasing share of the household surplus over the past hundred years
NBER Working Paper No. 23087
http://www.nber.org/papers/w23
NBER Program(s): ED
During the 20th century there was a secular transformation within American families from a household dominated by the father to a more egalitarian one in which the wife and the children have been empowered. This transformation coincided with two major economic and demographic changes, namely the increase in economic opportunities for women and a decline in family size. To explain the connection between these trends and the transformation in family relationships we develop a novel model of parenting styles that highlights the importance of competition within the family. The key intuition is that the rise in relative earnings of wives increased competition between spouses for the love and affection of their children while the decline in family size reduced competition between children for resources from their parents. The combined effect has empowered children within the household and allowed them to capture an increasing share of the household surplus over the past hundred years
Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure
Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure. By Elseline Hoekzema et al.
Nature Neuroscience
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v20/n2/full/nn.4458.html
Abstract: Pregnancy involves radical hormone surges and biological adaptations. However, the effects of pregnancy on the human brain are virtually unknown. Here we show, using a prospective ('pre'-'post' pregnancy) study involving first-time mothers and fathers and nulliparous control groups, that pregnancy renders substantial changes in brain structure, primarily reductions in gray matter (GM) volume in regions subserving social cognition. The changes were selective for the mothers and highly consistent, correctly classifying all women as having undergone pregnancy or not in-between sessions. Interestingly, the volume reductions showed a substantial overlap with brain regions responding to the women's babies postpartum. Furthermore, the GM volume changes of pregnancy predicted measures of postpartum maternal attachment, suggestive of an adaptive process serving the transition into motherhood. Another follow-up session showed that the GM reductions endured for at least 2 years post-pregnancy. Our data provide the first evidence that pregnancy confers long-lasting changes in a woman's brain.
Nature Neuroscience
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v20/n2/full/nn.4458.html
Abstract: Pregnancy involves radical hormone surges and biological adaptations. However, the effects of pregnancy on the human brain are virtually unknown. Here we show, using a prospective ('pre'-'post' pregnancy) study involving first-time mothers and fathers and nulliparous control groups, that pregnancy renders substantial changes in brain structure, primarily reductions in gray matter (GM) volume in regions subserving social cognition. The changes were selective for the mothers and highly consistent, correctly classifying all women as having undergone pregnancy or not in-between sessions. Interestingly, the volume reductions showed a substantial overlap with brain regions responding to the women's babies postpartum. Furthermore, the GM volume changes of pregnancy predicted measures of postpartum maternal attachment, suggestive of an adaptive process serving the transition into motherhood. Another follow-up session showed that the GM reductions endured for at least 2 years post-pregnancy. Our data provide the first evidence that pregnancy confers long-lasting changes in a woman's brain.
A Virtual Out-of-Body Experience Reduces Fear of Death
A Virtual Out-of-Body Experience Reduces Fear of Death. By Pierre Bourdin et al.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169343
PLoS ONE, January 2017
Abstract: Immersive virtual reality can be used to visually substitute a person’s real body by a life-sized virtual body (VB) that is seen from first person perspective. Using real-time motion capture the VB can be programmed to move synchronously with the real body (visuomotor synchrony), and also virtual objects seen to strike the VB can be felt through corresponding vibrotactile stimulation on the actual body (visuotactile synchrony). This setup typically gives rise to a strong perceptual illusion of ownership over the VB. When the viewpoint is lifted up and out of the VB so that it is seen below this may result in an out-of-body experience (OBE). In a two-factor between-groups experiment with 16 female participants per group we tested how fear of death might be influenced by two different methods for producing an OBE. In an initial embodiment phase where both groups experienced the same multisensory stimuli there was a strong feeling of body ownership. Then the viewpoint was lifted up and behind the VB. In the experimental group once the viewpoint was out of the VB there was no further connection with it (no visuomotor or visuotactile synchrony). In a control condition, although the viewpoint was in the identical place as in the experimental group, visuomotor and visuotactile synchrony continued. While both groups reported high scores on a question about their OBE illusion, the experimental group had a greater feeling of disownership towards the VB below compared to the control group, in line with previous findings. Fear of death in the experimental group was found to be lower than in the control group. This is in line with previous reports that naturally occurring OBEs are often associated with enhanced belief in life after death.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169343
PLoS ONE, January 2017
Abstract: Immersive virtual reality can be used to visually substitute a person’s real body by a life-sized virtual body (VB) that is seen from first person perspective. Using real-time motion capture the VB can be programmed to move synchronously with the real body (visuomotor synchrony), and also virtual objects seen to strike the VB can be felt through corresponding vibrotactile stimulation on the actual body (visuotactile synchrony). This setup typically gives rise to a strong perceptual illusion of ownership over the VB. When the viewpoint is lifted up and out of the VB so that it is seen below this may result in an out-of-body experience (OBE). In a two-factor between-groups experiment with 16 female participants per group we tested how fear of death might be influenced by two different methods for producing an OBE. In an initial embodiment phase where both groups experienced the same multisensory stimuli there was a strong feeling of body ownership. Then the viewpoint was lifted up and behind the VB. In the experimental group once the viewpoint was out of the VB there was no further connection with it (no visuomotor or visuotactile synchrony). In a control condition, although the viewpoint was in the identical place as in the experimental group, visuomotor and visuotactile synchrony continued. While both groups reported high scores on a question about their OBE illusion, the experimental group had a greater feeling of disownership towards the VB below compared to the control group, in line with previous findings. Fear of death in the experimental group was found to be lower than in the control group. This is in line with previous reports that naturally occurring OBEs are often associated with enhanced belief in life after death.
Propaganda can be effective at changing the behavior of all citizens even if most do not believe it
Propaganda and credulity, by Andrew T. Little. In
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s
Highlights
• Propaganda can be effective at changing the behavior of all citizens even if most do not believe it.
• This effect is particularly strong when citizens care a lot about behaving in a similar manner as others.
• However, the government picks less propaganda when it is more effective.
Abstract: I develop a theory of propaganda which affects mass behavior without necessarily affecting mass beliefs. A group of citizens observe a signal of their government's performance, which is upwardly inflated by propaganda. Citizens want to support the government if it performs well and if others are supportive (i.e., to coordinate). Some citizens are unaware of the propaganda (“credulous”). Because of the coordination motive, the non-credulous still respond to propaganda, and when the coordination motive dominates they perfectly mimic the actions of the credulous. So, all can act as if they believe the government's lies even though most do not. The government benefits from this responsiveness to manipulation since it leads to a more compliant citizenry, but uses more propaganda precisely when citizens are less responsive.
JEL classification: D83
Keywords: Political economy; Propaganda; Authoritarian politics
Games and Economic Behavior,Volume 102, March 2017, Pages 224–232
Highlights
• Propaganda can be effective at changing the behavior of all citizens even if most do not believe it.
• This effect is particularly strong when citizens care a lot about behaving in a similar manner as others.
• However, the government picks less propaganda when it is more effective.
Abstract: I develop a theory of propaganda which affects mass behavior without necessarily affecting mass beliefs. A group of citizens observe a signal of their government's performance, which is upwardly inflated by propaganda. Citizens want to support the government if it performs well and if others are supportive (i.e., to coordinate). Some citizens are unaware of the propaganda (“credulous”). Because of the coordination motive, the non-credulous still respond to propaganda, and when the coordination motive dominates they perfectly mimic the actions of the credulous. So, all can act as if they believe the government's lies even though most do not. The government benefits from this responsiveness to manipulation since it leads to a more compliant citizenry, but uses more propaganda precisely when citizens are less responsive.
JEL classification: D83
Keywords: Political economy; Propaganda; Authoritarian politics
Saturday, June 3, 2017
Political Persecutions and Social Capital: Evidence from Imperial China
Autocratic Rule and Social Capital: Evidence from Imperial China. Melanie Meng Xue, Mark Koyama
November 30, 2016. GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 16-50. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p
Abstract: This paper studies the consequences of autocratic rule for social capital in the context of imperial China. Between 1660-1788, individuals were persecuted if they were suspected of subversive attitudes towards the autocratic ruler. Using a difference-in-differences approach, our main finding is that these persecutions led to an average decline of 38% in the number of charitable organizations in each subsequent decade.
To investigate the long-run effect of persecutions, we examine the impact that they had on the provision of local public goods. During this period, local public goods, such as basic education, relied primarily on voluntary contributions and local cooperation. We show that persecutions are associated with lower provision of basic education suggesting that they permanently reduced social capital. This is consistent with what we find in modern survey data: persecutions left a legacy of mistrust and political apathy.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 83
Keywords: Social Capital, Institutions, Autocratic Rule, Persecutions, China
November 30, 2016. GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 16-50. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p
Abstract: This paper studies the consequences of autocratic rule for social capital in the context of imperial China. Between 1660-1788, individuals were persecuted if they were suspected of subversive attitudes towards the autocratic ruler. Using a difference-in-differences approach, our main finding is that these persecutions led to an average decline of 38% in the number of charitable organizations in each subsequent decade.
To investigate the long-run effect of persecutions, we examine the impact that they had on the provision of local public goods. During this period, local public goods, such as basic education, relied primarily on voluntary contributions and local cooperation. We show that persecutions are associated with lower provision of basic education suggesting that they permanently reduced social capital. This is consistent with what we find in modern survey data: persecutions left a legacy of mistrust and political apathy.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 83
Keywords: Social Capital, Institutions, Autocratic Rule, Persecutions, China
Insurance policy specifically for self-inflicted liver damage
China’s Zhongan sees scope for offbeat insurance.
https://www.ft.com/content/bee51a52-accd-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122
Financial Times
Medical insurance often becomes invalid if the
customer is drunk. But during the football World Cup in 2014,
Shanghai-based Zhongan Insurance turned that rule upside down by
offering Chinese football fans a policy specifically for self-inflicted
liver damage.
It cost less than $1 and covered sports enthusiasts against alcohol poisoning for 30 days — paying out up to Rmb2,000 ($290) for hospital fees. It soon came to be known as “watching-football-drinking-too-much” insurance.
It cost less than $1 and covered sports enthusiasts against alcohol poisoning for 30 days — paying out up to Rmb2,000 ($290) for hospital fees. It soon came to be known as “watching-football-drinking-too-much” insurance.
This has not been Zhongan’s only foray into more specialist areas of China’s insurancemarket. Another of its policies, called “high heat”, reimburses customers when the temperature hits 37°C. Another insures against flight delays — and, in many cases, pays out while the customer is still waiting in the departure lounge.
Zhongan has sold 5800m policies to 460m customers. This has quickly translated into profit.
Upward Mobility and Discrimination: The Case of Asian Americans
Upward Mobility and Discrimination: The Case of Asian Americans. By Nathaniel Hilger
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22748
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22748
Asian Americans are the only non-white US racial group to experience
long-term, institutional discrimination and subsequently exhibit high
income. I re-examine this puzzle in California, where most Asians
settled historically. Asians achieved extraordinary upward mobility
relative to blacks and whites for every cohort born in California since
1920. This mobility stemmed primarily from gains in earnings conditional
on education, rather than unusual educational mobility. Historical test
score and prejudice data suggest low initial earnings for Asians,
unlike blacks, reflected prejudice rather than skills. Post-war declines
in discrimination interacting with previously uncompensated skills can
account for Asians’ extraordinary upward mobility.
Sabotage occurs more often when Green Party candidates fail to win even minor offices
The political roots of domestic environmental sabotage
Benjamin Farrer & Graig Klein
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties,
Abstract: In this paper, we demonstrate that when environmentalist niche parties compete in a given constituency over a number of elections, but continually fail to win seats, then environmental sabotage becomes more frequent in that constituency. When mainstream tactics fail, radical tactics are used more frequently. Using a new data-set on the success rates of all Green Party candidates in US states, we show that environmental sabotage occurs more often when Green Party candidates fail to win even minor offices. This is true even when we control for other political expressions of environmentalism, such as interest group activity, and when we define ‘success’ through votes not seats. We discuss the implications of this for environmental politics, for social movements and democracy, and for political violence in the US.
Benjamin Farrer & Graig Klein
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties,
Volume 27, 2017 - Issue 2
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457289.2016.1247846Abstract: In this paper, we demonstrate that when environmentalist niche parties compete in a given constituency over a number of elections, but continually fail to win seats, then environmental sabotage becomes more frequent in that constituency. When mainstream tactics fail, radical tactics are used more frequently. Using a new data-set on the success rates of all Green Party candidates in US states, we show that environmental sabotage occurs more often when Green Party candidates fail to win even minor offices. This is true even when we control for other political expressions of environmentalism, such as interest group activity, and when we define ‘success’ through votes not seats. We discuss the implications of this for environmental politics, for social movements and democracy, and for political violence in the US.
Children of low-income parents are much less likely to become inventors than their higher-income counterparts
The Lifecycle of Inventors, by Alex Bell et al.
Harvard Working Paper, June 2016
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p
Abstract: We use administrative records on the population of individuals who applied for or were granted a patent between 1996 and 2014 to characterize the lives of more than 1.2 million inventors in the United States. We show that children of low-income parents are much less likely to become inventors than their higher-income counterparts (as are minorities and women). Decompositions using third grade and older test scores indicate that this income-innovation gap can largely be accounted for by differences in human capital acquisition while children are growing up. We establish the importance of "innovation exposure effects" during childhood by showing that growing up in an area with a high innovation rate in a particular technology class is associated with a much higher probability of becoming an inventor specifically in that technology class. Similarly, exposure to innovation from parents or their colleagues in specific fields is also associated with greater future innovation by children in those same technological fields. Inventors' incomes are very skewed and uncertain at the start of their career. While our analysis does not directly identify the causal mechanisms that drive innovation, our descriptive findings shed light on which types of policy tools are likely to be most effective in sparking innovation. Calibrations suggest that "extensive margin" policies drawing more talented children from low-income families into the R&D sector have great potential to improve aggregate innovation rates.
Harvard Working Paper, June 2016
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p
Abstract: We use administrative records on the population of individuals who applied for or were granted a patent between 1996 and 2014 to characterize the lives of more than 1.2 million inventors in the United States. We show that children of low-income parents are much less likely to become inventors than their higher-income counterparts (as are minorities and women). Decompositions using third grade and older test scores indicate that this income-innovation gap can largely be accounted for by differences in human capital acquisition while children are growing up. We establish the importance of "innovation exposure effects" during childhood by showing that growing up in an area with a high innovation rate in a particular technology class is associated with a much higher probability of becoming an inventor specifically in that technology class. Similarly, exposure to innovation from parents or their colleagues in specific fields is also associated with greater future innovation by children in those same technological fields. Inventors' incomes are very skewed and uncertain at the start of their career. While our analysis does not directly identify the causal mechanisms that drive innovation, our descriptive findings shed light on which types of policy tools are likely to be most effective in sparking innovation. Calibrations suggest that "extensive margin" policies drawing more talented children from low-income families into the R&D sector have great potential to improve aggregate innovation rates.
Relationship between spicy food and aggressive cognition
You are what you eat: An empirical investigation of the relationship
between spicy food and aggressive cognition. By Rishtee K. Batra, Tanuka
Ghoshal, Rajagopal Raghunathan
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s
Abstract: The popular saying “you are what you eat” suggests that people take on the characteristics of the food they eat. Wisdom from ancient texts and practitioners of alternative medicine seem to share the intuition that consuming spicy food may increase aggression. However, this relationship has not been empirically tested. In this research, we posit that those who consume “hot” and “spicy” food may be more prone to thoughts related to aggression. Across three studies, we find evidence for this proposition. Study 1 reveals that those who typically consume spicy food exhibit higher levels of trait aggression. Studies 2 and 3 reveal, respectively, that consumption of, and even mere exposure to spicy food, can semantically activate concepts related to aggression as well as lead to higher levels of perceived aggressive intent in others. Our work contributes to the literature on precursors of aggression, and has substantive implications for several stakeholders, including marketers, parents and policy makers.
Keywords: Aggressive cognition; Aggressive intent; Spicy food
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 71, July 2017, Pages 42–48
Abstract: The popular saying “you are what you eat” suggests that people take on the characteristics of the food they eat. Wisdom from ancient texts and practitioners of alternative medicine seem to share the intuition that consuming spicy food may increase aggression. However, this relationship has not been empirically tested. In this research, we posit that those who consume “hot” and “spicy” food may be more prone to thoughts related to aggression. Across three studies, we find evidence for this proposition. Study 1 reveals that those who typically consume spicy food exhibit higher levels of trait aggression. Studies 2 and 3 reveal, respectively, that consumption of, and even mere exposure to spicy food, can semantically activate concepts related to aggression as well as lead to higher levels of perceived aggressive intent in others. Our work contributes to the literature on precursors of aggression, and has substantive implications for several stakeholders, including marketers, parents and policy makers.
Keywords: Aggressive cognition; Aggressive intent; Spicy food
Review of Vijay Joshi's India’s Long Road: The Search for Prosperity
India’s long road to prosperity, by Martin Wolf
Martin Wolf is impressed by an analysis of what the world’s largest democracy must do in order to thriveFinancial Times, May 24, 2017
https://www.ft.com/content/d5cf8bb0-3fc3-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2
India could do far better. That, in a sentence, is the conclusion of Vijay Joshi’s superb book. Joshi is an Indian economist who has spent most of his professional life at Oxford university. In this penetrating account of the past and present of Indian economic development, he casts a bright light on the prospects ahead. If India’s aim is to become a high-income country in the next generation, its economic, social and political performance needs to improve dramatically.
The good news is that there is room for improvement on many fronts. The bad news is that the obstacles to the needed improvement are huge. Worse, many emanate from the failures of the state and the political processes that guide it. Yet, as Joshi also notes, “The two fixed points in the socio-political setting of the Indian state’s development policies are that the country is a democracy, and an extremely diverse society.” The challenge is to improve performance within the constraints of these realities.
The success of Indian development matters, for at least three reasons: India will soon be the most populous country in the world; it is already far and away the largest democracy; and, above all, despite progress in the last three decades, between 270m and 360m Indians still lived in dire poverty (on slightly different definitions) in 2011 (that is, between 22 and 30 per cent of the population). If extreme poverty is to be eliminated from the world, it must be eliminated in India.
While the focus of India’s Long Road is on the economy, its analysis is appropriately comprehensive. It considers the post-independence growth record, the failure to create remunerative employment, the excessive role of publicly owned enterprises, the poor quality of Indian infrastructure and the inadequacy of environmental regulation. The book also analyses the successes and failures of macroeconomic management, the appalling quality of government-provided education and healthcare, the need for a better safety net for the poor, the long-term decay of the state, the prevalence of corruption and the role of India in the world economy.
In covering all these issues, Joshi combines enthusiastic engagement with the detachment of a scholar who has passed much of his life abroad. No better guide to India’s contemporary economy exists.
Over the past 70 years, India’s growth has shown two marked accelerations. The first followed independence in 1947. The second followed the economic liberalisation that began in the 1980s and accelerated dramatically after the balance of payments crisis of 1991. In the first period, growth averaged 3.5 per cent a year. In the second, it rose to 6 per cent (4 per cent per head). Unfortunately, after a further acceleration in the first decade of the 2000s, growth has slowed once again. The principal explanation for this recent slowdown is a marked weakening of investment by an over-indebted private sector.
"Joshi argues that India could provide a basic income to all by diverting resources wasted on subsidies"
So what should be the goal for the decades ahead? Joshi describes it simply as “rapid, inclusive, stable, and sustainable growth . . . within a political framework of liberal democracy”. More precisely, if incomes per head could grow at 7 per cent a year, India would achieve high-income status, at the level of Portugal, within a quarter of a century.
Only three economies have achieved something close to this in the past: Taiwan, South Korea and China. It represents an enormous challenge that cannot be met with the current “partial reform model”. The basic flaw of that model, argues Joshi, “is a failure to put the role of the state, and the relation between the state, the market, and the private sector, on the right footing”. The state, in brief, does what it does not need to do and fails to do what it does need to do.
It is no longer enough for the state merely to get out of the way, important though that still is in crucial areas. Among these is the labour market, whose huge distortions and inefficiencies have turned the demographic dividend into a demographic disaster.
Thus, in the 10 years from 1999 to 2009, India’s workforce increased by 63m. “Of these, 44 million joined the unorganized sector, 22 million became informal workers in the organized sector, and the number of formal workers in the organized sector fell by 3 million.” This is a social catastrophe. It is due not only to labour-market distortions, but to a host of constraints on the creation, operation and, not least, closure of organised and large-scale businesses.
Yet India also needs an effective state able to supply the public goods, public services and competent regulation on which an efficient economy depends. Unfortunately, that is not what now exists. All international surveys give India a very low rank for the efficiency and honesty of the state and the ease of doing business. Joshi argues that while the economy is more dynamic and the quality of policy has indeed improved since the 1980s, the quality of the state has deteriorated in many respects.
Among the many failures is the waste of state resources on inefficient subsidies that, though often given in the name of the poor, actually go to the better off. Indeed, one of the most original and persuasive aspects of the book is the argument that it would in principle be possible to provide a basic income to all Indians sufficient to lift everybody out of extreme poverty merely by diverting resources wasted on grotesquely costly subsidies. Yet, to take just one example, state governments continue to bribe farmers with free power, at the expense of a reliable electricity supply.
Will prime minister Narendra Modi be the new broom that sweeps all these cobwebs away? Alas no. His government’s performance is “mixed at best”. It has some achievements. But it has shown insufficient energy in tackling both the immediate problems of inadequate private investment, excessive debt and feeble banks, and the longer-term problems of dreadful education, lousy healthcare, weak infrastructure, corruption, regulatory incompetence, excessive interference and government waste.
A great opportunity for radically improved performance is being missed. This is not bad just for the Indian economy. There is a real danger that if the economy fails to perform as needed and desired, the governing Bharatiya Janata party will find itself increasingly attracted to its “dark side” of communal and caste division. That way lies not just economic failure, but possibly the destabilisation of Indian democracy, one of the great political achievements of the post-second world war era.
Those who care about the future of this remarkable country and indeed the future of democracy itself must hope that Modi gets this right. If they want to understand what he needs to do and why, they should first read this book.
India’s Long Road: The Search for Prosperity, by Vijay Joshi, Oxford University Press, RRP£22.99, 360 pages
Martin Wolf is the FT’s chief economics commentator
Martin Wolf is impressed by an analysis of what the world’s largest democracy must do in order to thriveFinancial Times, May 24, 2017
https://www.ft.com/content/d5cf8bb0-3fc3-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2
India could do far better. That, in a sentence, is the conclusion of Vijay Joshi’s superb book. Joshi is an Indian economist who has spent most of his professional life at Oxford university. In this penetrating account of the past and present of Indian economic development, he casts a bright light on the prospects ahead. If India’s aim is to become a high-income country in the next generation, its economic, social and political performance needs to improve dramatically.
The good news is that there is room for improvement on many fronts. The bad news is that the obstacles to the needed improvement are huge. Worse, many emanate from the failures of the state and the political processes that guide it. Yet, as Joshi also notes, “The two fixed points in the socio-political setting of the Indian state’s development policies are that the country is a democracy, and an extremely diverse society.” The challenge is to improve performance within the constraints of these realities.
The success of Indian development matters, for at least three reasons: India will soon be the most populous country in the world; it is already far and away the largest democracy; and, above all, despite progress in the last three decades, between 270m and 360m Indians still lived in dire poverty (on slightly different definitions) in 2011 (that is, between 22 and 30 per cent of the population). If extreme poverty is to be eliminated from the world, it must be eliminated in India.
While the focus of India’s Long Road is on the economy, its analysis is appropriately comprehensive. It considers the post-independence growth record, the failure to create remunerative employment, the excessive role of publicly owned enterprises, the poor quality of Indian infrastructure and the inadequacy of environmental regulation. The book also analyses the successes and failures of macroeconomic management, the appalling quality of government-provided education and healthcare, the need for a better safety net for the poor, the long-term decay of the state, the prevalence of corruption and the role of India in the world economy.
In covering all these issues, Joshi combines enthusiastic engagement with the detachment of a scholar who has passed much of his life abroad. No better guide to India’s contemporary economy exists.
Over the past 70 years, India’s growth has shown two marked accelerations. The first followed independence in 1947. The second followed the economic liberalisation that began in the 1980s and accelerated dramatically after the balance of payments crisis of 1991. In the first period, growth averaged 3.5 per cent a year. In the second, it rose to 6 per cent (4 per cent per head). Unfortunately, after a further acceleration in the first decade of the 2000s, growth has slowed once again. The principal explanation for this recent slowdown is a marked weakening of investment by an over-indebted private sector.
"Joshi argues that India could provide a basic income to all by diverting resources wasted on subsidies"
So what should be the goal for the decades ahead? Joshi describes it simply as “rapid, inclusive, stable, and sustainable growth . . . within a political framework of liberal democracy”. More precisely, if incomes per head could grow at 7 per cent a year, India would achieve high-income status, at the level of Portugal, within a quarter of a century.
Only three economies have achieved something close to this in the past: Taiwan, South Korea and China. It represents an enormous challenge that cannot be met with the current “partial reform model”. The basic flaw of that model, argues Joshi, “is a failure to put the role of the state, and the relation between the state, the market, and the private sector, on the right footing”. The state, in brief, does what it does not need to do and fails to do what it does need to do.
It is no longer enough for the state merely to get out of the way, important though that still is in crucial areas. Among these is the labour market, whose huge distortions and inefficiencies have turned the demographic dividend into a demographic disaster.
Thus, in the 10 years from 1999 to 2009, India’s workforce increased by 63m. “Of these, 44 million joined the unorganized sector, 22 million became informal workers in the organized sector, and the number of formal workers in the organized sector fell by 3 million.” This is a social catastrophe. It is due not only to labour-market distortions, but to a host of constraints on the creation, operation and, not least, closure of organised and large-scale businesses.
Yet India also needs an effective state able to supply the public goods, public services and competent regulation on which an efficient economy depends. Unfortunately, that is not what now exists. All international surveys give India a very low rank for the efficiency and honesty of the state and the ease of doing business. Joshi argues that while the economy is more dynamic and the quality of policy has indeed improved since the 1980s, the quality of the state has deteriorated in many respects.
Among the many failures is the waste of state resources on inefficient subsidies that, though often given in the name of the poor, actually go to the better off. Indeed, one of the most original and persuasive aspects of the book is the argument that it would in principle be possible to provide a basic income to all Indians sufficient to lift everybody out of extreme poverty merely by diverting resources wasted on grotesquely costly subsidies. Yet, to take just one example, state governments continue to bribe farmers with free power, at the expense of a reliable electricity supply.
Will prime minister Narendra Modi be the new broom that sweeps all these cobwebs away? Alas no. His government’s performance is “mixed at best”. It has some achievements. But it has shown insufficient energy in tackling both the immediate problems of inadequate private investment, excessive debt and feeble banks, and the longer-term problems of dreadful education, lousy healthcare, weak infrastructure, corruption, regulatory incompetence, excessive interference and government waste.
A great opportunity for radically improved performance is being missed. This is not bad just for the Indian economy. There is a real danger that if the economy fails to perform as needed and desired, the governing Bharatiya Janata party will find itself increasingly attracted to its “dark side” of communal and caste division. That way lies not just economic failure, but possibly the destabilisation of Indian democracy, one of the great political achievements of the post-second world war era.
Those who care about the future of this remarkable country and indeed the future of democracy itself must hope that Modi gets this right. If they want to understand what he needs to do and why, they should first read this book.
India’s Long Road: The Search for Prosperity, by Vijay Joshi, Oxford University Press, RRP£22.99, 360 pages
Martin Wolf is the FT’s chief economics commentator
Determinants of financial outcomes and choices: the role of noncognitive abilities
Understanding the determinants of financial outcomes and choices: the
role of noncognitive abilities, Gianpaolo Parise and Kim Peijnenburg
BIS Working Papers No 640. May 2017
http://www.bis.org/publ/work64
We explore how financial distress and choices are affected by noncognitive abilities. Our measures stem from research in psychology and economics. In a representative panel of households, we find that people in the bottom decile of noncognitive abilities are five times more likely to experience financial distress compared to those in the top decile. Relatedly, individuals with lower noncognitive abilities make financial choices that increase their likelihood of distress: They are less likely to plan for retirement and save, and more likely to buy impulsively and to have unsecured debt. Causality is shown using childhood trauma as an instrument.
BIS Working Papers No 640. May 2017
http://www.bis.org/publ/work64
We explore how financial distress and choices are affected by noncognitive abilities. Our measures stem from research in psychology and economics. In a representative panel of households, we find that people in the bottom decile of noncognitive abilities are five times more likely to experience financial distress compared to those in the top decile. Relatedly, individuals with lower noncognitive abilities make financial choices that increase their likelihood of distress: They are less likely to plan for retirement and save, and more likely to buy impulsively and to have unsecured debt. Causality is shown using childhood trauma as an instrument.
Our social evaluation of other people is influenced by their faces and their voices. How?
Audiovisual Integration in Social Evaluation. By Mila Mileva et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, in press
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk
Abstract: Our social evaluation of other people is influenced by their faces and their voices. However, rather little is known about how these channels combine in forming “first impressions.” Over 5 experiments, we investigate the relative contributions of facial and vocal information for social judgments: dominance and trustworthiness. The experiments manipulate each of these sources of information within-person, combining faces and voices giving rise to different social attributions. We report that vocal pitch is a reliable source of information for judgments of dominance (Study 1), but not trustworthiness (Study 4). Faces and voices make reliable, but independent, contributions to social evaluation. However, voices have the larger influence in judgments of dominance (Study 2), whereas faces have the larger influence in judgments of trustworthiness (Study 5). The independent contribution of the 2 sources appears to be mandatory, as instructions to ignore 1 channel do not eliminate its influence (Study 3). Our results show that information contained in both the face and the voice contributes to first impression formation. This combination is, to some degree, outside conscious control, and the weighting of channel contribution varies according the trait being perceived.
Keywords: First impressions; social evaluation; audio-visual integration; faces; voices
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, in press
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk
Abstract: Our social evaluation of other people is influenced by their faces and their voices. However, rather little is known about how these channels combine in forming “first impressions.” Over 5 experiments, we investigate the relative contributions of facial and vocal information for social judgments: dominance and trustworthiness. The experiments manipulate each of these sources of information within-person, combining faces and voices giving rise to different social attributions. We report that vocal pitch is a reliable source of information for judgments of dominance (Study 1), but not trustworthiness (Study 4). Faces and voices make reliable, but independent, contributions to social evaluation. However, voices have the larger influence in judgments of dominance (Study 2), whereas faces have the larger influence in judgments of trustworthiness (Study 5). The independent contribution of the 2 sources appears to be mandatory, as instructions to ignore 1 channel do not eliminate its influence (Study 3). Our results show that information contained in both the face and the voice contributes to first impression formation. This combination is, to some degree, outside conscious control, and the weighting of channel contribution varies according the trait being perceived.
Keywords: First impressions; social evaluation; audio-visual integration; faces; voices
Independent of concealment frequency, frequency of mind-wandering to own secrets predicts lower well-being
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2017 May 8. doi: 10.1037/pspa0000085. [Epub ahead of print]
The Experience of Secrecy.
Abstract
The
concept of secrecy calls to mind a dyadic interaction: one person
hiding a secret from another during a conversation or social
interaction. The current work, however, demonstrates that this aspect of
secrecy is rather rare. Taking a broader view of secrecy as the intent
to conceal information, which only sometimes necessitates concealment,
yields a new psychology of secrecy. Ten studies demonstrate the secrets
people have, what it is like to have a secret, and what about secrecy is
related to lower well-being. We demonstrate that people catch
themselves spontaneously thinking about their secrets-they mind-wander
to them-far more frequently than they encounter social situations that
require active concealment of those secrets. Moreover, independent of
concealment frequency, the frequency of mind-wandering to secrets
predicts lower well-being (whereas the converse was not the case). We
explore the diversity of secrets people have and the harmful effects of
spontaneously thinking about those secrets in both recall tasks and in
longitudinal designs, analyzing more than 13,000 secrets across our
participant samples, with outcomes for relationship satisfaction,
authenticity, well-being, and physical health. These results demonstrate
that secrecy can be studied by having people think about their secrets,
and have implications for designing interventions to help people cope
with secrecy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
Patients treated by older physicians die more than patients cared for by younger ones, except those docs treating high volumes of patients
BMJ. 2017 May 16;357:j1797. doi: 10.1136/bmj.j1797.
Physician age and outcomes in elderly patients in hospital in the US: observational study.
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.jAbstract
Objectives To investigate whether outcomes of patients who were admitted to hospital differ between those treated by younger and older physicians.
Design: Observational study.
Setting: US acute care hospitals.
Participants: 20% random sample of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries aged ≥65 admitted to hospital with a medical condition in 2011-14 and treated by hospitalist physicians to whom they were assigned based on scheduled work shifts. To assess the generalizability of findings, analyses also included patients treated by general internists including both hospitalists and non-hospitalists.
Main outcome measures 30 day mortality and readmissions and costs of care.
Results: 736 537 admissions managed by 18 854 hospitalist physicians (median age 41) were included. Patients’ characteristics were similar across physician ages. After adjustment for characteristics of patients and physicians and hospital fixed effects (effectively comparing physicians within the same hospital), patients’ adjusted 30 day mortality rates were 10.8% for physicians aged <40 10.7="" 10.9="" 11.1="" 11.3="" 11.5="" 12.1="" 12.5="" 40-49="" 40="" 50-59="" a="" age="" aged="" among="" analyses.="" and="" association="" between="" br="" care="" confidence="" costs="" did="" for="" general="" high="" higher="" however="" in="" internists="" interval="" mortality.="" no="" not="" observed="" of="" older="" patient="" patients="" patterns="" physician="" physicians.="" physicians="" readmissions="" sensitivity="" several="" similar="" slightly="" there="" to="" vary="" volume="" was="" were="" while="" with="">
<40 10.7="" 10.9="" 11.1="" 11.3="" 11.5="" 12.1="" 12.5="" 40-49="" 50-59="" a="" age="" aged="" among="" analyses.="" and="" association="" between="" br="" care="" confidence="" costs="" did="" for="" general="" high="" higher="" however="" in="" internists="" interval="" mortality.="" no="" not="" observed="" of="" older="" patient="" patients="" patterns="" physician="" physicians.="" physicians="" readmissions="" sensitivity="" several="" similar="" slightly="" there="" to="" vary="" volume="" was="" were="" while="" with="">Conclusions: Within the same hospital, patients treated by older physicians had higher mortality than patients cared for by younger physicians, except those physicians treating high volumes of patients.
Ethnic and linguistic fractionalization contributes to poverty levels
Ethnic Diversity and Poverty. By Sefa Awawory Churchill, Russell Smyth
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worl
Highlights
. We examine the relationship between ethnic diversity and poverty.
. We measure poverty using a wide range of indicators from the World Bank and UNDP. Ethnic diversity is measured by both fractionalization and polarization.
. Ethnic diversity increases poverty.
Summary: We examine the relationship between ethnic diversity and poverty for a cross-sectional sample of developing countries. We measure diversity using indices of ethnic and linguistic fractionalization, and measure poverty using the multidimensional poverty index (MPI), multidimensional poverty headcount (MPH), intensity of deprivation, poverty gap, and poverty headcount ratio. We find that ethnic and linguistic fractionalization contributes to poverty levels. Specifically, after controlling for endogeneity, we find that a standard deviation increase in ethnic fractionalization is associated with a 0.32-, 0.44- and 0.53-standard deviation increase in the MPI, MPH and the intensity of deprivation, respectively. Moreover, a standard deviation increase in ethnic fractionalization is associated with between a 0.34- and 0.63-standard deviation increase in the population living below $1.90 and $3.10, the poverty gap at $1.90 and $3.10 a day and the headcount ratio at $1.90 and $3.10 a day. Similar results are also observed for linguistic fractionalization with standardized coefficients between 0.53 and 0.93. We find that our results are robust to alternative ways to measure poverty and ethnic diversity including ethnic polarization as well as alternative approaches to address endogeneity.
Key words: ethnic diversity; poverty; fractionalization; polarization
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worl
World Development, Volume 95, July 2017, Pages 285–302
Highlights
. We examine the relationship between ethnic diversity and poverty.
. We measure poverty using a wide range of indicators from the World Bank and UNDP. Ethnic diversity is measured by both fractionalization and polarization.
. Ethnic diversity increases poverty.
Summary: We examine the relationship between ethnic diversity and poverty for a cross-sectional sample of developing countries. We measure diversity using indices of ethnic and linguistic fractionalization, and measure poverty using the multidimensional poverty index (MPI), multidimensional poverty headcount (MPH), intensity of deprivation, poverty gap, and poverty headcount ratio. We find that ethnic and linguistic fractionalization contributes to poverty levels. Specifically, after controlling for endogeneity, we find that a standard deviation increase in ethnic fractionalization is associated with a 0.32-, 0.44- and 0.53-standard deviation increase in the MPI, MPH and the intensity of deprivation, respectively. Moreover, a standard deviation increase in ethnic fractionalization is associated with between a 0.34- and 0.63-standard deviation increase in the population living below $1.90 and $3.10, the poverty gap at $1.90 and $3.10 a day and the headcount ratio at $1.90 and $3.10 a day. Similar results are also observed for linguistic fractionalization with standardized coefficients between 0.53 and 0.93. We find that our results are robust to alternative ways to measure poverty and ethnic diversity including ethnic polarization as well as alternative approaches to address endogeneity.
Key words: ethnic diversity; poverty; fractionalization; polarization
The Effect of Income on Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from the 2008 Economic Stimulus Tax Rebates
The Effect of Income on Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from the 2008 Economic Stimulus Tax Rebates. By Marta Lachowska. In Journal of Human Resources, Oct 2015
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2682543##
Abstract: This paper uses tax rebate payments from the 2008 economic stimulus to estimate the effect of a one-time change in income on three measures of subjective well-being: life satisfaction, health satisfaction, and affect. The income effect is identified by exploiting the plausibly exogenous variation in the payment schedule of the rebates. Using both ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares estimators, I find that the rebates had a large and positive impact on affect, which is explained by a reduction in feelings of stress and worry. For life satisfaction and health satisfaction, there is weaker evidence of a positive impact. Overall, the results show that a temporary increase in liquidity may enhance emotional well-being and that this effect is relatively stronger for low-income respondents.
Keywords: Subjective well-being, affect, income effect, quasi-experiment, instrumental variable
JEL Classification: I31, H31, E62
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2682543##
Abstract: This paper uses tax rebate payments from the 2008 economic stimulus to estimate the effect of a one-time change in income on three measures of subjective well-being: life satisfaction, health satisfaction, and affect. The income effect is identified by exploiting the plausibly exogenous variation in the payment schedule of the rebates. Using both ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares estimators, I find that the rebates had a large and positive impact on affect, which is explained by a reduction in feelings of stress and worry. For life satisfaction and health satisfaction, there is weaker evidence of a positive impact. Overall, the results show that a temporary increase in liquidity may enhance emotional well-being and that this effect is relatively stronger for low-income respondents.
Keywords: Subjective well-being, affect, income effect, quasi-experiment, instrumental variable
JEL Classification: I31, H31, E62
On the Size of the Gender Difference in Competitiveness
On the Size of the Gender Difference in Competitiveness. By Silvia
Saccardo, Aniela Pietrasz, Uri Gneezy. In Management Science, http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc
Abstract: We design a new procedure for measuring competitiveness and use it to estimate the magnitude of the gender gap in competitiveness. Before working on a task, participants choose what percentage of their payoffs will be based on a piece-rate compensation scheme; the rest of their payoff is allocated to a competitive compensation scheme. This novel procedure allows us to distinguish between 101 levels of competitiveness, as opposed to the binary measure used in the literature. Whereas the binary measure allows researchers to conclude that about twice as many men as women choose to compete (typically two-thirds versus one-third), the new procedure sheds light on the intensive margin. We find that the intensity of the preference is more extreme than the binary measure could detect. For example, we find that only one-fifth of the most competitive 25% of our participants are women, and the most competitive 10% of our participants are all men. The new procedure also allows us to study the correlation between competitiveness and parameters such as overconfidence, attitudes toward risk, and ambiguity.
Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2
Keywords: gender; competitiveness; behavioral economics
Abstract: We design a new procedure for measuring competitiveness and use it to estimate the magnitude of the gender gap in competitiveness. Before working on a task, participants choose what percentage of their payoffs will be based on a piece-rate compensation scheme; the rest of their payoff is allocated to a competitive compensation scheme. This novel procedure allows us to distinguish between 101 levels of competitiveness, as opposed to the binary measure used in the literature. Whereas the binary measure allows researchers to conclude that about twice as many men as women choose to compete (typically two-thirds versus one-third), the new procedure sheds light on the intensive margin. We find that the intensity of the preference is more extreme than the binary measure could detect. For example, we find that only one-fifth of the most competitive 25% of our participants are women, and the most competitive 10% of our participants are all men. The new procedure also allows us to study the correlation between competitiveness and parameters such as overconfidence, attitudes toward risk, and ambiguity.
Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2
Keywords: gender; competitiveness; behavioral economics
Perceived warmth and competence of others shape voluntary deceptive behaviour
Perceived warmth and competence of others shape voluntary deceptive
behaviour in a morally relevant setting. Br J Psychol. 2017 Mar 9. doi:
10.1111/bjop.12245. By Azevedo RT, Panasiti MS, Maglio R, Aglioti SM.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p
Abstract: The temptation to deceive others compares to a moral dilemma: it involves a conflict between the temptation to obtain some benefit and the desire to conform to personal and social moral norms or avoid aversive social consequences. Thus, people might feel different levels of emotional and moral conflict depending on the target of the deception. Here we explored, in a morally relevant setting, how social judgements based on two fundamental dimensions of human social cognition - 'warmth' and 'competence' - impact on the decision to deceive others. Results revealed independent effects for warmth and competence. Specifically, while people are less inclined to deceive for self-gain those individuals they perceive as warm, they also tend to lie more to highly competent others. Furthermore, the perceived warmth and competence modulated the general tendency to reduce deceptive behaviour when there was a risk of disclosure compared to when the lying was anonymous, highlighting the importance of these judgements in social evaluation processes. Together, our results demonstrate that the emotional costs and personal moral standards that inhibit engagement in deceptive behaviour are not stable but rather malleable according to the target and the consequences of the deception.
© 2017 The British Psychological Society.
KEYWORDS: bias; deception; guilt; lie; moral; stereotype content model
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p
Abstract: The temptation to deceive others compares to a moral dilemma: it involves a conflict between the temptation to obtain some benefit and the desire to conform to personal and social moral norms or avoid aversive social consequences. Thus, people might feel different levels of emotional and moral conflict depending on the target of the deception. Here we explored, in a morally relevant setting, how social judgements based on two fundamental dimensions of human social cognition - 'warmth' and 'competence' - impact on the decision to deceive others. Results revealed independent effects for warmth and competence. Specifically, while people are less inclined to deceive for self-gain those individuals they perceive as warm, they also tend to lie more to highly competent others. Furthermore, the perceived warmth and competence modulated the general tendency to reduce deceptive behaviour when there was a risk of disclosure compared to when the lying was anonymous, highlighting the importance of these judgements in social evaluation processes. Together, our results demonstrate that the emotional costs and personal moral standards that inhibit engagement in deceptive behaviour are not stable but rather malleable according to the target and the consequences of the deception.
© 2017 The British Psychological Society.
KEYWORDS: bias; deception; guilt; lie; moral; stereotype content model
Do Globalization and Free Markets Drive Obesity among Children and Youth? An Empirical Analysis, 1990–2013
Do Globalization and Free Markets Drive Obesity among Children and Youth? An Empirical Analysis, 1990–2013
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi
ABSTRACT: Scholars of public health identify globalization as a major cause of obesity. Free markets are blamed for spreading high calorie, nutrient-poor diets, and sedentary lifestyles across the globe. Global trade and investment agreements apparently curtail government action in the interest of public health. Globalization is also blamed for raising income inequality and social insecurities, which contribute to “obesogenic” environments. Contrary to recent empirical studies, this study demonstrates that globalization and several component parts, such as trade openness, FDI flows, and an index of economic freedom, reduce weight gain and obesity among children and youth, the most likely age cohort to be affected by the past three decades of globalization and attendant lifestyle changes. The results suggest strongly that local-level factors possibly matter much more than do global-level factors for explaining why some people remain thin and others put on weight. The proposition that globalization is homogenizing cultures across the globe in terms of diets and lifestyles is possibly exaggerated. The results support the proposition that globalized countries prioritize health because of the importance of labor productivity and human capital due to heightened market competition, ceteris paribus, even if rising incomes might drive high consumption.
KEYWORDS: Globalization, obesity, trade and FDI, economic freedom
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi
ABSTRACT: Scholars of public health identify globalization as a major cause of obesity. Free markets are blamed for spreading high calorie, nutrient-poor diets, and sedentary lifestyles across the globe. Global trade and investment agreements apparently curtail government action in the interest of public health. Globalization is also blamed for raising income inequality and social insecurities, which contribute to “obesogenic” environments. Contrary to recent empirical studies, this study demonstrates that globalization and several component parts, such as trade openness, FDI flows, and an index of economic freedom, reduce weight gain and obesity among children and youth, the most likely age cohort to be affected by the past three decades of globalization and attendant lifestyle changes. The results suggest strongly that local-level factors possibly matter much more than do global-level factors for explaining why some people remain thin and others put on weight. The proposition that globalization is homogenizing cultures across the globe in terms of diets and lifestyles is possibly exaggerated. The results support the proposition that globalized countries prioritize health because of the importance of labor productivity and human capital due to heightened market competition, ceteris paribus, even if rising incomes might drive high consumption.
KEYWORDS: Globalization, obesity, trade and FDI, economic freedom
Small association between socioeconomic status and adult fast-food consumption in US
The association between socioeconomic status and adult fast-food
consumption in the U.S. By Jay L. Zagorsky , Patricia K. Smith. Economics & Human Biology
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s
Highlights
• Fast-food consumption among adults varies little across SES, measured as income and wealth.
• Descriptive analyses indicate a weak, inverted U-shaped association between fast-food and SES.
• Checking nutrition labels frequently and drinking less soda predict less adult fast-food intake.
• More work hours predict greater fast-food intake.
Abstract: Health follows a socioeconomic status (SES) gradient in developed countries, with disease prevalence falling as SES rises. This pattern is partially attributed to differences in nutritional intake, with the poor eating the least healthy diets. This paper examines whether there is an SES gradient in one specific aspect of nutrition: fast-food consumption. Fast food is generally high in calories and low in nutrients. We use data from the 2008, 2010, and 2012 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to test whether adult fast-food consumption in the United States falls as monetary resources rise (n = 8136). This research uses more recent data than previous fast-food studies and includes a comprehensive measure of wealth in addition to income to measure SES.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s
Highlights
• Fast-food consumption among adults varies little across SES, measured as income and wealth.
• Descriptive analyses indicate a weak, inverted U-shaped association between fast-food and SES.
• Checking nutrition labels frequently and drinking less soda predict less adult fast-food intake.
• More work hours predict greater fast-food intake.
Abstract: Health follows a socioeconomic status (SES) gradient in developed countries, with disease prevalence falling as SES rises. This pattern is partially attributed to differences in nutritional intake, with the poor eating the least healthy diets. This paper examines whether there is an SES gradient in one specific aspect of nutrition: fast-food consumption. Fast food is generally high in calories and low in nutrients. We use data from the 2008, 2010, and 2012 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) to test whether adult fast-food consumption in the United States falls as monetary resources rise (n = 8136). This research uses more recent data than previous fast-food studies and includes a comprehensive measure of wealth in addition to income to measure SES.
Protestant Ethic and Entrepreneurship: Religious Minorities in the Holy Roman Empire
The Protestant Ethic and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Religious
Minorities in the Former Holy Roman Empire. By Luca Nunziata, Lorenzo
Rocco. European Journal of Political Economy
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpo
Abstract: We investigate the effect of Protestantism versus Catholicism on the decision to become an entrepreneur in former Holy Roman Empire regions. Our research design exploits religious minorities' strong attachment to religious ethic and the predetermined historical determination of religious minorities' geographical distribution in the 1500 s as a result of the “cuius regio eius religio” (whose realm, his religion) rule. We find that today Protestantism increases the probability to be an entrepreneur by around 5 percentage points with respect to Catholicism, a result that survives to a battery of robustness checks. We explicit the assumptions underlying the identification strategy and provide an extensive testing of their validity by making use of several European datasets.
JEL classification: J24; Z12; J21; Z13
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Religion; Culture; Protestantism; Catholicism
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpo
Abstract: We investigate the effect of Protestantism versus Catholicism on the decision to become an entrepreneur in former Holy Roman Empire regions. Our research design exploits religious minorities' strong attachment to religious ethic and the predetermined historical determination of religious minorities' geographical distribution in the 1500 s as a result of the “cuius regio eius religio” (whose realm, his religion) rule. We find that today Protestantism increases the probability to be an entrepreneur by around 5 percentage points with respect to Catholicism, a result that survives to a battery of robustness checks. We explicit the assumptions underlying the identification strategy and provide an extensive testing of their validity by making use of several European datasets.
JEL classification: J24; Z12; J21; Z13
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Religion; Culture; Protestantism; Catholicism
Socially excluded consumers tend to rely on affect to process information, and prefer persuasive messages based on feelings
Speaking to the heart: Social exclusion and reliance on feelings versus reasons in persuasion. By Fang-Chi Lu , Jayati Sinh
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s
Abstract: The authors of this study identify an alternative frame of communication for persuading people who feel socially excluded to behave in ways that benefit individual and social well-being, regardless of future connection possibilities. The authors suggest that socially excluded (included) consumers tend to rely on affect (cognition) in processing information, and to consequently prefer persuasive messages based on feelings (reasons). The effect occurs because people tend to ruminate about exclusionary events, which depletes self-regulatory resources. Thus, distraction that interferes with rumination can mitigate the social exclusion effect on affective processing. The authors present findings from five studies across various paradigms promoting personal and social well-being (i.e., donating blood, recycling, and consuming healthful foods) and discuss the theoretical and policy implications.
Keywords: Distraction intervention; Emotional versus rational appeals; Persuasion; Social exclusion
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s
Abstract: The authors of this study identify an alternative frame of communication for persuading people who feel socially excluded to behave in ways that benefit individual and social well-being, regardless of future connection possibilities. The authors suggest that socially excluded (included) consumers tend to rely on affect (cognition) in processing information, and to consequently prefer persuasive messages based on feelings (reasons). The effect occurs because people tend to ruminate about exclusionary events, which depletes self-regulatory resources. Thus, distraction that interferes with rumination can mitigate the social exclusion effect on affective processing. The authors present findings from five studies across various paradigms promoting personal and social well-being (i.e., donating blood, recycling, and consuming healthful foods) and discuss the theoretical and policy implications.
Keywords: Distraction intervention; Emotional versus rational appeals; Persuasion; Social exclusion
Expert ability can actually impair the accuracy of expert perception when judging others' performance
Larson, J. S., & Billeter, D. M. (2017). Adaptation and fallibility
in experts' judgments of novice performers. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(2), 271–288. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0
These authors show that expert ability can actually impair the accuracy of expert perception in the context of judging the performance of others.
They had individuals with a range of singing experience rank-order recordings of different vocalists singing "Let it Go" from best to worst. The true quality of each vocalist was assessed by applying a Bayesian model to the ranking data, and then judgment accuracy was assessed by comparing these "true" rankings to those given by the judges.
Expert singers were less accurate than intermediate singers at determining the relative quality of low-quality vocalists. A subsequent experiment showed that experts notice more mistakes than intermediate or novice judges, and judge these mistakes more harshly.
The authors interpret these results in terms of adaptation level theory, which suggests that people are better able to discriminate at their own adaptation level. Thus, performance expertise increases the ability to discriminate among top performers, but this reduces the ability to discriminate among lower-level performers.
These authors show that expert ability can actually impair the accuracy of expert perception in the context of judging the performance of others.
They had individuals with a range of singing experience rank-order recordings of different vocalists singing "Let it Go" from best to worst. The true quality of each vocalist was assessed by applying a Bayesian model to the ranking data, and then judgment accuracy was assessed by comparing these "true" rankings to those given by the judges.
Expert singers were less accurate than intermediate singers at determining the relative quality of low-quality vocalists. A subsequent experiment showed that experts notice more mistakes than intermediate or novice judges, and judge these mistakes more harshly.
The authors interpret these results in terms of adaptation level theory, which suggests that people are better able to discriminate at their own adaptation level. Thus, performance expertise increases the ability to discriminate among top performers, but this reduces the ability to discriminate among lower-level performers.
Complex trauma in childhood, a psychiatric diagnosis in adulthood: Making meaning of a double-edged phenomenon
Complex trauma in childhood, a psychiatric diagnosis in adulthood:
Making meaning of a double-edged phenomenon. By McCormack, Lynne;
Thomson, Sherilyn. In Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice,
and Policy, Vol 9(2), Mar 2017, 156-165.
Abstract: Objective: No known research explores the double-edged phenomenon of childhood trauma/adult mental health consumer. Therefore, whether receiving a psychiatric diagnosis in light of childhood trauma supports or impedes psychological wellbeing in adult life, is unknown. Method: Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) provided the methodological framework. Data were collected through the use of semistructured interviews. Analysis sought thematic representation from subjective interpretations of the experienced phenomenon: childhood trauma survivor/mental health consumer. Results: Data revealed 1 superordinate theme, Childhood Betrayal, Identity, and Worthiness, that overarched 5 subordinate themes a) legacies, (b) the label, (c) putting the jigsaw together, (d) stigma, and (e) better than good enough self. Legacies of doubt that perpetuated “not good enough” delayed the development of an adult identity of worthiness in these participants. Importantly, the right diagnosis separated self as worthy-adult from self as traumatized child and facilitated positive change for breaking harmful cycles, self-valuing, and increased empathy, wisdom, and patience. Conclusions: Findings inform future research and therapeutic practice in regards to adult help seeking behaviors in light of childhood trauma, often postponed through fear of stigma associated with mental health diagnoses and services. Similarly, findings suggest that ameliorating wellbeing may be dependent on a therapeutic relationship in which accuracy or right fit of diagnosis provides a conduit for the client to disengage from self-blame, unworthiness, and “not good enough.”
Abstract: Objective: No known research explores the double-edged phenomenon of childhood trauma/adult mental health consumer. Therefore, whether receiving a psychiatric diagnosis in light of childhood trauma supports or impedes psychological wellbeing in adult life, is unknown. Method: Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) provided the methodological framework. Data were collected through the use of semistructured interviews. Analysis sought thematic representation from subjective interpretations of the experienced phenomenon: childhood trauma survivor/mental health consumer. Results: Data revealed 1 superordinate theme, Childhood Betrayal, Identity, and Worthiness, that overarched 5 subordinate themes a) legacies, (b) the label, (c) putting the jigsaw together, (d) stigma, and (e) better than good enough self. Legacies of doubt that perpetuated “not good enough” delayed the development of an adult identity of worthiness in these participants. Importantly, the right diagnosis separated self as worthy-adult from self as traumatized child and facilitated positive change for breaking harmful cycles, self-valuing, and increased empathy, wisdom, and patience. Conclusions: Findings inform future research and therapeutic practice in regards to adult help seeking behaviors in light of childhood trauma, often postponed through fear of stigma associated with mental health diagnoses and services. Similarly, findings suggest that ameliorating wellbeing may be dependent on a therapeutic relationship in which accuracy or right fit of diagnosis provides a conduit for the client to disengage from self-blame, unworthiness, and “not good enough.”
Friday, June 2, 2017
Alemania reinventa la crisis energética. Por Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Alemania reinventa la crisis energética. Por Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB100014240527023044482045791857 20802195590
Wall Street Journal, Nov. 8, 2013 6:28 p.m. ET
ObamaCare no es el único tren en camino de descarrilar que tenemos ahora. Como Mao apremiando a los campesinos para que fundieran sus cacharros, sartenes y útiles de labranza para convertir a China en un coloso del acero de la noche a la mañana, Alemania repartía alegremente subsidios para alentar a los ciudadanos y granjeros a instalar paneles solares y molinos de viento para luego vender la energía resultante a las compañías eléctricas a precios inflados. El éxito —Alemania obtiene un 25% de su energía de las renovables— ha resultado ser un desastre.
Mientras los alemanes se apresuran a hacerse con su dinero fácil, la producción de dióxido de carbono ha aumentado, no disminuido, porque las compañías, privadas de capital, han pasado a quemar carbón americano barato para proveer de la necesaria energía cuando el viento y el sol nos fallan.
Debido a que sol y viento son intermitentes y la red eléctrica está pobremente preparada para acomodar estas fuentes, los apagones y las reducciones de suministro amenazan en este invierno.
Como las facturas las pagan hogares y empresas, los precios de la electricidad son el triple que en los EE UU. Un pánico apremiante es el del empleo, ya que industrias de gran aportación se dirigen a EE UU para aprovechar la energía barata que ha producido la revolución de las arenas bituminosas y los esquistos. El máximo responsable energético de Europa habla ya francamente de la "desindustrialización de Alemania".
En UK, donde la política pública ha sido casi tan generosa con las renovables, "Está bien ser muy, muy verde, pero no si estás interesado en la fabricación", según queja de un prominente CEO.
La gran virtud de la democracia es que no sigue con ciertos planes hasta el precipicio, pero los mecanismos normales de ajuste están agarrotados por el hecho de que el desastre energético de Europa implica al entero espectro político.
Ed Miliband, líder del Partido Laborista de UK, ha fijado el tema de las elecciones del próximo año cuando prometió recientemente congelar los precios de la energía si se le elegía. Pero los laboristas no van a abandonar los subsidios solares y eólicos que crearon ellos mismos. Quieren dejarlos grabados en piedra, pasando los costes a las empresas. En Alemania, la conservadora Angela Merkel se adhirió completamente a las posiciones económicas sobre energía de la oposición tras Fukushima, dejando a los electores alarmados sobre los precios de la energía sin lugar al que tornar en las elecciones de septiembre excepto a Angela Merkel, quien de forma vaga mostró alguna moderación sobre la energiewende (revolución energética) que lanzó y continúa liderando.
Un infrecuente destello de raciocinio ha partido en realidad del probable socio de coalición de Angela Merkel, el SPD, autor de la ley original sobre energías verdes, cuyo portavoz dice ahora: "Necesitamos asegurar que la energía renovable es asequible. Y necesitamos terminar con la idea de que podemos salirnos simultáneamente de nucleares y el carbón. No va a funcionar."
Es tentador asumir que los políticos europeos eran feligreses de la iglesia del calentamiento global. Pero más importante es su apego a la ideología del agotamiento de recursos, que les convenció de haber elegido un ganador en esta idea porque estaba garantizado que los precios de los combustibles fósiles harían parecer baratos a los de la energía verde.
"Cuanta más gente consuma petróleo y carbón, más subirá el precio, pero cuanta más gente consuma energías renovables, más bajará su precio", explicó el asesor energético de Angela Merkel.
He aquí una idea que parece ser impermeable a la experiencia y que es parte del bagaje de todo político que pudiera ser elegido en nuestro mundo. "Es absolutamente cierto que la demanda [de energías fósiles] subirá mucho más rápido que el suministro. Ese es un hecho", explicó el presidente Obama en 2011. Los EE UU "no pueden permitirse apostar nuestra prosperidad a largo plazo a un recurso que con el tiempo se agotará."
El Sr. Obama mencionó los fósiles no convencionales exactamente una vez en su discurso — y solo para decir que también se agotarían.
Si todo esto fuera cierto, Europa no habría llegado a sus presentes trabajos. Esta es la realidad: la revolución de los fósiles no convencionales es menos revolucionaria de lo que parece. Ha sacudido los errores comunes solo porque ha sucedido en las mismas narices de los americanos, en áreas pobladas en que se asumía que los "recursos" se habían extraído y transportado hace mucho.
De hecho, los depósitos de hidrocarburos que hay en el mundo son verdaderamente vastos, incluyendo entre ellos cantidades inimaginables de hidratos de metano . El desafío es el tecnológico y económico de buscar el acceso a un determinado recurso a un precio asequible — un desafío desde que se usaban trapos para empaparlos en petróleo de manantiales naturales. Durante ciento cincuenta años, el precio del barril de petróleo ha fluctuado entre $10 y $100 (en dólares de 2011), un rango suficiente para encontrar nuevas reservas cada vez que se quería requerían con objeto de mantener a los hidrocarburos como fuente de energía de precio competitivo.
La crisis energética europea es muy parecida a la nuestra de hace 40 años — autoinfligida. El sueño de Europa dejó de ser sostenible al minuto de que los precios de la energía empezaran a caer en un competidor comercial importante como los EE UU. LA gran pregunta ahora es cuán lejos irá la secudida política cuando toda la élite está implicada en un insatisfactorio experimento energético, que inevitablemente se ha visto envuelta en el desencanto del público con otro projecto fracasado de la élite, la Unión Europea.
Va a ser fascinante también la suerte de los shales europeos. En Europa, el gobierno, no los propietarios, controla y se beneficia de los recursos minerales, creando la política de suma zero en lo referente a recusos que han hecho al Oriente Medio un parangón de estabilidad y progreso. ¿Y el calentamiento global? Por suerte la respuesta es fácil. Los votantes europeos se van a acercar al punto en que están los americanos, dándose cuenta de que abjurar de la energía barata no hará nada por los niveles de CO2 (y aun menos por el clima) mientras otros no abjuren de la energía barata también.
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Germany Reinvents the Energy Crisis
A love affair with renewables brings high prices, potential blackouts and worries about 'deindustrialization.'
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB100014240527023044482045791857 20802195590
Wall Street Journal, Nov. 8, 2013 6:28 p.m. ET
ObamaCare isn't the only policy train wreck in progress. Like Mao urging peasants to melt down their pots, pans and farm tools to turn China into a steel-producing superpower overnight, Germany dished out subsidies to encourage homeowners and farmers to install solar panels and windmills and sell energy back to the power company at inflated prices. Success—Germany now gets 25% of its power from renewables—has turned out to be a disaster.
As Germans rush to grab this easy money, carbon dioxide output has risen, not fallen, because money-strapped utilities have switched to burning cheap American coal to provide the necessary standby power when wind and sun fail.
Because the sun and wind are intermittent and the power grid is poorly arranged to accommodate them, brownouts and blackouts threaten this winter.
Because the bills are paid by households and businesses, electricity rates are triple those in the United States. An immediate panic is jobs, as prized industries head to the U.S. for cheaper energy unleashed by the shale revolution. Europe's top energy official now speaks frankly of the "deindustrialization in Germany."
In Britain, where policy has been nearly as generous to renewables, "It's fine being very, very green, but not if you're interested in manufacturing," complains a prominent CEO.
Enlarge Image
Wind turbines stand behind a solar power park near Werder, Germany. Getty Images
Democracy's great virtue is that it doesn't follow schemes off a cliff, but the normal adjustment mechanisms are hampered by the fact that Europe's energy disaster implicates the entire political spectrum.
Ed Miliband, leader of Britain's Labour Party, set the theme for next year's British election when he recently promised to freeze energy prices if elected. But Labour isn't about to disown the solar and wind subsidies it created. It wants to soldier on, shifting the cost to business. In Germany, conservative Angela Merkel embraced the opposition's energy economics wholesale after Fukushima, leaving voters who are alarmed about energy prices no place to turn in September's election except Angela Merkel, who vaguely indicated some moderation of the energiewende (energy revolution) she launched and continues to champion.
An unwonted glimmer of reason has actually come from Mrs. Merkel's likely Social Democrat coalition partner, author of Germany's original green energy law, whose spokesman now says: "We need to ensure that renewable energy is affordable. And we need to put an end to the idea that we can pull out of nuclear and coal simultaneously. This won't work."
It's tempting to assume Europe's politicians were praying in the church of global warming. But more important is their subscription to resource-depletion ideology, which convinced them they'd picked a political winner because rising fossil fuel prices were guaranteed to make green energy look cheap in comparison.
"When more people consume oil and coal, the price will go up, but when more people consume renewable energy, the price of it will go down," explained Ms. Merkel's top energy adviser.
We have here an idea seemingly impervious to experience and part of the mental baggage of every politician likely to get elected in our world. "It is absolutely certain that [fossil energy] demand will go up a lot faster than supply. It's just a fact," President Obama explained in 2011. The U.S. "cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity on a resource that will eventually run out."
Mr. Obama mentioned shale exactly once in his speech—and only to say shale would run out too.
If all this were true, Europe wouldn't be in its present fix. Here's the real truth: The shale revolution is less revolutionary than it seems. It has shocked settled misconceptions only because it happened under the noses of Americans, in populated areas where the casual assumption was that "resources" would long ago have been dug out and carted away.
In fact, the world's store of fossil hydrocarbons is truly vast, including almost unimaginable quantities of methane hydrates. The challenge is the technological and economic one of getting access to a given resource at an affordable price—a challenge ever since men used rags to soak up oil from natural seeps. For 150 years, the price of a barrel of oil has fluctuated between $10 and $100 (in 2011 dollars), a range that has been sufficient to call forth new reserves and feedstocks whenever needed to maintain hydrocarbons as a source of competitively priced energy.
Europe's energy crisis is a lot like ours of 40 years ago—self- inflicted. Europe's dream was untenable the minute energy prices began falling in a major trade competitor like the United States. The big question now is how far will the political upheaval go when an entire elite is implicated in an unsatisfactory energy experiment, which inevitably has become wrapped up in public disappointment with another failed elite project, the European Union itself.
Fascinating too will be the fate of Europe's shale. In Europe, government, not landowners, controls and benefits from mineral resources, creating the zero-sum resource politics that have made the Mideast a paragon of stability and civil progress. What about global warming? At least that answer is easier. European voters are coming out where Americans have, realizing that foreswearing cheap energy will do nothing for CO2 levels (and even less for climate) as long as others aren't foreswearing cheap energy too.
Rules of Thumb for Bank Solvency Stress Testing. By Daniel C. Hardy and Christian Schmieder
IMF Working Paper No. 13/232
November 11, 2013
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=41047.0
Summary: Rules of thumb can be useful in undertaking quick, robust, and readily interpretable bank stress tests. Such rules of thumb are proposed for the behavior of banks’ capital ratios and key drivers thereof—primarily credit losses, income, credit growth, and risk weights—in advanced and emerging economies, under more or less severe stress conditions. The proposed rules imply disproportionate responses to large shocks, and can be used to quantify the cyclical behaviour of capital ratios under various regulatory approaches.
Motivated by the usefulness of rules of thumb,
this paper concentrates on the formulation of rules of thumb for key factors affecting bank solvency, namely credit losses, pre-impairment income and credit growth during crises, and illustrates their use in the simulation of the evolution of capital ratios under stress.4 We thereby seek to provide answers to the following common questions in stress testing:
How much do credit losses usually increase in case of a moderate, medium and severe macroeconomic downturn and/or financial stress event, e.g., if cumulative real GDP growth turns out to be, say, 4 or 8 percentage points below potential (or average or previous years') growth?
How typically do other major factors that affect capital ratios, such as profitability, credit growth, and risk-weighted assets (RWA), react under these circumstances?
Taking these considerations together, how does moderate, medium, or severe macro-financial stress translate into (a decrease in) bank capital, and thus, how much capital do banks need to cope with different levels of stress?
IMF Working Paper No. 13/232
November 11, 2013
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=41047.0
Summary: Rules of thumb can be useful in undertaking quick, robust, and readily interpretable bank stress tests. Such rules of thumb are proposed for the behavior of banks’ capital ratios and key drivers thereof—primarily credit losses, income, credit growth, and risk weights—in advanced and emerging economies, under more or less severe stress conditions. The proposed rules imply disproportionate responses to large shocks, and can be used to quantify the cyclical behaviour of capital ratios under various regulatory approaches.
Motivated by the usefulness of rules of thumb,
this paper concentrates on the formulation of rules of thumb for key factors affecting bank solvency, namely credit losses, pre-impairment income and credit growth during crises, and illustrates their use in the simulation of the evolution of capital ratios under stress.4 We thereby seek to provide answers to the following common questions in stress testing:
How much do credit losses usually increase in case of a moderate, medium and severe macroeconomic downturn and/or financial stress event, e.g., if cumulative real GDP growth turns out to be, say, 4 or 8 percentage points below potential (or average or previous years') growth?
How typically do other major factors that affect capital ratios, such as profitability, credit growth, and risk-weighted assets (RWA), react under these circumstances?
Taking these considerations together, how does moderate, medium, or severe macro-financial stress translate into (a decrease in) bank capital, and thus, how much capital do banks need to cope with different levels of stress?
Sunday, May 7, 2017
Macroprudential Liquidity Stress Testing in FSAPs for Systemically Important Financial Systems
Author/Editor: Andreas A. Jobst ; Christian Schmieder ; Li Lian Ong
http://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2017/05/01/Macroprudential-Liquidity-Stress-Testing-in-FSAPs-for-Systemically-Important-Financial-44873?cid=em-COM-123-35149Summary:Bank liquidity stress testing, which has become de rigueur following the costly lessons of the global financial crisis, remains underdeveloped compared to solvency stress testing. The ability to adequately identify, model and assess the impact of liquidity shocks, which are infrequent but can have a severe impact on affected banks and financial systems, is complicated not only by data limitations but also by interactions among multiple factors. This paper provides a conceptual overview of liquidity stress testing approaches for banks and discusses their implementation by IMF staff in the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) for countries with systemically important financial sectors over the last six years.
Series:Working Paper No. 17/102
Publication Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN/ISSN: 9781475597240/1018-5941
Stock No: WPIEA2017102
Pages: 56Monday, January 9, 2017
A way to market to conservatives the science behind climate change more effectively
Past-focused environmental comparisons promote pro-environmental outcomes for conservatives. By Matthew Baldwin and Joris Lammers
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/52/14953.abstract
Significance
Political polarization on important issues can have dire consequences for society, and divisions regarding the issue of climate change could be particularly catastrophic. Building on research in social cognition and psychology, we show that temporal comparison processes largely explain the political gap in respondents’ attitudes towards and behaviors regarding climate change. We found that conservatives’ proenvironmental attitudes and behaviors improved consistently and drastically when we presented messages that compared the environment today with that of the past. This research shows how ideological differences can arise from basic psychological processes, demonstrates how such differences can be overcome by framing a message consistent with these basic processes, and provides a way to market the science behind climate change more effectively.
Abstract
Conservatives appear more skeptical about climate change and global warming and less willing to act against it than liberals. We propose that this unwillingness could result from fundamental differences in conservatives’ and liberals’ temporal focus. Conservatives tend to focus more on the past than do liberals. Across six studies, we rely on this notion to demonstrate that conservatives are positively affected by past- but not by future-focused environmental comparisons. Past comparisons largely eliminated the political divide that separated liberal and conservative respondents’ attitudes toward and behavior regarding climate change, so that across these studies conservatives and liberals were nearly equally likely to fight climate change. This research demonstrates how psychological processes, such as temporal comparison, underlie the prevalent ideological gap in addressing climate change. It opens up a promising avenue to convince conservatives effectively of the need to address climate change and global warming.
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/52/14953.abstract
Significance
Political polarization on important issues can have dire consequences for society, and divisions regarding the issue of climate change could be particularly catastrophic. Building on research in social cognition and psychology, we show that temporal comparison processes largely explain the political gap in respondents’ attitudes towards and behaviors regarding climate change. We found that conservatives’ proenvironmental attitudes and behaviors improved consistently and drastically when we presented messages that compared the environment today with that of the past. This research shows how ideological differences can arise from basic psychological processes, demonstrates how such differences can be overcome by framing a message consistent with these basic processes, and provides a way to market the science behind climate change more effectively.
Abstract
Conservatives appear more skeptical about climate change and global warming and less willing to act against it than liberals. We propose that this unwillingness could result from fundamental differences in conservatives’ and liberals’ temporal focus. Conservatives tend to focus more on the past than do liberals. Across six studies, we rely on this notion to demonstrate that conservatives are positively affected by past- but not by future-focused environmental comparisons. Past comparisons largely eliminated the political divide that separated liberal and conservative respondents’ attitudes toward and behavior regarding climate change, so that across these studies conservatives and liberals were nearly equally likely to fight climate change. This research demonstrates how psychological processes, such as temporal comparison, underlie the prevalent ideological gap in addressing climate change. It opens up a promising avenue to convince conservatives effectively of the need to address climate change and global warming.
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