Lectures on Macroeconomics, No. 13, by Arnold Kling
Having reached the unlucky number of 13, it is fitting to talk about multipliers and model estimates.
Having reached the unlucky number of 13, it is fitting to talk about multipliers and model estimates.
Although there currently appears to be no evidence as to why this gender gap exists, a couple of theories are still outstanding. As aforementioned, women may simply be more sensitive to the framing of survey questions, causing them to answer more towards the bias, as in the question of interest in this study. This issue, however, cannot be addressed with the ISSP data sets. Also, are males or females more likely to lose their jobs due to increased trade liberalization? ...Lastly, although it is not likely that risk aversion will explain any of this gender gap; women are in general more risk averse. [sic?] However, risk aversion as a possible explanation for the gender gap cannot be estimated empirically with the ISSP data sets as they do not contain a proxy for risk.What's so frustrating? As far as I can tell, Beaulieu and Napier don't even consider the possibility that women simply know less about economics than men, even though there is overwhelming evidence this is so. As I originally showed in my "What Makes People Think Like Economists?" (2001, Journal of Law and Economics), being male has roughly as much effect on economic beliefs as 1.7 steps on a 6-point educational scale. Why do economists have so much trouble taking the obvious explanation for female protectionism seriously?
Bryan discusses policy libertarianism and structural libertarianism. If they were 60's leftists, the policy libertarians would be willing to work within the system and the structural libertarians would want to change the system. In this case, I feel ambivalence, of the sort expressed by John Lennon in the Beatles song "Revolution."
The policy libertarian can complain that while the structural libertarian dreams of revolution, day-to-day reality is that there are opportunities to block bad policy and occasionally promote better policy. On the other hand Jacob Lyles can complain that the policy libertarian serves to legitimate the democratic process, which tends to be anti-libertarian by nature.
My goal is simple. I want people to stop rooting for bigger government. Get them to lose what Daniel Klein calls The People's Romance. A long as people root for bigger government, neither policy libertarianism nor structural libertarianism can get much traction.
Lyles thinks that my approach, too, is futiile. He writes,
Quoting Jefferson at housewives isn't going to sway them when Obama Claus is on the television offering free college educations and health insurance.
Gordon Dahl and Lance Lochner write (I can't find an ungated 2008 version of the paper, and the 2005 version seems to differ),
Our baseline estimates imply that a $1,000 increase in income raises combined math and reading test scores by 6% of a standard deviation in the short run. The gains are larger for children from disadvantaged families and are robust to a variety of alternative specifications. We find little evidence of long-run income effects, with most of the effects disappearing after one year.
1. Genetic factors are too strong. You can fool mother nature for a little while, but not for long. People tend to revert to their genetically-determined level of ability.
2. Other environmental factors are too strong. You can overcome environmental determinants for a little while, but nor for long. People tend to revert to their environmentally-determined level of skill development.
3. Over time, more random factors are introduced into the lives of the subject populations. Note, however, that this should lower the R-squared in the regression and might bring down the statistical significance of treatment effects, even if it does not cause the magnitude of treatment effects to disappear But researchers are fixated on statistical significance, so they interpret a drop in statistical significance as if it were a fall-off in the effect of the treatment.
At first glance, what Lyles calls the SLs seem a lot more realistic: To change policy, you've got to change institutions, right? Unfortunately, institutions themselves are a kind of policy. They arise because previous institutions create incentives for change, and endure because current institutions create incentives for stability. Or as we economists like to say, "Institutions are endogenous."Libertarian thinkers can be plotted on many axes. Presently, the axis I am most concerned with is Policy Libertarianism vs. Structural Libertarianism.
Policy Libertarians (PLs) include the vast majority of the most visible organizations and writers in the modern libertarian movement: the Reason Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Ron Paul campaign, the LP, the Constitution Party, most libertarian economists (e.g. Milton Friedman), and single-issue organizations like Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. PLs, as their name suggests, focus their energies on inventing and advocating a list of policies that governments should follow. For example, you can find policy libertarians opposing liberal eminent domain laws, fighting for lower taxes and deregulation, supporting cultural tolerance, opposing invasive police searches, and advocating the rest of the familiar libertarian manifesto.
Structural Libertarians (SLs) are much rarer in modern times than PLs, although the opposite used to be the case. Structural libertarians include Patri Friedman, Mencius Moldbug, David Friedman, Murray Rothbard, all libertarian Public Choice economists, Lysander Spooner, and the classical liberals that libertarians have adopted as intellectual ancestors. SLs often have the same moral and policy beliefs as PLs, but they focus their energies on the alternative ways to structure a government and the effect that government structure has on its incentive to adopt good policy.
Doug Clement interviews Ken Rogoff. Rogoff says,
I've taught for years in my class that many types of money funds and asset classes outside the traditional regulatory system are subject to the same kind of runs as the conventional banking system. I have had my classes write papers about whether the government can credibly promise not to bail out money funds, and if it cannot, then should they be subject to more regulation? This is not a simple question, but researchers need to provide better answers.
Another point he makes is that it is characteristic of financial crises that governments spend a lot of money cleaning up the damage. Why is this the case? Some possibilities:
1. We don't call it a financial crisis unless there is a big clean-up. So, if we didn't do a big clean-up after the Dotcom crash, then it was not a crisis.
2. There is strong interdependence between government and the financial sector. See my 8th lecture on macroeconomics. This means that banks are bound to have political influence, and they are likely to be bailed out in a crisis.
3. It really is good public policy to bail out banks. You really do help Main Street by saving Wall Street.
Do you think the government should forcibly reduce income inequality using taxes and subsidies? If so, wouldn't it follow that the government should forcibly reduce inequality in life spans? No? Then, if you answered Yes to the first question, you might want to rethink your answer. See the article posted today on Econlib by economist Dwight Lee. It's titled, "Should Government Reduce Inequality in Life Spans?"
Great paragraph:
When we seriously consider an attempt to use government power to reduce the gender inequality in life expectancy, the problems that we have always faced when government uses its power to reduce income inequality suddenly become crystal clear. Government transfers to reduce the gender gap in life expectancy would do little more than reduce improvements in both women's and men's life expectancies. For similar reasons, government transfers have done little more than reduce the income growth of both the rich and the poor. So government attempts to reduce life-expectancy inequality by transferring medical expenditures would be silly, but no sillier than its attempts to reduce income inequality by transferring money.
One of the joys of being a photographer is the opportunity to spend your life intersecting with a steady stream of very interesting people. One such recent encounter was with author Manil Suri (The Death of Vishnu), who I photographed for a literary magazine.
Looking at this three-pic composite of the background, you can see the original (auto) exposure on the concrete as it appeared as I found it. It's just a quick grab shot, not even in focus. But it doesn't need to be in focus, as it will be my backdrop and I want to get a look at it a little out of focus anyway. The tone is maybe a stop above medium grey.
Enter Manil Suri. I used two SB-800s, each with LumiQuest SB-III modifier, for the key and the fill. The key light has a 1/8 CTO on it for a little warmth, and is about 5 feet from the subject at camera left.
I love the airy, ethereal, Holga look when it is added to hard, sculpted light. The two balance each other out -- like lemon and sugar in a glass of lemonade.
This shot (seen at the top of this post and repeated here) was another quick add-on before going inside for the second setup. Just grab the key light and head over to under the exterior stairway to use it as a graphic element.Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by: