http://www.nationalaffairs.com/blog/blogger/findings-a-daily-roundup - Feb 10, 2012 10:40:55 AM - Dec 4, 2004 10:49:02 PM
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Thursday, February 9, 2012
Congealing Pot
Testing for Racial Profiling With the Veil-of-Darkness Method
Robert Worden, Sarah McLean & Andrew Wheeler Police Quarterly, March 2012, Pages 92-111
The "veil-of-darkness" method is an innovative and low-cost approach that circumvents many of the benchmarking issues that arise in testing for racial profiling. Changes in natural lighting are used to establish a presumptively more race-neutral benchmark on the assumption that after dark, police suffer an impaired ability to detect motorists' race. Applying the veil-of-darkness method to vehicle stops by the Syracuse (NY) police between 2006 and 2009 and examining differences among officers assigned to specialized traffic units and crime-suppression units, we found that African Americans were no more likely to be stopped during daylight than during darkness, indicating no racial bias.
Interracial Workplace Cooperation: Evidence from the NBA
Joseph Price, Lars Lefgren & Henry Tappen Economic Inquiry
Using data from the National Basketball Association (NBA), we examine whether patterns of workplace cooperation occur disproportionately among workers of the same race. We find that, holding constant the composition of teammates on the floor, basketball players are no more likely to complete an assist to a player of the same race than a player of a different race. Our confidence interval allows us to reject even small amounts of same-race bias in passing patterns. We find some evidence of own-race bias in situations where the outcome of a particular play is less important. Our findings suggest that high levels of interracial cooperation can occur in a setting where workers are operating in a highly visible setting with strong incentives to behave efficiently.
It's All in the Name: Employment Discrimination Against Arab Americans
Daniel Widner & Stephen ChicoineSociological Forum, December 2011, Pages 806-823
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Arab Americans faced increased discrimination that permeated almost every aspect of their lives. Previous research has documented the negative attention toward Arab Americans after 9/11 and the effect it has had on this community. However, less research has focused on discrimination against Arab Americans during the process of obtaining employment in the United States. To address this gap in the current literature, we conducted a correspondence study in which we randomly assigned a typical white-sounding name or a typical Arab-sounding name to two similar fictitious résumés. We sent résumés to 265 jobs over a 15-month period. We found that an Arab male applicant needed to send two résumés to every one résumé sent by a white male applicant to receive a callback for an interview by the hiring personnel. Our findings suggest that the difference in callbacks may be the result of discrimination against the perceived race/ethnicity of the applicant by the hiring personnel.
Roommate's race and the racial composition of white college students' ego networks
Noah Mark & Daniel HarrisSocial Science Research, March 2012, Pages 331-342
We develop and test a new hypothesis about how the race of a college freshman's roommate affects the racial composition of the student's ego network. Together, three principles of social structure - proximity, homophily, and transitivity - logically imply that college students assigned a roommate of a given race will have more friends (other than their roommate) of that race than will students assigned a roommate not of that race. A test with data collected from 195 white freshmen at Stanford University in the spring of 2002 supports this prediction. Our analysis advances earlier work by predicting and providing evidence of race-specific effects: While students assigned a different-race roommate of a given race have more friends (other than their roommate) of their roommate's race, they do not have more different-race friends not of their roommate's race.
Race, Attorney Influence, and Bankruptcy Chapter Choice
Jean Braucher, Dov Cohen & Robert Lawless Journal of Empirical Legal Studies
We report on racially disparate uses of chapter 13 bankruptcy. Currently, approximately 1,500,000 bankruptcy petitions are filed each year, with about 30% of those petitions being chapter 13 cases. Although chapter 13 can offer some legal advantages for persons seeking to protect valuable assets such as a house or automobile, it generally offers less relief and costs more than the primary alternative available to consumers, chapter 7. The chief feature of a chapter 13 bankruptcy case is a plan under which the debtor must devote all of his or her disposable income to creditor repayment over a 3- to 5-year period. Chapter 7, in contrast, requires only that the debtor turn over all nonexempt assets, with over 90% of chapter 7 debtors having no assets to turn over. This paper reports on two studies, one using data from actual bankruptcy cases and the other involving an experiment with a national random sample of bankruptcy attorneys. Because the court system does not collect racial data on bankruptcy filers, the first study uses data from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project. Even after controlling for financial, demographic, and legal factors that might favor a chapter 13 filing, African Americans are much more likely to file chapter 13, as compared to debtors of other races. The second study reports on an experimental vignette sent to a random sample of consumer bankruptcy attorneys who represented debtors. The attorneys were more likely to recommend chapter 13 when the hypothetical debtors were a couple named "Reggie & Latisha," who attended an African Methodist Episcopal Church, as compared to a couple named "Todd & Allison," who attended a United Methodist Church. Also, attorneys viewed "Reggie & Latisha" as having better values and being more competent when they expressed a preference for chapter 13 as compared to "Todd & Allison," who were seen as having better values and being more competent when they wanted to file chapter 7, giving them a "fresh start." Previous research and the results from the present experimental vignette study suggest consumer bankruptcy attorneys may be playing a very important, although likely unintentional, role in creating the racial disparity in chapter choice. Together, the two studies raise questions about the fairness of the bankruptcy system.
Taste-based discrimination evidence from a shift in ethnic preferences after WWI
Petra MoserExplorations in Economic History
This paper uses program notes from the Metropolitan opera to quantify changes in ethnic preferences as a result of news of German atrocities during World War I; these data indicate that the War created a persistent shift in ethnic preferences, which effectively switched the status of German Americans from a mainstream ethnicity to an ethnic minority until the late 1920s. Difference-in-difference analyses investigate whether this shift in preferences triggered taste-based discrimination in one of the world's most elite professional settings: applications to trade at the NYSE. This analysis indicates that changes in preferences more than doubled the probability that applicants with German-sounding names would be rejected. Placebo regressions for other non-German minorities yield no evidence of taste effects. Equivalent regressions that distinguish German Jewish from other Jewish applicants, however, indicate that German Jewish applicants were similarly affected as were other Germans.
Fiona Kay & Elizabeth GormanANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 2012, Pages 91-113
Explanations of minority underrepresentation among organizational managers have focused primarily on either employee deficits in human and social capital or employer discrimination. To date, research has paid little attention to the role of developmental practices and related cultural values within organizations. Using data on large U.S. law firms, the authors investigate the role of formal developmental practices and cultural values in the representation of three minority groups among firm partners: African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. The authors find that formal practices and cultural values intended to aid employee growth and development do not "level the playing field" for minorities. Formal training and mentoring programs do not increase minority presence, while a longer time period to promotion, a cultural commitment to professional development, and a cultural norm of early responsibility are all negatively associated with minority representation. Although the pattern is broadly similar across all three groups, some effects vary in interesting ways.
Affirmative Action in Higher Education in India: Targeting, Catch Up, and Mismatch at IIT-Delhi
Verónica Frisancho Robles & Kala Krishna
Affirmative action policies in higher education are used in many countries to try to socially advance historically disadvantaged minorities. Although the underlying social objectives of these policies are rarely criticized, there is intense debate over the actual impact of such preferences in higher education on educational performance and labor outcomes. Most of the work uses U.S. data where clean performance indicators are hard to find. Using a remarkably detailed dataset on the 2008 graduating class from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi we evaluate the impact of affirmative action policies in higher education on minority students focusing on three central issues in the current debate: targeting, catch up, and mismatch. In addition, we present preliminary evidence on labor market discrimination. We find that admission preferences effectively target minority students who are poorer than the average displaced non-minority student. Moreover, by analyzing the college performance of minority and non-minority students as they progress through college, we find that scheduled caste and scheduled tribe students, especially those in more selective majors, fall behind their same-major peers which is the opposite of catching up. We also identify evidence in favor of the mismatch hypothesis: once we control for selection into majors, minority students who enroll in more selective majors as a consequence of admission preferences end up earning less than their same-caste counterparts in less selective majors. Finally, although there is no evidence of discrimination against minority students in terms of wages, we find that scheduled caste and scheduled tribe students are more likely to get worse jobs, even after controlling for selection.
Diversity in Political Institutions and Congressional Responsiveness to Minority Interests
Michael Minta & Valeria Sinclair-Chapman Political Research Quarterly
Despite claims that diversity benefits the democratic process, critics question whether increased diversity significantly improves government responsiveness and accountability beyond electoral competition and constituency influence. The authors advance a diversity infrastructure theory to explain why and how minority legislators have kept minority interests on the congressional agenda. Using data on congressional hearings held on civil rights and social welfare from 1951 to 2004, the authors find that despite the decline of national attention to civil rights and social welfare issues in general, increased diversity in the House and to a lesser extent in the Senate is responsible for keeping minority interests on the congressional agenda.
Randolph HohleSociological Forum, March 2012, Pages 142-162
Prior research on the origins and diffusion of the neoliberal project have emphasized the role of elite economists, yet no explanations have been provided as to why neoliberal reforms were attractive to the broader U.S. population. To fill this gap in the literature, this article focuses on the voluntary sector struggles against desegregation and corporate taxation in postwar Alabama. I examine the emergence of a language of privatization that degraded all things public as "black" and inferior and all things private as "white" and superior, which provided the pretext to attract national white support for the neoliberal turn. Empirically, the article focuses on the construction of the modern southern businessman that emerged from struggles to economically modernize the South, and the construction of a publicly financed private school system that emerged from the struggles to fight school desegregation. These two struggles fused under the George Wallace political umbrella, whose regional and national political career diffused the racial language from its origins in 1950s Alabama to the national level in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow & Jimi AdamsInternational Review for the Sociology of Sport, February 2012, Pages 43-59
The popular image of the African American National Basketball Association (NBA) player as rising from the ‘ghetto' to international fame and fortune misleads academics and publics alike. This false image is fueled, in part, by critical shortcomings in empirical research on the relationship between race, sport, and occupational mobility: these studies have not adequately examined differences in social class and family structure backgrounds across, and especially within, racial groups. To address this problem, we empirically investigate how the intersection of race, social class and family structure background influences entry into the NBA. Information on social class and family structure background for a subpopulation of NBA players (N = 155) comes from 245 articles published in local, regional and national newspapers between 1994 and 2004. We find that, after accounting for methodological problems common in newspaper data, most NBA players come from relatively advantaged social origins and African Americans from disadvantaged social origins have lower odds of being in the NBA than African American and white players from relatively advantaged origins. A discussion of the implications of these findings for academics and publics concludes the article.
Robert BoydAmerican Journal of Economics and Sociology, January 2012, Pages 126-150
Past studies have dismissed the claim that retail enterprise among blacks in the urban North during the early 20th century was suppressed by competition from white immigrant merchants. The present investigation reconsiders the suppression hypothesis, applying the concepts of "niche overlap" and "competitive exclusion" from the literature on ethnic competition. An analysis of Census data on large northern cities offers some support for the hypothesis. The level of retail entrepreneurship of black men was negatively associated with that of white immigrant men in 1910 and 1920, implying that black retail enterprise at these time-points was discouraged by the presence of white immigrant merchants. These negative associations, though, were only moderately significant in a substantive sense, and there was no evidence that a reduction of white immigrant merchants would have produced substantial gains for blacks in the retail trade, as many black entrepreneurs and activists at the time had claimed.
"Call to Home?" Race, Region, and Migration to the U.S. South, 1970-2000
Matthew Hunt, Larry Hunt & William FalkSociological Forum, March 2012, Pages 117-141
This research examines recent migration patterns of native-born blacks and whites to the U.S. South. Our primary research questions concern race and regional migration dynamics, and whether new insights into such can be gleaned by comparing migrants to the South with persons moving within the non-South. Using samples of 1970-2000 census data, we focus on race differences in the tendency to choose the South as a migration destination, and whether whites and blacks differ in key selection mechanisms shaping movement to different regional destinations. We observe increasing rates of black (compared to white) migration to the South. Additionally, patterns of selectivity within this growing African-American migration stream are especially dramatic when southern migrants are compared to persons moving within the non-South. Our analyses also show that black migrants are targeting particular parts of the South (e.g., states where blacks are a larger share of the population), suggesting that future research should disaggregate the "Census South" region to provide a more comprehensive picture of contemporary interregional migration in the United States.
Checking the Pulse of Diversity among Health Care Professionals: An Analysis of West Coast Hospitals
Sheryl Skaggs & Julie KmecANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 2012, Pages 236-257
What factors are associated with variation in the racial/ethnic composition of hospital health care professionals? Institutional theories suggest that organizations react to external environmental and internal structural pressures for the racial/ethnic integration of workers. Using an institutional framework, we bring to bear new insight into how hospitals respond to such pressure for diversity. Models estimated with original data from 328 U.S. West Coast hospitals provide evidence that establishment size and a hospital's minority patient base promote diversity among health care professionals. The state legal environment is also associated with the racial/ethnic composition of professional hospital workers, indicating the importance of fair employment laws and court decisions in signaling expectations about workplace diversity. Last, the findings show that factors within hospitals' competitive and internal environments have positive consequences for diversity among health care professionals. We discuss implications for our findings, especially in the context of health care worker shortages and ongoing health care reform.
Caste and Entrepreneurship in India
Lakshmi Iyer, Tarun Khanna & Ashutosh Varshney Harvard Working Paper, October 2011
It is now widely accepted that the lower castes have risen in Indian politics. Has there been a corresponding change in the economy? Using comprehensive data on enterprise ownership from the Economic Censuses of 1990, 1998 and 2005, we document substantial caste differences in entrepreneurship across India. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are significantly under-represented in the ownership of enterprises and the share of the workforce employed by them. These differences are widespread across all states, have decreased very modestly between 1990 and 2005, and cannot be attributed to broad differences in access to physical or human capital.
David MaumeANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 2012, Pages 198-216
Scholars differ on whether the increase in minority managers represents real or vacuous progress toward the elimination of racial bias in the labor market. This study uses the National Study of the Changing Workforce to examine racial differences in work outcomes across the authority divide. On balance, this study finds more support for the pessimistic view of the minority presence in management, in that racial wage inequality is as large among supervisors as among nonsupervisors, and minority supervisors get less challenging job assignments and are more vulnerable to layoffs than white supervisors. Among subordinates, this study finds support for "bottom-up ascription" processes, in that minority workers who report to a minority boss earn less despite being more committed workers. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of these findings and the need for further research on minorities in management.
The Provision of Local Public Goods in Diverse Communities: Analyzing Municipal Bond Elections
Jacob Rugh & Jessica TrounstineJournal of Politics, October 2011, Pages 1038-1050
Scholars have shown that diversity depresses public goods provision. In U.S. cities, racial and ethnic divisions could seriously undermine investment. However, diverse cities spend significant amounts on public goods. We ask how these communities overcome their potential collective action problem. Using a new data set on more than 3,000 municipal bond elections, we show that strategic politicians encourage cooperation. Diversity leads officials to be more selective about requesting approval for investment and more attentive to coalition building. We show that diverse communities see fewer bond elections, but that the bonds proposed are larger and pass at higher rates. Diverse cities tend to offer voters bonds with more spending categories and are more likely to hold referenda during general elections. As a result, diverse cities do just as well as homogenous cities in issuing voter-authorized debt. Thus, political elites perform an important mediating function in the generation of public goods.
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Rachel Butts & Stephen Gasteyer
Environmental Practice, December 2011, Pages 386-395Abstract:
While much of the environmental justice literature has focused on exposure to environmental contaminants, this article argues that access to environmental goods should be explored, as well. We do this by looking at the rates paid for drinking and wastewater infrastructure in the United States (US). Although US residents, in aggregate, pay very little for water and sewer (around 1% of household income), the rate varies significantly by place (with Chicago residents paying roughly one fourth of the rates of residents in Atlanta, for instance). We ask whether particular groups may disproportionately pay higher rates. Using census data, we compare the cost of water and sewer across counties in Michigan and find tremendous disparity in reported expenditure. We then use multivariate regression analysis to investigate the relationship among income, urbanicity, race, and cost of water and sewer. Our findings indicate that a higher reported cost of water and sewer is associated most strongly with minority racial status. This results from postindustrial divestment and subsequent depopulation of particular urban areas. As a result, decreased demand (fewer households remaining in the city) actually increases prices (per remaining household), since water infrastructure costs are fixed, and this phenomenon disproportionately disadvantages people of color - who make up the majority of the great industrial cities.----------------------
Racial Disparities in Credit Constraints in the Great Recession: Evidence from the UK
John Gathergood
, September 2011Abstract:
This paper investigates racial disparities in household credit constraints using UK survey data. We find a widening disparity in the proportion of racial minority households reporting they face credit constraints compared with non-minority households over the period 2006-2009. By 2009 three times as many racial minority households faced credit constraints compared with non-minority households. The difference in credit constraints across racial minority and non-minority households is not explained by a broad set of covariates. While cross-section variation in reported credit constraints might most likely reflect unobservables, we argue this time series variation is very unlikely to arise due to unobservables and is evidence of growing perceived disparity in credit access between racial groups over the period.----------------------
Rashawn Ray & Jason Rosow
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, February 2012, Pages 66-94Abstract:
There has been limited empirical research on how individuals "do privilege." As a result, our understandings are incomplete about how high-status groups continue reaping the benefits of privilege. Using data from fifty-two men in three white and four black fraternities at a predominately white institution, this paper demonstrates that visibility and accountability function as mechanisms of privilege. Because of a large community size, central fraternity house, and influential alumni, white fraternity men are afforded a hyper level of invisibility and unaccountability. Because of the small black community and the obligation black fraternity men perceive having to be the ideal black student, they reap a hyper level of visibility and accountability based on expectations from and interactions with a host of others (e.g., university officials, white students, black community, women). By showing how high-status whites epitomize an ideal white racial identity and preserve inter- and intraracial boundaries, we advance theoretical discussions on hegemonic whiteness.----------------------
Women's Mobility into Upper-Tier Occupations: Do Determinants and Timing Differ by Race?
George Wilson
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 2012, Pages 131-148Abstract:
Data from the 1998 to 2005 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics are used to assess the particularistic mobility thesis, which maintains that among women there is a racialized continuum in the determinants of and timing to mobility into two "upper-tier" occupational categories. Findings support this theory, though racial gaps along the continuum are greater for professional/technical than for managerial/administrative positions. Specifically, the route to mobility for African Americans is relatively narrow and structured by traditional stratification causal factors, including human capital, background status, and job/labor market characteristics. In contrast, the route to mobility for whites is relatively broad and unstructured by the stratification-based causal factors, and they experience mobility the quickest. Along both dimensions, Latinas occupy an intermediate position between African Americans and whites. Implications of the findings for understanding racial inequality among managers, executives, and professionals are discussed.----------------------
Promoting minority success in the sciences: The minority opportunities in research programs at CSULA
Simeon Slovacek et al.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, February 2012, Pages 199-217Abstract:
Given the large continued investment by the federal government in programs that promote academic success and the pursuit of advanced degrees in the sciences among members groups traditionally underrepresented in the sciences, there is a strong need for research which provides rigorous investigations of these programs and their impact on the target population. The current study examines programs funded by the National Institutes of Health Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE) Division Office intended to address this underrepresentation at a minority serving comprehensive university. Academic outcomes, including college graduation and acceptance into graduate programs, among undergraduate program participants are compared against a propensity score matched comparison group. Results indicate that students supported by the MORE programs had higher GPAs at graduation, took less time to graduate, and were more likely to both graduate with a science degree and enter Master's and doctoral programs in the sciences.----------------------
Race, Gender, and Tokenism in Policing: An Empirical Elaboration
Meghan Stroshine & Steven Brandl
Police Quarterly, December 2011, Pages 344-365Abstract:
According to tokenism theory, "tokens" (those who comprise less than 15% of a group's total) are expected to experience a variety of hardships in the workplace, such as feelings of heightened visibility, isolation, and limited opportunities for advancement. In the policing literature, most previous studies have defined tokenism narrowly in terms of gender. The current research extends prior research by examining tokenism as a function of gender and race, with an examination of racial/ethnic subgroups. Particular attention is paid to Latino officers as this study represents the first known study of tokenism and Latino police officers. Quantitative analyses reveal that, for the most part, token police officers do experience the effects of tokenism as predicted by tokenism theory. Although all minorities experienced some level of tokenism, Black males and Black females experienced greater levels of tokenism than Latino officers, suggesting that race is a stronger predictor of tokenism than gender.----------------------
Segregation by Design: Mechanisms of Selection of Latinos and Whites into Gated Communities
Elena Vesselinov
Urban Affairs ReviewAbstract:
Gated communities have been thought to contribute to urban inequality, but empirical evidence is limited. This study utilizes the American Housing Survey for 2001 to examine the differential access of Latinos and Whites to gated communities in metropolitan United States. The results show that education is the most important sorting mechanism: as education increases, so does the probability to gate. On one hand, education trumps the effects of social class for owners, leading to segmentation within each class category, regardless of race/ethnicity; on the other hand, Latinos with higher education tend to select gated residences more often than comparable Whites.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
From idea to reality
Appetite for destruction: The impact of the September 11 attacks on business founding
Srikanth Paruchuri & Paul IngramIndustrial and Corporate Change, February 2012, Pages 127-149
It is widely accepted that entrepreneurial creation affects destruction, as new and better organizations, technologies and transactions replace old ones. This phenomenon is labeled creative destruction, but it might more accurately be called destructive creation, given the driving role of creation in the process. We reverse the typical causal ordering, and ask whether destruction may drive creation. We argue that economic systems may get stuck in suboptimal equilibria due to path dependence, and that destruction may sweep away this inertia, and open the way for entrepreneurship. To test this idea, we need an exogenous destructive shock, rather than destruction that is endogenous to the process of economic progress. Our identification strategy relies on the September 11 attacks as an exogenous destructive shock to the economic system centered on New York City. Consistent with our theoretical claim, we find that 15 months after the attacks the rate of business founding close to New York City exceeds the rate before the attacks, even after controlling for the inflow of recovery funds. Furthermore, the increase in the business founding rate after the attacks grows faster closer to Manhattan than it does further away from the epicenter of destruction.
People and process, suits and innovators: Individuals and firm performance
Ethan MollickStrategic Management Journal
Performance differences between firms are generally attributed to organizational factors rather than to differences among the individuals who make up firms. As a result, little is known about the part that individual firm members play in explaining the variance in performance among firms. This paper employs a multiple membership cross-classified multilevel model to test the degree to which organizational or individual factors explain firm performance. The analysis also examines whether individual differences among middle managers or innovators best explain firm performance variation. The results indicate that variation among individuals matter far more in organizational performance than is generally assumed. Further, variation among middle managers has a particularly large impact on firm performance, much larger than that of those individuals who are assigned innovative roles.
Liquidity Constraints, Household Wealth, and Entrepreneurship Revisited
Robert Fairlie & Harry KrashinskyReview of Income and Wealth
The existence of liquidity constraints for entrepreneurs has been challenged by the finding that business entry rates are invariant throughout most of the asset distribution and increase dramatically only at the top of this distribution. We reexamine the liquidity constraint hypothesis in three ways. First, we separately examine those who do and those who do not experience a job loss to reveal generally increasing entry rates through the wealth distribution for both groups, and show why these groups should be separately analyzed. Second, we use a two-period simulation of the Evans and Jovanovic model to shows how exogenous wealth shocks can accurately identify the presence of liquidity constraints. Third, we provide new evidence from matched Current Population Survey data to show that housing appreciation measured at the MSA-level is a significantly positive determinant of entry into self-employment, after controlling for changes in local economic conditions.
Jonathan MasurYale Law Journal, December 2011, Pages 470-532
For more than two decades, the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) and the Federal Circuit have exercised nearly complete institutional control over the patent system. Yet in recent years their stewardship has been widely criticized, largely on the basis of two particular failings. First, the PTO grants significant numbers of invalid patents, patents that impose substantial costs on innovative firms. And second, over time the Federal Circuit has steadily loosened the rules governing patentability, allowing ever more patents over a greater range of inventions. This Article argues that both of these modern trends may be attributable in whole or in part to the asymmetric institutional relationship between the PTO and the Federal Circuit. If a patent applicant is denied a patent by the PTO, she can appeal that denial to the Federal Circuit. However, if the PTO grants the patent, no other party has the right to appeal. Accordingly, the PTO can avoid appeals and reversals, both of which are costly in monetary and reputational terms, simply by granting any patent that the Federal Circuit might plausibly allow. Because the PTO will grant nearly any plausible patent, the vast majority of rejected applications that are appealed to the Federal Circuit will concern boundary-pushing inventions that are unpatentable under current law. Occasionally, a particularly patent-friendly panel of Federal Circuit judges will elect to reverse the PTO and grant a patent that the Agency has denied. The Federal Circuit's decision will create a new, inflationary precedent. The boundaries of patentability will expand slightly, as this new precedent exerts influence on the other circuit judges. And as the Federal Circuit's conception of what may be patented expands, the PTO will similarly inflate its own standards in order to maintain an adequate margin for error and avoid denying a patent that the Federal Circuit is likely to grant on appeal. Patent law will thus be subject to a natural inflationary pressure.
The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians
George Borjas & Kirk DoranNBER Working Paper, February 2012It has been difficult to open up the black box of knowledge production. We use unique international data on the publications, citations, and affiliations of mathematicians to examine the impact of a large post-1992 influx of Soviet mathematicians on the productivity of their American counterparts. We find a negative productivity effect on those mathematicians whose research overlapped with that of the Soviets. We also document an increased mobility rate (to lower-quality institutions and out of active publishing) and a reduced likelihood of producing "home run" papers. Although the total product of the pre-existing American mathematicians shrank, the Soviet contribution to American mathematics filled in the gap. However, there is no evidence that the Soviets greatly increased the size of the "mathematics pie." Finally, we find that there are significant international differences in the productivity effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that these international differences can be explained by both differences in the size of the émigré flow into the various countries and in how connected each country is to the global market for mathematical publications.
Music Piracy: A Case of "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer"
Amedeo Piolatto & Florian SchuettInformation Economics and Policy
There is evidence that music piracy has differential effects on artists depending on their popularity. We present a model of music piracy with endogenous copying costs: consumers' costs of illegal downloads increase with the scarcity of a recording and are therefore negatively related to the number of originals sold. Allowing for a second source of revenues apart from record sales, we show that piracy can hurt some artists while benefiting others. Under plausible assumptions, piracy is beneficial to the most popular artists. However, this does not carry over to less popular artists, who are often harmed by piracy. We conclude that piracy tends to reduce musical variety.
Seung-Hyun HongJournal of Applied Econometrics
This paper measures the effect of Napster on record sales. I treat the introduction of Napster as a technological event that only Internet users experienced, and use a difference-in-differences (DD) approach. Because of potential compositional changes in Internet users, I examine identifying assumptions for the DD estimator under compositional changes and develop a test for identifying restrictions. To address potential bias due to compositional changes, I extend DD matching estimators to the case of two-variate propensity scores. I find evidence suggesting that file sharing is likely to explain 20% of total sales decline, which is driven by households with children aged 6-17.
Music Downloads and the Flip Side of Digital Rights Management
Dinah Vernik, Devavrat Purohit & Preyas Desai Marketing Science
Digital rights management (DRM) is an important yet controversial issue in the information goods markets. Although DRM is supposed to help copyright owners by protecting digital content from illegal copying or distribution, it is controversial because DRM imposes restrictions on even legal users, and there are many industry practitioners who believe that the industry would be better off without DRM. In this paper, we model consumers' utilities and their incentives to purchase legal products versus pirate illegal ones. This allows us to endogenize the level of piracy and understand how it is influenced by the presence or absence of DRM. Our analysis suggests that, counterintuitively, download piracy might decrease when the firm allows legal DRM-free downloads. Furthermore, we find that a decrease in piracy does not guarantee an increase in firm profits and that copyright owners do not always benefit from making it harder to copy music illegally. By analyzing the competition among the traditional retailer, the digital retailer, and pirated sources of information goods, we get a better understanding of the competitive forces in the market and provide insights into the role of digital rights management.
Elves or Trolls? The role of nonpracticing patent owners in the innovation economy
Damien Geradin, Anne Layne-Farrar & Jorge Padilla Industrial and Corporate Change, February 2012, Pages 73-94
Firm structure and the degree of vertical integration lie at the core of a key intellectual property concern currently under debate: "patent trolls." While court opinions and competition agency decisions have focused on "non-practicing" patent holders as synonymous with trolls and hold up problems, this view of upstream specialists is far too narrow. In fact, patents in the hands of nonpracticing entities can increase competition, increase innovation, lower downstream prices, and enhance consumer choice. We explain why and when and argue for more business-model-neutral policy when it comes to patent licensing. Clearly, patents are a complex subject that cannot be portrayed as either all good or all bad; tradeoffs will always be involved. Likewise, patents in the hands of nonpracticing entities cannot be viewed as either all good or all bad. Without a better understanding of the many complicated effects of patents in high technology markets, we run the very real risk of misguided policy decisions. In light of that risk, we argue that more attention needs to be devoted to finding meaningful ways of identifying harmful behaviors, rather than on categorical labels based on firm structure or business model.
The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls
James Bessen, Jennifer Ford & Michael Meurer Boston University Working Paper, November 2011
In the past, non-practicing entities (NPEs) - firms that license patents without producing goods - have facilitated technology markets and increased rents for small inventors. Is this also true for today's NPEs? Or are they "patent trolls" who opportunistically litigate over software patents with unpredictable boundaries? Using stock market event studies around patent lawsuit filings, we find that NPE lawsuits are associated with half a trillion dollars of lost wealth to defendants from 1990 through 2010, mostly from technology companies. Moreover, very little of this loss represents a transfer to small inventors. Instead, it implies reduced innovation incentives and a net loss of social welfare.
Intellectual Property Rights Policy, Competition and Innovation
Daron Acemoglu & Ufuk AkcigitJournal of the European Economic Association, February 2012, Pages 1-42
To what extent and in what form should the intellectual property rights (IPR) of innovators be protected? Should a company with a large technology lead over its rivals receive the same IPR protection as a company with a more limited advantage? In this paper, we develop a dynamic framework for the study of the interactions between IPR and competition, in particular to understand the impact of such policies on future incentives. The economy consists of many industries and firms engaged in cumulative (step-by-step) innovation. IPR policy regulates whether followers in an industry can copy the technology of the leader. We prove the existence of a steady-state equilibrium and characterize some of its properties. We then quantitatively investigate the implications of different types of IPR policy on the equilibrium growth rate and welfare. The most important result from this exercise is that full patent protection is not optimal; instead, optimal policy involves state-dependent IPR protection, providing greater protection to technology leaders that are further ahead than those that are close to their followers. This is because of a trickle-down effect: providing greater protection to firms that are further ahead of their followers than a certain threshold increases the R&D incentives also for all technology leaders that are less advanced than this threshold.
The dynamics of social innovation
Peyton YoungProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 December 2011, Pages 21285-21291
Social norms and institutions are mechanisms that facilitate coordination between individuals. A social innovation is a novel mechanism that increases the welfare of the individuals who adopt it compared with the status quo. We model the dynamics of social innovation as a coordination game played on a network. Individuals experiment with a novel strategy that would increase their payoffs provided that it is also adopted by their neighbors. The rate at which a social innovation spreads depends on three factors: the topology of the network and in particular the extent to which agents interact in small local clusters, the payoff gain of the innovation relative to the status quo, and the amount of noise in the best response process. The analysis shows that local clustering greatly enhances the speed with which social innovations spread. It also suggests that the welfare gains from innovation are more likely to occur in large jumps than in a series of small incremental improvements.
Optimal Copyright Length and Ex Post Investment: A Mickey Mouse Approach
Nodir Adilov & Michael WaldmanEconomic Inquiry, forthcoming
This paper considers a theoretical model of copyright protection in which the value of an intellectual work changes over time because of depreciation and value-enhancing ex post investments. The first main finding is that, in the case of a single project, granting infinitely lived copyright protection maximizes social welfare when the return on ex post investments is high relative to the return on the initial investment. We also provide simulation results of our model for the case of multiple heterogeneous projects that show how social welfare varies with the length of copyright protection and the returns on initial and ex post investments. We then consider what our framework says concerning the social-welfare effects of the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act. Here we show that, depending on the importance of ex post investments, the act may have either increased or decreased social welfare. Our final analysis considers the social-welfare implications of replacing fixed-length copyright protection with Landes and Posner's(University of Chicago Law Review, 70(2), 2003, 471-518) idea of indefinitely renewable copyright protection. We find that implementing indefinitely renewable copyright protection frequently increases social welfare provided the returns on ex post investments are sufficiently large. We also provide a brief history of Disney's Mickey Mouse and argue that the history of that character matches quite well with the predictions of our theoretical approach.
Robert Fairlie, Dean Karlan & Jonathan Zinman NBER Working Paper, February 2012
We use randomized program offers and multiple follow-up survey waves to examine the effects of entrepreneurship training on a broad set of outcomes. Training increases short run business ownership and employment, but there is no evidence of broader or longer run effects. We also test whether training mitigates market frictions by estimating heterogeneous treatment effects. Training does not have strong effects (in either relative or absolute terms) on those most likely to face credit or human capital constraints, or labor market discrimination. Training does have a relatively strong short-run effect on business ownership for those unemployed at baseline, but not at other horizons or for other outcomes.
Does Distance Matter Less Now? The Changing Role of Geography in Biotechnology Innovation
Daniel Johnson & Kristina LybeckerReview of Industrial Organization, February 2012, Pages 21-35
Using patent citation data for the U.S., we test whether knowledge spillovers in biotechnology are sensitive to distance, and whether that sensitivity has changed over time. Controlling for self-citation by inventor, assignee, and examiner, cohort-based regression analysis shows that physical distance is becoming less important for spillovers with time.
Measuring the Price of Research and Development Output
Adam Copeland & Dennis FixlerReview of Income and Wealth, March 2012, Pages 166-182
We construct a price index for the scientific R&D services industry, a significant producer of R&D in the United States. Unlike most previous R&D price indexes, our index is not based on input costs but rather on measures of R&D sales. Consequently, unlike input-cost price indexes, our output-based index is able to account for changes in productivity and markups in the scientific R&D services industry. We compute that scientific R&D services prices increased, on average, by 7.14 percent at an annual rate from 1987 to 2006. Using our index, we find that real revenues grew at an annual average rate of 2.85 percent. We then propose using our index, in combination with an input-cost price index, to deflate total R&D nominal expenditures. We find that real total U.S. R&D expenditures grew at an average annual rate of 1.42 percent from 1987 to 2006.
Why are Some Regions More Innovative than Others? The Role of Firm Size Diversity
Ajay Agrawal et al.
Large labs may spawn spin-outs caused by innovations deemed unrelated to the firm's overall business. Small labs generate demand for specialized services that lower entry costs for others. We develop a theoretical framework to study the interplay of these two localized externalities and their impact on regional innovation. We examine MSA-level patent data during the period 1975-2000 and find that innovation output is higher where large and small labs coexist. The finding is robust to across-region as well as within-region analysis, IV analysis, and the effect is stronger in certain subsamples consistent with our explanation but not the plausible alternatives.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
When in Rome
Andrew Lindner & Daniel HawkinsSociological Quarterly, Winter 2012, Pages 68-91
This study examines the "culture wars" using the lens of attitudes toward soccer. Despite soccer's increasing popularity in the United States, anti-soccer rhetoric is fairly common. In his widely read book, How Soccer Explains the World (2004), Foer contends that the "culture wars," including divisions over soccer, are better explained by reactions to globalization than social class or political ideology. Using data from a survey of Nebraskans, we find that attitudes about cultural globalization are the best predictor of soccer sentiment. Contrary to popular claims about the "culture wars," most respondents were moderate in their attitudes toward both soccer and globalization.
Beware of national symbols: How flags can threaten intergroup relations
Julia Becker et al.Social Psychology, Winter 2012, Pages 3-6
The present research examined effects of exposure to the German flag on outgroup prejudice in Germany. In agreement with social identity theory, we demonstrated that exposure to the German flag increased outgroup prejudice among highly nationalistic German respondents. This finding seems to contradict prior research illustrating that exposure to the US flag reduced outgroup prejudice among highly nationalistic American respondents. This contradiction is considered the result of various concepts Germans associate with the German flag compared to concepts Americans associate with the US flag. Practical implications for flag exposure are discussed.
Yuri Takhteyev, Anatoliy Gruzd & Barry Wellman Social Networks, January 2012, Pages 73-81
The paper examines the influence of geographic distance, national boundaries, language, and frequency of air travel on the formation of social ties on Twitter, a popular micro-blogging website. Based on a large sample of publicly available Twitter data, our study shows that a substantial share of ties lies within the same metropolitan region, and that between regional clusters, distance, national borders and language differences all predict Twitter ties. We find that the frequency of airline flights between the two parties is the best predictor of Twitter ties. This highlights the importance of looking at pre-existing ties between places and people.
Culture, Control, and Illusory Pattern Perception
Cynthia Wang, Jennifer Whitson & Tanya Menon
Lacking control causes illusory pattern perception, but does culture influence the patterns people perceive? Different cultural contexts invite distinct types of control, with people from Western cultures emphasizing primary control methods (i.e., personal agency) and people from East Asian cultures emphasizing secondary control methods (i.e., adjustment to surroundings). Four experiments suggest that cultural differences in primary versus secondary control orientation shape the patterns people perceive within horoscopes. When lacking (vs. possessing) control, Westerners are relatively more likely to rely on horoscopes that help them understand themselves, whereas East Asians are relatively more likely to rely on horoscopes that help them understand others. The authors isolate underlying mechanisms, demonstrating that, following loss of control, people high on primary control rely on self-focused horoscopes and people high on secondary control rely on horoscopes about friends. Thus, cultural differences in primary versus secondary control create unique signatures in pattern perception.
Suicide, Culture, and Society from a Cross-National Perspective
Matteo Lenzi, Erminia Colucci & Harry Minas Cross-Cultural Research, February 2012, Pages 50-71
In this article, the authors explored the associations between suicide rates and a large number of sociocultural indexes, within the sociological framework provided by Durkheim and taking into account recent sociological theories. The analyses were performed on a sample of 87 nations and a subsample of posttraditional societies. The authors found strong positive (linear) correlations between suicide rates and measures of secularization, and curvilinear relationships between measures of individualization and suicide rates. Negative associations were found between suicide rates and measures of individualization in a subsample of posttraditional countries. Following the postmodernization and reflexive modernization theories, the authors argue that a new form of individualization is in place in secular-rational societies. This form of individualization exercises a negative effect on suicide rates through its positive influence on social integration and regulation.
Maja Becker et al.
The motive to attain a distinctive identity is sometimes thought to be stronger in, or even specific to, those socialized into individualistic cultures. Using data from 4,751 participants in 21 cultural groups (18 nations and 3 regions), we tested this prediction against our alternative view that culture would moderate the ways in which people achieve feelings of distinctiveness, rather than influence the strength of their motivation to do so. We measured the distinctiveness motive using an indirect technique to avoid cultural response biases. Analyses showed that the distinctiveness motive was not weaker - and, if anything, was stronger - in more collectivistic nations. However, individualism-collectivism was found to moderate the ways in which feelings of distinctiveness were constructed: Distinctiveness was associated more closely with difference and separateness in more individualistic cultures and was associated more closely with social position in more collectivistic cultures. Multilevel analysis confirmed that it is the prevailing beliefs and values in an individual's context, rather than the individual's own beliefs and values, that account for these differences.
Foreign Corporations and the Culture of Transparency: Evidence from Russian Administrative Data
Serguey Braguinsky & Sergey MityakovNBER Working Paper, January 2012
Foreign-owned firms from advanced countries carry the culture of transparency in business transactions that is orthogonal to the culture of hiding and insider dealing in many developing economies and economies in transition. In this paper, we document this using administrative data on reported earnings and market values of cars owned by workers employed in foreign-owned and domestic firms in Moscow, Russia. We examine whether closer ties to foreign corporations result in the diffusion of transparency to private Russian firms. We find that Russian firms initially founded in partnerships with foreign corporations are twice as transparent in reported earnings of their workers as other Russian firms, but they are still less than half as transparent as foreign firms themselves. We also find that increased links to foreign corporations, such as hiring more workers from them, raise the transparency of domestic firms. An important channel for this transmission appears to be the need to keep official wages and salaries of incumbent workers close to wages domestic firms have to pay to their newly hired workers with experience in multinationals.
The neural basis of cultural differences in delay discounting
Bokyung Kim, Young Shin Sung & Samuel McClure , 5 March 2012, Pages 650-656
People generally prefer to receive rewarding outcomes sooner rather than later. Such preferences result from delay discounting, or the process by which outcomes are devalued for the expected delay until their receipt. We investigated cultural differences in delay discounting by contrasting behaviour and brain activity in separate cohorts of Western (American) and Eastern (Korean) subjects. Consistent with previous reports, we find a dramatic difference in discounting behaviour, with Americans displaying much greater present bias and elevated discount rates. Recent neuroimaging findings suggest that differences in discounting may arise from differential involvement of either brain reward areas or regions in the prefrontal and parietal cortices associated with cognitive control. We find that the ventral striatum is more greatly recruited in Americans relative to Koreans when discounting future rewards, but there is no difference in prefrontal or parietal activity. This suggests that a cultural difference in emotional responsivity underlies the observed behavioural effect. We discuss the implications of this research for strategic interrelations between Easterners and Westerners.
Krishna Savani & Hazel Rose MarkusJournal of Experimental Social Psychology
Analytic visual processing and holistic visual processing have been conceptualized in terms of attention to focal objects vs. the background. We expand the study of perceptual biases associated with these attentional patterns using the multiple object tracking task, which measures people's ability to track multiple moving target objects amidst otherwise identical distractors. We test two competing hypotheses: (1) Asians' more frequent eye saccades will enable them to quickly cycle through the multiple target objects before the objects move too far away, giving them another perceptual advantage; and (2) European Americans' tendency to focus attention on the focal objects while inhibiting attention to less important objects might facilitate tracking of multiple moving objects. We find that European Americans significantly outperform Asians on multiple object tracking. The research expands the conceptualization of analytic processing and holistic processing to include selective attention as a key component, a facet has not been previously identified.
Erin O'Mara et al.Journal of Research in Personality
Intensely debated is whether the self-enhancement motive is culturally relative or universal. The universalist perspective predicts that satisfaction of the motive panculturally promotes psychological well-being. The relativistic perspective predicts that such promotive effects are restricted to Western culture. A longitudinal-randomized-experiment conducted in China and the US tested the competing predictions. Participants completed measures of psychological well-being in an initial session. A week later participants listed a personally important attribute, described (via random assignment) how that attribute is more (self-enhancement) or less (self-effacement) descriptive of self than others, and again reported their psychological well-being. Consistent with the universalist perspective, self-enhancement significantly increased psychological well-being from baseline in the US and China; self-effacement yielded no change in psychological well-being in either culture.
Elizabeth Davis et al.
Culture and gender shape emotion experience and regulation, in part because the value placed on emotions and the manner of their expression is thought to vary across these groups. This study tested the hypothesis that culture and gender would interact to predict people's emotion responding (emotion intensity and regulatory strategies). Chinese (n = 220; 52% female) and American undergraduates (n = 241; 62% female) viewed photos intended to elicit negative emotions after receiving instructions to either "just feel" any emotions that arose (Just Feel), or to "do something" so that they would not experience any emotion while viewing the photos (Regulate). All participants then rated the intensity of their experienced emotions and described any emotion-regulation strategies that they used while viewing the photos. Consistent with predictions, culture and gender interacted with experimental condition to predict intensity: Chinese men reported relatively low levels of emotion, whereas American women reported relatively high levels of emotion. Disengagement strategies (especially distancing) were related to lower emotional intensity and were reported most often by Chinese men. Taken together, findings suggest that emotion-regulation strategies may contribute to differences in emotional experience across Western and East Asian cultures.
Dynamic Cultural Modulation of Neural Responses to One's Own and Friend's Faces
Jie Sui et al.
Long-term cultural experiences influence neural response to one's own and friend's faces. The present study investigated whether an individual's culturally-specific pattern of neural activity to faces can be modulated by temporary access to other cultural frameworks using a self-construal priming paradigm. Event-related potentials were recorded from British and Chinese adults during judgments of orientations of one's own and friend's faces after they were primed with independent and interdependent self-construals. We found that an early frontal negative activity at 220-340 ms (the anterior N2) differentiated between one's own and friend's faces in both cultural groups. Most remarkably, for British participants, priming an interdependent self-construal reduced the default anterior N2 to their own faces. For Chinese participants, however, priming an independent self-construal suppressed the default anterior N2 to their friend's faces. These findings indicate fast modulations of culturally-specific neural responses induced by temporary access to other cultural frameworks.
Values, trust and democracy in Germany: Still in search of ‘inner unity'?
Ross CampbellEuropean Journal of Political Research
Twenty years after German reunification, surveys have persistently uncovered differences in political trust between the eastern and western parts of the country. Studies have offered disintegrated and inconclusive assessments of the cross-regional variation. This variation is traced to a tenacious, retrospective sympathy for socialism steeped in political socialisation and experiential learning. Empirical analyses confirm the presence of two key effects. First, retrospective evaluations of socialism not only fuel popular distrust of political institutions, but are more strongly correlated with trust in the east. Second, East-West evaluations of socialism are sufficiently different to contribute towards explaining the contrasting levels of trust between the two regions. That socialist values constitute a core axis upon which East German attitudes pivot presents a challenge for nurturing trust in democratic institutions and renews attention to processes through which supportive attitudes to democracy are acquired in transitional countries.
Reconciling long-term cultural diversity and short-term collective social behavior
Luca Valori et al.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 January 2012, Pages 1068-1073
An outstanding open problem is whether collective social phenomena occurring over short timescales can systematically reduce cultural heterogeneity in the long run, and whether offline and online human interactions contribute differently to the process. Theoretical models suggest that short-term collective behavior and long-term cultural diversity are mutually excluding, since they require very different levels of social influence. The latter jointly depends on two factors: the topology of the underlying social network and the overlap between individuals in multidimensional cultural space. However, while the empirical properties of social networks are intensively studied, little is known about the large-scale organization of real societies in cultural space, so that random input specifications are necessarily used in models. Here we use a large dataset to perform a high-dimensional analysis of the scientific beliefs of thousands of Europeans. We find that interopinion correlations determine a nontrivial ultrametric hierarchy of individuals in cultural space. When empirical data are used as inputs in models, ultrametricity has strong and counterintuitive effects. On short timescales, it facilitates a symmetry-breaking phase transition triggering coordinated social behavior. On long timescales, it suppresses cultural convergence by restricting it within disjoint groups. Moreover, ultrametricity implies that these results are surprisingly robust to modifications of the dynamical rules considered. Thus the empirical distribution of individuals in cultural space appears to systematically optimize the coexistence of short-term collective behavior and long-term cultural diversity, which can be realized simultaneously for the same moderate level of mutual influence in a diverse range of online and offline settings.
Daniel Steel, Tiffany Rinne & John Fairweather Cross-Cultural Research, February 2012, Pages 3-30
Research has shown relationships between personality factors and innovation at the level of the individual person. Recently, data have become available that would allow testing of these relationships at the nation-state level. Based on theoretical aspects of the Big Five factors of personality, and on empirical work conducted using individuals as the unit of analysis, the authors hypothesize that mean national scores of Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness would be related to national innovation scores. Multinational data on mean national scores of the Big Five Inventory and the NEO-PI-R are compared to national-level innovation input and output scores from the International Innovation Index and the Global Innovation Index. On both indices, the results of the analyses using the NEO-PI-R show strong, positive relationships between Openness to Experience and both aspects of innovation, a strong positive relationship between Agreeableness and innovation inputs and no relationships between Conscientiousness and either innovation inputs or outputs. The analyses using the Big Five Inventory data shows no reliable relationship between national-level personality and national innovation scores. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for what one can learn from national-level studies of personality and innovation. Suggestions are offered to those governments and financial institutions interested in encouraging economic growth via innovation.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Property
Peter LeesonJournal of Legal Analysis, Spring 2011, Pages 341-375
For over a century England's judicial system decided land disputes by ordering disputants' legal representatives to bludgeon one another before an arena of spectating citizens. The victor won the property right for his principal. The vanquished lost his cause and, if he were unlucky, his life. People called these combats trials by battle. This paper investigates the law and economics of trial by battle. In a feudal world where high transaction costs confounded the Coase theorem, I argue that trial by battle allocated disputed property rights efficiently. It did this by allocating contested property to the higher bidder in an all-pay auction. Trial by battle's "auctions" permitted rent seeking. But they encouraged less rent seeking than the obvious alternative: a first-price ascending-bid auction.
Bart Wilson et al.Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization
This article uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18th and 19th centuries developed rules of conduct that minimized the sum of the transaction and production costs of capturing their prey, the primary implication being that different ecological conditions led to different rules of capture. Ceteris paribus, we find that simply imposing two different types of prey is insufficient to observe two different rules of capture. Another factor is essential, namely, as Samuel Pufendorf theorized over 300 years ago, that the members of the community are civil minded.
Sound taxation? On the use of self-declared value
Marco Haan et al.European Economic Review, February 2012, Pages 205-215
In the 16th century, foreign ships passing through the Sound had to pay ad valorem taxes, known as the Sound Dues. To give skippers an incentive to declare the true value of their cargo, the Danish Crown reserved the right to purchase it at the declared value. We show that this rule does not induce truth-telling, but does allow the authorities to effectively implement a given tax rate.
Institutional reversals and economic growth: Palestine 1516-1948
Andrew Schein, March 2012, Pages 119-141
This study examines the type and quality of institutions in Palestine and the correlation between the institutions and economic growth in Palestine from 1516 to 1948. Initially in the 16th century, with the Ottoman conquest of the area, institutions in Palestine involved de facto private user-rights. The level of expropriation by elites was low, and this enabled the people to develop the lands that they had acquired the right to cultivate. In the 17th and 18th centuries, with the exception of the Galilee in the middle of the 18th century, institutions became extractive due to tax farming, rapacious governors and Bedouin raids. From the middle of the 19th century until 1948, there was a second reversal back to private property institutions, first slowly until the First World War, and then more rapidly under the British Mandate after the First World War. When there were private property institutions the economy prospered, while when there were extractive institutions, the economy stagnated.
Kim Manturuk, Sarah Riley & Janneke Ratcliffe Social Science Research, March 2012, Pages 276-286
This research examines how homeowners and renters were impacted by the financial crisis in 2009. We build from the hypothesis that homeownership provides people a sense of stability which decreases the extent to which they feel stressed as a result of financial hardship. Our study tests whether owning a home affected either the degree to which lower-income households experienced financial hardship or the extent to which they perceived they were financially stressed. Using a sample of lower-income borrowers who obtained affordable mortgages through the Community Advantage Program (CAP) and a comparison panel of renters, we collected data on the effects of the financial crisis. From a portfolio performance standpoint, CAP loans have performed relatively well. Our analysis of the survey data finds that, although both renters and owners experienced similar levels of financial hardship, the homeowners were less psychologically stressed overall and reported feeling more satisfied with their financial situation.
Should you pay off your mortgage or invest?
Valentina Michelangeli, May 2012, Pages 322-324
The mortgage payoff dilemma affects many retirees that have enough financial assets to pay off their mortgage. I find that, on average, retirees with less than $300,000 in non-housing financial wealth are better off keeping the mortgage and investing.
Do Borrower Rights Improve Borrower Outcomes? Evidence from the Foreclosure Process
Kristopher Gerardi, Lauren Lambie-Hanson & Paul Willen
We evaluate laws designed to protect borrowers from foreclosure. We find that these laws delay but do not prevent foreclosures. We first compare states that require lenders to seek judicial permission to foreclose with states that do not. Borrowers in judicial states are no more likely to cure and no more likely to renegotiate their loans, but the delays lead to a build-up in these states of persistently delinquent borrowers, the vast majority of whom eventually lose their homes. We next analyze a "right-to-cure" law instituted in Massachusetts on May 1, 2008. Using a difference-in-differences approach to evaluate the effect of the policy, we compare Massachusetts with neighboring states that did not adopt similar laws. We find that the right-to-cure law lengthens the foreclosure timeline but does not lead to better outcomes for borrowers.
Waltraud SchelklePolitics & Society, March 2012, Pages 59-80
The crisis of 2007-09 was prefigured by bubbles in the housing and mortgage credit markets of major Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. A comparison of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France reveals that, contrary to popular perception, the two European countries had a bigger housing price bubble, more volatility, and a more short-termist mortgage market. Yet, the fallout of the crisis - in terms of overindebtedness of mortgage holders, foreclosures of homes, and the extent to which the "nest-eggs" of households were devalued - has been worse in the United States. This article explores which differences in the use of credit markets for the social policy of promoting homeownership can account for this puzzling finding.
Tax Incentives for Homeownership and the Provision of Local Public Services
Kelly Edmiston & Kenneth SpongPublic Finance Review, January 2012, Pages 116-144
There is a substantial literature that assesses the distributional impact of the mortgage interest and state and local property tax deductions and the disparate incentives for buying a home across income groups, but virtually no work exists that evaluates the secondary effect on the provision of local public services. In this paper we evaluate the impact that disparate homeowner tax subsidies have on the provision of local public services, specifically, schools. Performing a path analysis, we find that a 100 percent increase in the average homeowner tax subsidy yields a ten percent increase in local public school spending per student.
After the Fall: An Ex Post Characterization of Housing Price Declines across Metropolitan Areas
Richard Carson & Samuel Dastrup
Housing prices have plummeted across the United States. This article examines differences in the magnitude of housing price decreases across metropolitan areas. A small number of housing market variables observable before the fall are capable of explaining over 70% of the considerable variation in price declines. An additional non-parametric analysis suggests that exceeding particular thresholds for some of the key predictors is associated with much larger price drops. These findings are consistent with historical price patterns, which raises questions about the validity of mortgage pricing policy and risk diversification norms in the United States. The analysis points to a set of stylized facts concerning the housing price bubble that need to be explained and suggests fruitful hypotheses for understanding the dramatic housing price declines.
Housing, the Welfare State, and the Global Financial Crisis: What is the Connection?
Herman SchwartzPolitics & Society, March 2012, Pages 35-58
Analyses of the global financial crisis that assign causality to the erosion of parts of the welfare state that protected individuals miss the importance of macro level regulation that protected firms and the financial system from itself. Post-Depression macro level regulation of finance prevented the emergence of mismatched maturities where deposits lacked state guarantees, and thus prevented runs on banks or near-banks. A balance sheet approach shows that macro regulation linked long duration liabilities in housing finance (mortgages) to long duration assets (pensions). Deregulation permitted the reemergence of mismatched maturities, providing both a necessary and sufficient condition for the current financial crisis.
The Determinants of Attitudes towards Strategic Default on Mortgages
Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales Journal of Finance
We use survey data to measure households' propensity to default on mortgages even if they can afford to pay them (strategic default) when the value of the mortgage exceeds the value of the house. The willingness to default increases both in the absolute and in the relative size of the home-equity shortfall. Our evidence suggests that this willingness is affected both by pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors, such as views about fairness and morality. We also find that exposure to other people who strategically defaulted increases the propensity to default strategically because it conveys information about the probability of being sued.
Preston McAfee & Alan MillerJournal of Public Economics, April 2012, Pages 349-353
We develop a model of scarce, renewable resources to study the commons problem. We show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, property rights can often be less efficient than a commons. In particular, we study two effects: (1) waste which arises when individuals expend resources to use a resource unavailable due to congestion and (2) the risk of underutilization of the resource. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for each effect to dominate the other when the cost of determining the availability of a resource is low.
Revealed Preference for Relative Status: Evidence from the Housing Market
Susane Leguizamon & Justin RossJournal of Housing Economics
This paper investigates the value individuals place on their relative housing consumption as compared to absolute housing consumption. Using observed housing sales from three Ohio MSAs in 2000, a spatial Durbin hedonic price model provides total marginal willingness-to-pay estimates for both characteristics of housing units and those of its neighbors. Using this revealed-preference approach, we find evidence suggesting individuals do value relative house size, but the absolute effect dominates. For instance, the estimates indicate that if all homes in Columbus were to increase in size by 100 square feet, the net effect of impacts on absolute and relative consumption would be to increase house prices by $605 on average. This stands in contrast to the stated preference literature, which frequently find individuals to be willing to forgo absolute well-being in exchange for relative status gains.
Voting on a NIMBY Facility: Proximity Cost of an "Iconic" Stadium
Gabriel Ahlfeldt & Wolfgang MaennigUrban Affairs Review
This paper provides a spatial analysis at precinct level of the 2001 referendum of the Allianz Arena, a professional soccer stadium in Munich in Germany. While at the city level voters clearly supported the sports arena, voters in proximity of the proposed site opposed the project. Voters in proximity of an alternative site instead supported the project. We conclude that residents expected net costs of proximity to stadia and engaged in the referendum in order to shift the stadium away from their neighborhood. These findings indicate that sport facilities may exhibit a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) character, which stands in contrast to the evidence available for the United States. Proximity costs and benefits of sports facilities apparently vary across sports and countries.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Couch Potato
The Effects of Reality Television on Weight Bias: An Examination of The Biggest Loser
Sarah Domoff et al.Obesity
Weight-loss reality shows, a popular form of television programming, portray obese individuals and their struggles to lose weight. While the media is believed to reinforce obesity stereotypes and contribute to weight stigma, it is not yet known whether weight-loss reality shows have any effect on weight bias. The goal of this investigation was to examine how exposure to 40-min of The Biggest Loser impacted participants' levels of weight bias. Fifty-nine participants (majority of whom were white females) were randomly assigned to either an experimental (one episode of The Biggest Loser) or control (one episode of a nature reality show) condition. Levels of weight bias were measured by the Implicit Associations Test (IAT), the Obese Person Trait Survey (OPTS), and the Anti-fat Attitudes scale (AFA) at baseline and following the episode viewing (1 week later). Participants in The Biggest Loser condition had significantly higher levels of dislike of overweight individuals and more strongly believed that weight is controllable after the exposure. No significant condition effects were found for implicit bias or traits associated with obese persons. Exploratory analyses examining moderation of the condition effect by BMI and intention to lose weight indicated that participants who had lower BMIs and were not trying to lose weight had significantly higher levels of dislike of overweight individuals following exposure to The Biggest Loser compared to similar participants in the control condition. These results indicate that anti-fat attitudes increase after brief exposure to weight-loss reality television.
The Psychological Weight of Weight Stigma
Brenda Major, Dina Eliezer & Heather Rieck Social Psychological and Personality Science
The authors theorized that overweight individuals experience social identity threat in situations that activate concerns about weight stigma, causing them to experience increased stress and reduced self-control. To test these predictions, women who varied in body mass index (BMI) gave a speech on why they would make a good dating partner. Half thought they were videotaped (weight visible); the remainder thought they were audiotaped (weight not visible). As predicted, higher BMI was associated with increased blood pressure and poorer performance on a measure of executive control when weight was visible and concerns about stigma were activated but not when weight was not visible. Compared to average weight women, overweight women also reported more stress-related emotions when videotaped versus audiotaped. Findings suggest that weight stigma can be detrimental to mental and physical health and deplete self-regulatory resources necessary for weight control.
Kathleen Keller et al.Obesity
Animal studies show that CD36, a fatty acid translocase, is involved in fat detection and preference, but these findings have not been reported in humans. The objective of this study was to determine whether human genetic variation in 5 common CD36 polymorphisms is associated with oral fat perception of Italian salad dressings, self-reported acceptance of high-fat foods and obesity in African-American adults (n = 317). Ratings of perceived oiliness, fat content, and creaminess were assessed on a 170-mm visual analogue scale (VAS) in response to salad dressings that were 5%, 35%, and 55% fat-by-weight content. Acceptance of added fats and oils and high-fat foods was self-reported and anthropometric measures were taken in the laboratory. DNA was isolated from saliva and genotyped at 5 CD36 polymorphisms. Three polymorphisms, rs1761667, rs3840546, and rs1527483 were associated with the outcomes. Participants with the A/A genotype at rs1761667 reported greater perceived creaminess, regardless of the fat concentration of the salad dressings (P < 0.01) and higher mean acceptance of added fats and oils (P = 0.02) compared to those with other genotypes at this site. Individuals who had C/T or T/T genotypes at rs1527483 also perceived greater fat content in the salad dressings, independent of fat concentration (P = 0.03). BMI and waist circumference were higher in participants who were homozygous for a deletion (D/D) at rs3840546, compared to I/D or D/D individuals (P < 0.001), but only 2 D/D individuals were tested, so this finding needs replication. This is the first study to demonstrate an association between common variants in CD36 and fat ingestive behaviors in humans.
Obesity, SES, and Economic Development: A Test of the Reversal Hypothesis
Fred PampelSocial Science & Medicine
Studies of individual countries suggest that socioeconomic status (SES) and weight are positively associated in lower-income countries but negatively associated in higher-income countries. However, this reversal in the direction of the SES-weight relationship and arguments about the underlying causes of the reversal need to be tested with comparable data for a large and diverse set of nations. This study systematically tests the reversal hypothesis using individual- and aggregate-level data for 67 nations representing all regions of the world. In support of the hypothesis, we find not only that the body mass index, being overweight, and being obese rise with national product but also that the associations of SES with these outcomes shift from positive to negative. These findings fit arguments about how health-related, SES-based resources, costs, and values differ across levels of economic development. Although economic and social development can improve health, it can also lead to increasing obesity and widening SES disparities in obesity.
Educational Differences in Obesity in the United States: A Closer Look at the Trends
Yan YuObesity
Both body weight and educational attainment have risen in the United States. Empirical evidence regarding educational differences in obesity (BMI ≥30) is inconsistent. According to some widely cited claims, these differences have declined since the 1970s, and the most educated have experienced the greatest gain in obesity. Prior research was limited in grouping college graduates with nongraduates, combining men and women in the same analysis, and using self-reported rather than measured anthropometric information. Using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), we address these issues and examine changing educational differences in obesity from 1971-1980 to 1999-2006 for non-Hispanic whites and blacks in two separate age groups (25-44 vs. 45-64 years). We find that (i) obesity differentials by education have remained largely stable, (ii) compared with college graduates, less educated whites and younger black women continue to be more likely to be obese, (iii) but the differentials are larger for women than men, and weak or nonexistent among black men and older black women. There are exceptions to the overall trend. The obesity gap has widened between the two groups of college-educated younger women, but disappeared between the least and most educated younger white men. Thus, the increase in obesity was similar for most educational groups, but significantly greater for younger women with some college and smaller for younger white men without a high-school degree. Lumping together the two distinct college groups has biased previous estimates of educational differences in obesity.
Economic growth and obesity: An interesting relationship with world-wide implications
Garry Egger, Boyd Swinburn & Amirul Islam Economics & Human Biology
The prosperity of a country, commonly measured in terms of its annual per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has different relationships with population levels of body weight and happiness, as well as environmental impacts such as carbon emissions. The aim of this study was to examine these relationships and to try to find a level of GDP, which provides for sustainable economic activity, optimal happiness and healthy levels of mean body mass index (BMI). Spline regression analyses were conducted using national indices from 175 countries: GDP, adult BMI, mean happiness scores, and carbon footprint per capita for the year 2007. Results showed that GDP was positively related to BMI and happiness up to ∼$US3,000 and ∼$5,000 per capita respectively, with no significant relationships beyond these levels. GDP was also positively related to CO2 emissions with a recognised sustainable carbon footprint of less than 5 tonnes per capita occurring at a GDP of <$US15,000. These findings show that a GDP between $US5-$15,000 is associated with greater population happiness and environmental stability. A mean BMI of 21-23 kg/m2, which minimises the prevalence of underweight and overweight in the population then helps to define an ideal position in relation to growth, which few countries appear to have obtained. Within a group of wealthy countries (GDP > $US30,000), those with lower income inequalities and more regulated (less liberal) market systems had lower mean BMIs.
Acute Sleep Deprivation Enhances the Brain's Response to Hedonic Food Stimuli: An fMRI Study
Christian Benedict et al.Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
Context: There is growing recognition that a large number of individuals living in Western society are chronically sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation is associated with an increase in food consumption and appetite. However, the brain regions that are most susceptible to sleep deprivation-induced changes when processing food stimuli are unknown.
Objective: Our objective was to examine brain activation after sleep and sleep deprivation in response to images of food.
Intervention: Twelve normal-weight male subjects were examined on two sessions in a counterbalanced fashion: after one night of total sleep deprivation and one night of sleep. On the morning after either total sleep deprivation or sleep, neural activation was measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging in a block design alternating between high- and low-calorie food items. Hunger ratings and morning fasting plasma glucose concentrations were assessed before the scan, as were appetite ratings in response to food images after the scan.
Main Outcome Measures: Compared with sleep, total sleep deprivation was associated with an increased activation in the right anterior cingulate cortex in response to food images, independent of calorie content and prescan hunger ratings. Relative to the postsleep condition, in the total sleep deprivation condition, the activation in the anterior cingulate cortex evoked by foods correlated positively with postscan subjective appetite ratings. Self-reported hunger after the nocturnal vigil was enhanced, but importantly, no change in fasting plasma glucose concentration was found.
Conclusions: These results provide evidence that acute sleep loss enhances hedonic stimulus processing in the brain underlying the drive to consume food, independent of plasma glucose levels. These findings highlight a potentially important mechanism contributing to the growing levels of obesity in Western society.
Kate Tchanturia et al.PLoS ONE, January 2012, e28331
Background: People with eating disorders (ED) frequently present with inflexible behaviours, including eating related issues which contribute to the maintenance of the illness. Small scale studies point to difficulties with cognitive set-shifting as a basis. Using larger scale studies will lend robustness to these data.
Methodology/Principal Findings: 542 participants were included in the dataset as follows: Anorexia Nervosa (AN) n = 171; Bulimia Nervosa (BN) n = 82; Recovered AN n = 90; Healthy controls (HC): n = 199. All completed the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), an assessment that integrates multiple measurement of several executive processes concerned with problem solving and cognitive flexibility. The AN and BN groups performed poorly in most domains of the WCST. Recovered AN participants showed a better performance than currently ill participants; however, the number of preservative errors was higher than for HC participants.
Conclusions/Significance: There is a growing interest in the diagnostic and treatment implications of cognitive flexibility in eating disorders. This large dataset supports previous smaller scale studies and a systematic review which indicate poor cognitive flexibility in people with ED.
Monika Krzyżanowska & Nicholas Mascie-Taylor Journal of Biosocial Science, March 2012, Pages 221-228
Using a sample of 2090 British father and son pairs the relationships between social and geographical intra- and inter-generational mobility were examined in relation to height, weight and body mass index (BMI). There was much more social mobility than geographical (regional) migration. Social mobility and geographical migration were not independent: socially non-mobile fathers and sons were more likely to be geographical non-migrants, and upwardly socially mobile fathers and sons were more likely to be regional migrants. Upwardly socially mobile fathers and sons were, on average, taller and had a lower BMI than non-mobile and downwardly mobile fathers and sons. In general, no significant associations were found between geographical migration and height or weight. Migrating fathers had a lower BMI than sedentes, as did their sons who migrated between 1965 and 1991. There was no significant interaction that indicated that social mobility and geographical migration were acting in a simple additive way on height, weight and BMI.
Obesity and Pain Are Associated in the United States
Arthur Stone & Joan BroderickObesity
Recent small-scale studies have shown a positive association between central obesity and self-reported pain levels. This study attempts to replicate the finding in a survey of over 1,000,000 individuals in the United States. The Gallup Organization conducted a proprietary survey between 2008 through 2010 where 1,062,271 randomly selected individuals in the United States participated in a telephone interview. Survey questions included height and weight, from which BMI was computed, questions about pain conditions in the past year, and a question about pain experience yesterday. Only 19.2% of the sample was classified as Low-Normal BMI, 21.4 were classified as Overweight, and the remainder was in the three categories of Obese. BMI and pain yesterday were reliably associated when demographic variables were controlled: the overweight group reported 20% higher rates of pain than Low-Normal group, 68% higher for Obese I group, 136% higher for Obese II group, and 254% higher for Obese III group. The association held for both men and women and it became stronger in older age groups. Controlling the associations for other pain-related medical conditions substantially reduced the associations, but they remained substantial for the Obese groups. We conclude that BMI and daily pain are positively correlated in the United States: people who are obese are considerably more prone to having daily pain. The association is robust and holds after controlling for several pain conditions and across gender and age. The increasing BMI-pain association with older ages suggests a developmental process that, along with metabolic hypotheses, calls out for investigation.
Evidence of Motivational Influences in Early Visual Perception: Hunger Modulates Conscious Access
Rémi Radel & Corentin Clément-Guillotin
"Although food deprivation did not affect the reported visibility of neutral words, t(40) = 0.48, n.s., fasting participants rated the visibility of food-related words higher (M = 5.48, SD = 1.42) than satiated participants did (M = 4.52, SD = 1.51), t(40) = 2.06, p < .05...The research reported here extends the generally accepted concept that people tend to see what they want to see (e.g., Balcetis & Dunning, 2006). Whereas the results of previous studies could be explained by an implicit bias occurring at a postperceptual stage, our findings indicate that motivation directly improves perceptual encoding of desired stimuli. This demonstration of a modulation of conscious access reveals that motivational influences can penetrate early perceptual processing. Specifically, our results imply that the stimuli were quickly processed unconsciously on a semantic level, and that the stimuli most relevant to participants' goals were most likely to be selected to reach consciousness."
"Theory of food" as a neurocognitive adaptation
John AllenAmerican Journal of Human Biology
Human adult cognition emerges over the course of development via the interaction of multiple critical neurocognitive networks. These networks evolved in response to various selection pressures, many of which were modified or intensified by the intellectual, technological, and sociocultural environments that arose in connection with the evolution of genus Homo. Networks related to language and theory of mind clearly play an important role in adult cognition. Given the critical importance of food to both basic survival and cultural interaction, a "theory of food" (analogous to theory of mind) may represent another complex network essential for normal cognition. I propose that theory of food evolved as an internal, cognitive representation of our diets in our minds. Like other complex cognitive abilities, it relies on complex and overlapping dedicated neural networks that develop in childhood under familial and cultural influences. Normative diets are analogous to first languages in that they are acquired without overt teaching; they are also difficult to change or modify once a critical period in development is passed. Theory of food suggests that cognitive activities related to food may be cognitive enhancers, which could have implications for maintaining healthy brain function in aging.
Impact of Physician BMI on Obesity Care and Beliefs
Sara Bleich et al.Obesity
Using a national cross-sectional survey of 500 primary care physicians conducted between 9 February and 1 March 2011, the objective of this study was to assess the impact of physician BMI on obesity care, physician self-efficacy, perceptions of role-modeling weight-related health behaviors, and perceptions of patient trust in weight loss advice. We found that physicians with normal BMI were more likely to engage their obese patients in weight loss discussions as compared to overweight/obese physicians (30% vs. 18%, P = 0.010). Physicians with normal BMI had greater confidence in their ability to provide diet (53% vs. 37%, P = 0.002) and exercise counseling (56% vs. 38%, P = 0.001) to their obese patients. A higher percentage of normal BMI physicians believed that overweight/obese patients would be less likely to trust weight loss advice from overweight/obese doctors (80% vs. 69%, P = 0.02). Physicians in the normal BMI category were more likely to believe that physicians should model healthy weight-related behaviors - maintaining a healthy weight (72% vs. 56%, P = 0.002) and exercising regularly (73% vs. 57%, P = 0.001). The probability of a physician recording an obesity diagnosis (93% vs. 7%, P < 0.001) or initiating a weight loss conversation (89% vs. 11%, P ≤ 0.001) with their obese patients was higher when the physicians' perception of the patients' body weight met or exceeded their own personal body weight. These results suggest that more normal weight physicians provided recommended obesity care to their patients and felt confident doing so.
Looks Good Enough to Eat: How Food Plating Preferences Differ Across Cultures and Continents
Francesca Zampollo et al.Cross-Cultural Research, February 2012, Pages 31-49
Food is central to cross-cultural studies of behavior, thought, and symbolism. The way it is presented to people, however, can have a dramatic influence on how palatable it is perceived and what is eaten. Because of this, issues of food plating and presentation are of applied interest to anyone who wishes to influence the perceptions and consumption of prepared food. This includes chefs, marketers, and parents. This study examines two questions: (a) What are these visual preferences of plating, and (b) How do they vary across cultures? To explore these questions, we presented a wide range of meal photos to adults from the United States, Italy, and Japan to assess preferences for various plating arrangements. Across six visual dimensions of food, there was a consistent preference for the number of colors on a plate (three), components on a plate (three to four) and the fill level of a plate; however, there were diverging preferences regarding the preferred position of the featured main course, how the items should be organized, and whether they should be casually presented. We discuss the implications of our findings for cross-cultural researchers as well as those who wish to influence the perceptions and food consumption of others.
Measuring Availability of Healthy Foods: Agreement Between Directly Measured and Self-reported Data
Latetia Moore, Ana Diez Roux & Manuel Franco American Journal of Epidemiology
A major challenge in studies of the impact of the local food environment is the accuracy of measures of healthy food access. The authors assessed agreement between self-reported and directly measured availability of healthful choices within neighborhood food stores and examined the validity of reported availability using directly measured availability as a "gold standard." Reported availability was measured via a phone survey of 1,170 adults in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2004. Directly measured availability was assessed in 226 food stores in 2006 using a modified Nutrition Environment Measures Survey in Stores (NEMS-S). Whites, college-educated individuals, and higher income households (≥$50,000) had significantly higher reported and directly measured availability than did blacks, those with less education, and lower income households. Persons in areas with above average directly measured availability reported above average availability 70%-80% of the time (sensitivity = 79.6% for all stores within 1 mile (1.6 km) of participants' homes and 69.6% for the store with the highest availability within 1 mile). Those with below average directly measured availability reported low availability only half the time. With revisions to improve specificity, self-reported measures can be reasonable indicators of healthy food availability and provide feasible proxy measures of directly assessed availability.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Open Your Mind
Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories
Michael Wood, Karen Douglas & Robbie Sutton Social Psychological and Personality Science
Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: A self-sustaining worldview comprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs. The present research shows that even mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated in endorsement. In Study 1 (n = 137), the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. In Study 2 (n = 102), the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive. Hierarchical regression models showed that mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively associated because both are associated with the view that the authorities are engaged in a cover-up (Study 2). The monological nature of conspiracy belief appears to be driven not by conspiracy theories directly supporting one another but by broader beliefs supporting conspiracy theories in general.
Feeling the Future: The Emotional Oracle Effect
Michel Tuan Pham, Leonard Lee & Andrew Stephen Journal of Consumer Research
Eight studies reveal an intriguing phenomenon: Individuals who have higher trust in their feelings can predict the outcomes of future events better than individuals with lower trust in their feelings. This emotional oracle effect was found across a variety of prediction domains, including (a) the 2008 U.S. Democratic presidential nomination, (b) movie box-office success, (c) the winner of American Idol, (d) the stock market, (e) college football, and even (f) the weather. It is mostly high trust in feelings that improves prediction accuracy rather than low trust in feelings that impairs it. However, the effect occurs only among individuals who possess sufficient background knowledge about the prediction domain, and dissipates when the prediction criterion becomes inherently unpredictable. The authors hypothesize that the effect arises because trusting one's feelings encourages access to a "privileged window" into the vast amount of predictive information that people learn, often unconsciously, about their environments.
Reducing Information Avoidance Through Affirmation
Jennifer Howell & James ShepperdPsychological Science, February 2012, Pages 141-145
Although screening for medical problems can have health benefits, the potentially threatening nature of the results can lead people to avoid screening. In three studies, we examined whether affirming people's self-worth reduces their avoidance of medical-screening feedback. Participants completed an online risk calculator for a fictitious medical condition and then were offered a choice to receive or not receive their risk feedback. Our results showed that affirmation decreased participants' avoidance of risk feedback (Study 1) and eliminated the increased avoidance typically observed when risk feedback might obligate people to engage in undesired behavior (Study 2) and when feedback is about risk for an untreatable disease (Study 3). These findings suggest that affirmation may be an effective strategy for increasing rates of medical screening.
Uncorking the muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving
Andrew Jarosz, Gregory Colflesh & Jennifer Wiley Consciousness and Cognition
That alcohol provides a benefit to creative processes has long been assumed by popular culture, but to date has not been tested. The current experiment tested the effects of moderate alcohol intoxication on a common creative problem solving task, the Remote Associates Test (RAT). Individuals were brought to a blood alcohol content of approximately .075, and, after reaching peak intoxication, completed a battery of RAT items. Intoxicated individuals solved more RAT items, in less time, and were more likely to perceive their solutions as the result of a sudden insight. Results are interpreted from an attentional control perspective.
Kimberlee Weaver, Stephen Garcia & Norbert Schwartz Journal of Consumer Research
AbstractThis analysis introduces the Presenter's Paradox. Robust findings in impression formation demonstrate that perceivers' judgments show a weighted averaging pattern, which results in less favorable evaluations when mildly favorable information is added to highly favorable information. Across seven studies, we show that presenters do not anticipate this averaging pattern on the part of evaluators and instead design presentations that include all of the favorable information available. This additive strategy ("more is better") hurts presenters in the perceivers' eyes because mildly favorable information dilutes the impact of highly favorable information. For example, presenters choose to spend more money to make a product bundle look more costly, even though doing so actually cheapened its value from the evaluators' perspective (study 1). Additional studies demonstrate the robustness of the effect, investigate the psychological processes underlying it, and examine its implications for a variety of marketing contexts.
Dean SimontonPsychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming
Galileo Galilei's celebrated contributions to astronomy are used as case studies in the psychology of scientific discovery. Particular attention was devoted to the involvement of foresight, insight, oversight, and hindsight. These four mental acts concern, in divergent ways, the relative degree of "sightedness" in Galileo's discovery process and accordingly have implications for evaluating the blind-variation and selective-retention (BVSR) theory of creativity and discovery. Scrutiny of the biographical and historical details indicates that Galileo's mental processes were far less sighted than often depicted in retrospective accounts. Hindsight biases clearly tend to underline his insights and foresights while ignoring his very frequent and substantial oversights. Of special importance was how Galileo was able to create a domain-specific expertise where no such expertise previously existed - in part by exploiting his extensive knowledge and skill in the visual arts. Galileo's success as an astronomer was founded partly and "blindly" on his artistic avocations. The investigation closes by briefly discussing Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's similar creation of microscopic biology. This parallel case indicates that Galileo's telescopic astronomy was probably not unique as an illustration of how scientific discovery works in practice.
Embodied Metaphors and Creative "Acts"
Angela Leung et al.Psychological Science
Creativity is a highly sought after skill. To inspire people's creativity, prescriptive advice in the form of metaphors abound: We are encouraged to think outside the box, to consider the problem on one hand, then on the other hand, and to put two and two together to achieve creative breakthroughs. These metaphors suggest a connection between concrete bodily experiences and creative cognition. Inspired by recent advances on body-mind linkages under the emerging vernacular of embodied cognition, we explored for the first time whether enacting metaphors for creativity enhances creative problem-solving. In five studies, findings revealed that both physically and psychologically embodying creative metaphors promote fluency, flexibility, and/or originality in problem-solving. Going beyond prior research that focused primarily on the kind of embodiment that primes preexisting knowledge, we provide the first evidence that embodiment can also activate cognitive processes conducive for generating previously unknown ideas and connections.
Edith Chen et al.Psychosomatic Medicine, forthcoming
Objective: Low socioeconomic status (SES) early in life is one of the most well-established social predictors of poor health. However, little is understood about why some adults who grew up in low-SES environments do not have poor health outcomes. This study examined whether the psychological characteristic of "shift-and-persist" protects adults from the physiological risks of growing up in low-SES households. Shift-and-persist consists of reframing appraisals of current stressors more positively (shifting), while simultaneously persisting with a focus on the future. We hypothesized that this characteristic would be associated with reduced physiological risk in low-childhood SES individuals.
Methods: A national sample of 1207 adults (aged 25-74 years) from the Survey of Midlife Development in the United States completed psychological questionnaires and were queried about parent education. Biologic assessments consisted of 24 different measures across seven physiological systems, from which a composite measure representing cumulative physiological risk (allostatic load) was derived.
Results: Among adults who grew up in low-SES households, those who engaged in high-shift-and-high-persist strategies had the lowest allostatic load (b = -0.15, p = .04). No benefit of shift-and-persist was found for those from higher-childhood SES backgrounds (p = .36).
Conclusions: Identifying the health-related protective qualities that naturally occur in some low-SES individuals represents one important approach for developing future health improvement interventions for those who start out life low in SES. Moreover, the psychological qualities that are protective from future disease risk for those from low-SES backgrounds are different from those beneficial to high-SES individuals.
Empathy Manipulation Impacts Music-Induced Emotions: A Psychophysiological Study on Opera
Andrei Miu & Felicia Rodica BalteşPLoS ONE, January 2012, e30618
This study investigated the effects of voluntarily empathizing with a musical performer (i.e., cognitive empathy) on music-induced emotions and their underlying physiological activity. N = 56 participants watched video-clips of two operatic compositions performed in concerts, with low or high empathy instructions. Heart rate and heart rate variability, skin conductance level (SCL), and respiration rate (RR) were measured during music listening, and music-induced emotions were quantified using the Geneva Emotional Music Scale immediately after music listening. Listening to the aria with sad content in a high empathy condition facilitated the emotion of nostalgia and decreased SCL, in comparison to the low empathy condition. Listening to the song with happy content in a high empathy condition also facilitated the emotion of power and increased RR, in comparison to the low empathy condition. To our knowledge, this study offers the first experimental evidence that cognitive empathy influences emotion psychophysiology during music listening.
Saving the Last for Best: A Positivity Bias for End Experiences
Ed O'Brien & Phoebe EllsworthPsychological Science, February 2012, Pages 163-165
"The research reported here demonstrates the power of endings in everyday life. Furthermore, unlike most prior research, it assessed participants' feelings as the endings occurred rather than retrospectively. Participants who knew they were eating the final chocolate of a taste test enjoyed it more, preferred it to other chocolates, and rated the overall experience as more enjoyable than participants who thought they were just eating one more chocolate in a series. These results are especially intriguing because the 'end' was somewhat artificial and impermanent (i.e., participants could still eat chocolates after finishing our experiment). This suggests that the same experience is viewed as better simply because people are aware that it is the last in a series, and this awareness influences subsequent evaluations and preferences."
Jack Goncalo & Michelle DuguidOrganizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Adopting a person by situation interaction approach, we identified conditions under which conformity pressure can either stifle or boost group creativity depending on the joint effects of norm content and group personality composition. Using a 2 × 2 × 2 experimental design, we hypothesized and found that pressure to adhere to an individualistic norm boosted creativity in groups whose members scored low on the Creative Personality Scale (Gough, 1979), but stifled creativity in groups whose members scored high on that measure. Our findings suggest that conformity pressure may be a viable mechanism for boosting group creativity, but only among those who lack creative talent.
Carsten De Dreu et al.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Anecdotes from creative eminences suggest that executive control plays an important role in creativity, but scientific evidence is sparse. Invoking the Dual Pathway to Creativity Model, the authors hypothesize that working memory capacity (WMC) relates to creative performance because it enables persistent, focused, and systematic combining of elements and possibilities (persistence). Study 1 indeed showed that under cognitive load, participants performed worse on a creative insight task. Study 2 revealed positive associations between time-on-task and creativity among individuals high but not low in WMC, even after controlling for general intelligence. Study 3 revealed that across trials, semiprofessional cellists performed increasingly more creative improvisations when they had high rather than low WMC. Study 4 showed that WMC predicts original ideation because it allows persistent (rather than flexible) processing. The authors conclude that WMC benefits creativity because it enables the individual to maintain attention focused on the task and prevents undesirable mind wandering.
Ettore Ambrosini, Corrado Sinigaglia & Marcello Costantini Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, forthcoming
Previous studies have demonstrated that motor abilities allow us not only to execute our own actions and to predict their consequences, but also to predict others' actions and their consequences. But just how deeply are motor abilities implicated in action observation? If an observer is prevented from acting while witnessing others' actions, will this impact on their making sense of others' behavior? We recorded proactive eye movements while participants observed an actor grasping objects. The participants' hands were either freely resting on the table or tied behind their back. Proactivity of gaze behavior was dramatically impaired when participants observed others' actions with their hands tied. Since we don't literally perceive actions with our hands, the effect may be explained by the hypothesis that effective observation of action depends not only on motor abilities but on being in a position to exercise them. This suggests, for the first time, that actions are observed best when we are actually in the position to perform them.
The Role of Bolstering and Counterarguing Mind-Sets in Persuasion
Alison Jing Xu & Robert WyerJournal of Consumer Research, February 2012, Pages 920-932
The effect of a persuasive communication on individuals' attitudes can be influenced by the cognitive behavior they have performed in an earlier, unrelated situation. Inducing participants to make supportive elaborations about a series of propositions activated a bolstering mind-set that increased the effectiveness of an unrelated advertisement they encountered subsequently. However, inducing participants to refute the implications of a series of propositions activated a counterarguing mind-set that decreased the ad's effectiveness. These mind-sets had more impact when the cognitive behavior they activated differed from the behavior that would occur in the absence of these mind-sets. When the implications of a persuasive message were difficult to refute, inducing a counterarguing mind-set increased its effectiveness. Finally, watching a political speech or debate activated different mind-sets, depending on participants' a priori attitude toward the politicians involved, and these mind-sets influenced the impact of an unrelated commercial they considered later.
The Wisdom of the Crowd in Combinatorial Problems
Sheng Kung Michael Yi et al.Cognitive Science, forthcoming
The "wisdom of the crowd" phenomenon refers to the finding that the aggregate of a set of proposed solutions from a group of individuals performs better than the majority of individual solutions. Most often, wisdom of the crowd effects have been investigated for problems that require single numerical estimates. We investigate whether the effect can also be observed for problems where the answer requires the coordination of multiple pieces of information. We focus on combinatorial problems such as the planar Euclidean traveling salesperson problem, minimum spanning tree problem, and a spanning tree memory task. We develop aggregation methods that combine common solution fragments into a global solution and demonstrate that these aggregate solutions outperform the majority of individual solutions. These case studies suggest that the wisdom of the crowd phenomenon might be broadly applicable to problem-solving and decision-making situations that go beyond the estimation of single numbers.
Disliked Music can be Better for Performance than Liked Music
Nick Perham & Martinne SykoraApplied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Although liked music is known to improve performance through boosting one's mood and arousal, both liked music and disliked music impair serial recall performance. Given that the key acoustical feature of this impairment is the acoustical variation, it is possible that some music may contain less acoustical variation and so produce less impairment. In this situation, unliked, unfamiliar music could be better for performance than liked, familiar music. This study tested this by asking participants to serially recall eight-item lists in either quiet, liked or disliked music conditions. Results showed that performance was significantly poorer in both music conditions compared with quiet. More importantly, performance in the liked music condition was significantly poorer than in the disliked music condition. These findings provide further illustration of the irrelevant sound effect and limitations of the impact of liked music on cognition.
The role of medial prefrontal cortex in theory of mind: A deep rTMS study
Laura Krause et al.Behavioural Brain Research, 1 March 2012, Pages 87-90
Neuroimaging studies suggest that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) plays a central role in cognitive theory of mind (ToM). This can be assessed more definitively, however, using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Sixteen healthy participants (10 females, 6 males) completed tasks assessing cognitive and affective ToM following low-frequency deep rTMS to bilateral mPFC in active-stimulation and placebo-stimulation sessions. There was no effect of deep rTMS on either cognitive or affective ToM performance. When examining self-reported empathy, however, there was evidence for a double dissociation: deep rTMS disrupted affective ToM performance for those with high self-reported empathy, but improved affective ToM performance for those with low self-reported empathy. mPFC appears to play a role in affective ToM processing, but the present study suggest that stimulation outcomes are dependent on baseline empathic abilities.
Dopamine receptor D4 gene variation predicts preschoolers' developing theory of mind
Christine Lackner et al.Developmental Science, forthcoming
Individual differences in preschoolers' understanding that human action is caused by internal mental states, or representational theory of mind (RTM), are heritable, as are developmental disorders such as autism in which RTM is particularly impaired. We investigated whether polymorphisms of genes affecting dopamine (DA) utilization and metabolism constitute part of the molecular basis of this heritability. Seventy-three 42- to 54-month-olds were given a battery of RTM tasks along with other task batteries that measured executive functioning and representational understanding more generally. Polymorphisms of the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) were associated with RTM performance such that preschoolers with shorter alleles outperformed those with one or more longer alleles. However, polymorphisms of the catechol-O-methyl transferase gene (COMT) and the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1) genes were not associated with children's RTM performance. Further tests showed that the association between DRD4 allele length and RTM performance was not attributable to a common association with executive functioning or representational understanding more generally. We conclude that DRD4 receptors, likely via their effects on frontal lobe development and functioning, may represent a neuromaturational constraint governing the stereotypical and universal trajectory of RTM development.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Accountable
Penalizing the Party: Health Care Reform Issue Voting in the 2010 Election
David Konisky & Lilliard Richardson
Many political pundits characterized the 2010 election as a referendum on President Obama's health care reform law. The political science literature on issue voting, however, does not consistently demonstrate that these types of policy evaluations are central to citizens' vote choices. Moreover, existing theories suggest different predictions about how the health care reform issue would affect elections across different levels of government. Studying data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), the analysis indicates that those opposed to health care reform were less likely to vote for Democratic candidates in the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, state gubernatorial, and state attorneys general contests, controlling for partisan affiliation, political ideology, perceptions of the economy, and evaluations of other salient policy issues. These findings suggest that, across the board, Democrats were penalized for their support of health care reform, and more generally provide evidence of the role of noneconomic issue voting in U.S. elections.
The Electoral Consequences of Large Fiscal Adjustments
Alberto Alesina, Dorian Carloni & Giampaolo Lecce
The conventional wisdom regarding the political consequences of large reductions of budget deficits is that they are very costly for the governments which implement them: they are punished by voters at the following elections. In the present paper, instead, we find no evidence that governments which quickly reduce budget deficits are systematically voted out of office in a sample of 19 OECD countries from 1975 to 2008. We also take into consideration issues of reverse causality, namely the possibility that only "strong and popular" governments can implement fiscal adjustments and thus they are not voted out of office "despite" having reduced the deficits. In the end we conclude that many governments can reduce deficits avoiding an electoral defeat.
David LawGeorgetown Law Journal, March 2011, Pages 779-835
The organizational structure of a judicial system has systematic implications for the ideological slant of judicial policymaking. These implications are, however, rarely discussed and poorly understood. This Article uses the prospect of court-rigging to illustrate both the impact of institutional design on judicial policymaking and the perils of taking institutional design for granted. Political leaders often pursue a form of entrenchment by attempting to imbue the courts with an enduring ideological bias. But the most familiar strategies for achieving this type of entrenchment - namely, court-packing and gerrymandering - are doomed to enjoy only limited success in the context of the Federal Judiciary. Comparative analysis of the judiciary's organizational structure, by contrast, highlights the existence of design vulnerabilities that could be exploited to greater effect. Examination of the Japanese judiciary in particular suggests that a more effective strategy would be to restructure the federal courts by delegating power over sensitive policy and personnel decisions to ideologically reliable, self-replicating agents who are insulated from the effects of regime change. Unlike conventional court-packing strategies, this approach can be implemented in ways that are not merely consistent with the requirements of Article III, but that actually exploit those very requirements for even greater effect. Specific implementation mechanisms discussed in this Article include the creation of a new intermediate appellate court with the ability to select its own members; the introduction of procedural rules that would effectively restrict the Supreme Court's appellate docket; and a comprehensive overhaul of the law clerk system that would forge the clerks into a collective body, establish their independence from the judges whom they nominally serve, and subject them to a combination of bureaucratic supervision and oversight by the legal academy.
Gregory Huber, Seth Hill & Gabriel LenzYale Working Paper, September 2011
Are citizens competent assessors of incumbent performance? Although observational studies cast doubt on their retrospective abilities, inferences from these studies are limited by the complexity of the real world, making it difficult to know why these shortcoming arise. In this paper, we show that biases in retrospective evaluation occur even in the simplified setting of experimental games. In three experiments, our participants (1) overweighted recent relative to overall incumbent performance when made aware of an election closer rather than more distant from that event, (2) allowed an unrelated lottery that affected their welfare to influence their choices, and (3) were influenced by rhetoric to give more weight to recent rather than overall incumbent performance. These biases were apparent even though we provided information, reinforced with a monetary incentive, that weighting all performance equally was preferable. These findings suggest key limitations in voters' abilities to effectively implement a retrospective decision rule.
Hearing Campaign Appeals: The Accountability Implications of Presidential Campaign Tone
Michele ClaibournPolitical Communication, Winter 2012, Pages 64-85
Citizen understanding of candidate priorities is highly consequential for both elections and postelection accountability and is especially key to the office of the presidency. I examine the impact of campaign advertising tone on citizen understanding of candidate agendas in the context of the 2000 presidential election. Merging data on political ads from the Wisconsin Advertising Project with individual survey data, I test whether citizens are more likely to accurately hear a positive campaign theme. The analysis provides empirical support for this benefit of positivity.
Henning FinseraasJournal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties, Winter 2012, Pages 95-108
This article examines the importance of retrospective pocketbook voting, i.e. that voters reward an incumbent party for an improvement in their own economic situation, in the Norwegian 2005 general election. The article utilizes a dataset with extensive tax register information on income and tax payments in 2004 and 2005, which makes it possible to examine how changes in tax burdens affect the probability of voting for an incumbent party. The results show that a reduced tax burden is not significantly correlated with vote choice, a finding that questions the reward/punishment logic of retrospective pocketbook voting. The article does, however, find some evidence of retrospective sociotropic voting, as the county-level unemployment rate is significantly correlated with vote choice.
Smith (and Jones) Go to Washington: Democracy and Vice-Presidential Selection
Joseph UscinskiPS: Political Science & Politics, January 2012, Pages 58-66
The American vice president's most notable constitutional function is that of succession: if the president unexpectedly leaves office, the vice president becomes president. The process of selecting vice-presidential running mates has fallen into fewer hands over time, moving from the electorate, to party bosses and delegates, to a single person: the presidential candidate. The selection process presents challenges for democratic governance: electoral considerations may provide presidential candidates with incentive to choose vice-presidential running mates who differ from themselves politically. In cases of succession, this can lead to undemocratic outcomes and unstable policy.
The Influence of Magna Carta in Limiting Executive Power in the War on Terror
Eric KasperPolitical Science Quarterly, Winter 2011, Pages 547-578
Eric T. Kasper examines the use of Magna Carta by U.S. federal courts in enemy combatant cases. He traces the history of due process, jury trial, and habeas corpus rights within Magna Carta as well as subsequent legal documents and rulings in England and America. He concludes that Magna Carta is properly used by the federal courts as persuasive authority to limit executive power in the war on terror.
Stefanie Lindquist & Pamela CorleyJournal of Legal Studies, June 2011, Pages 467-502
The Supreme Court's decision to invalidate a legislative enactment involves both the choice to strike as well as the choice whether to invalidate the statute on its face or as applied. Both choices implicate the possibility of counteraction by the legislature. In this paper, we evaluate the justices' choices to invalidate a state or federal enactment on its face or as applied and find that the justices are responsive to congressional preferences concerning the substance of the legal challenge at both stages of judicial review. Other factors systematically affect the justices' decisions as well, including the legal basis for the challenge, the statutory scope of the constitutional challenge, the president (through the solicitor general), and interest groups' amicus filings. These findings suggest that the Court's exercise of judicial review is significantly influenced by Congress and by other contextual, legal, and political factors, both as to the choice to strike as well as to the method of constitutional enforcement.
Distributive Politics and Electoral Incentives: Evidence from Seven US State Legislatures
Toke Aidt & Julia Shvets
We study the effect of electoral incentives on the allocation of public services across legislative districts. We develop a model in which elections encourage legislators to cater to parochial interests and thus aggravate the common pool problem. Using unique data from seven US states, we study how the amount of funding that a legislator channels to his district changes when he faces a term limit. We find that legislators bring less pork to their district when they cannot seek re-election. Consistent with the Law of 1/N, this last term reduction in funding is smaller in states with many legislative districts.
Public Approval of U.S. State Legislatures
Lilliard Richardson, David Konisky & Jeffrey Milyo Legislative Studies Quarterly, February 2012, Pages 99-116
The determinants of public approval for state legislatures have not received much attention, but one important finding is that more professionalized legislatures experience lower levels of public support. We argue that this result is an artifact of limited data and problematic model specifications. Analyzing a large national survey sample, we demonstrate that the negative relationship holds primarily for conservatives and to a lesser extent for moderates but not liberals. Additionally, we find that legislative approval in states with term limits and ballot initiatives is no different than in states without these institutions.
Should We Venerate That Which We Cannot Love? James Madison on Constitutional Imperfection
Jeremy BaileyPolitical Research Quarterly
Scholars have long pointed to James Madison's argument for constitutional veneration in Federalist No. 49 to illustrate what they see as Madison's fear of democratic politics and frequent constitutional reform. This article challenges that consensus, first, by showing that Madison said the opposite several years earlier and, second, by revisiting the historical and textual context of Federalist No. 49. It argues that even as Madison praises veneration he offers serious reasons to be wary of it.
Policy Networks and the U.S. Congressional Efforts to Terminate Four Federal Agencies
Gordon E. ShockleyInternational Journal of Public Administration, February 2012, Pages 98-111
The article develops a partial explanation for the varying fates of four federal agencies that the U.S. Congress targeted for elimination in the 1980s or 1990s: the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Congress successfully eliminated the CAB, ICC, and OTA; the NEA, however, survived. The argument of the article is that a vibrant policy network surrounding an agency Congress has targeted for elimination provides resiliency to resist congressional termination efforts by weaving together the relevant institutions and organizations into a resilient policy network and generating critical political support during dire times. A model of policy network resiliency is presented and applied to congressional efforts to terminate the CAB, ICC, OTA, and NEA.
Do Standards of Review Matter? The Case of Federal Criminal Sentencing
Joshua Fischman & Max SchanzenbachJournal of Legal Studies, June 2011, Pages 405-437
We study whether changes to standards of review affect district court sentencing decisions under the U.S. sentencing guidelines. Departures from the guidelines by district judges have at times been reviewed strictly or deferentially. If review standards are constraining, then differences among judges should be larger when review is deferential. We find that Democratic appointees are more lenient than Republican appointees under deferential review, but this difference significantly narrows when review is strict. We conclude that district judges are meaningfully constrained by the prospect of appellate reversal. By contrast, judges appointed before the adoption of the guidelines are more likely to depart and issue shorter sentences, but their decisions are not significantly affected by the standard of review. We suggest that the constraining effect of appellate review varies with a judge's respect for the underlying legal regime.
Political institutions, voter turnout, and policy outcomes
Eileen Fumagalli & Gaia Narciso, June 2012, Pages 162-173
This paper tests whether constitutions directly affect economic outcomes. By introducing citizens' political participation as the driving force connecting institutions to policy outcomes, we empirically show that voter turnout is the channel through which forms of government affect economic policies. We provide evidence of the existence of two relationships. First, presidential regimes appear to be associated with lower voter participation in national elections. Second, higher voter participation induces an increase in government expenditure, total revenues, welfare state spending, and budget deficit. We conclude that forms of government affect policy outcomes only through voter turnout.
Kai JägerDemocratization
In 2006, Bangkok's middle-class residents overwhelmingly supported the military coup that displaced the elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra. Survey research shows that opponents of Thaksin had a stronger commitment to liberal democracy and possibly to royalist values while rural voters supported Thaksin because he fulfilled their social demands. Opposition to Thaksin was not motivated by economic interests, but rather, there is some evidence that urban middle- and upper-class voters disliked Thaksin because they heard negative reporting about him, which were less available in the countryside. These findings are compatible with a new theory of democratic consolidation, in which the upper classes have the means that would enable and encourage them to pay sufficient attention to politics to discover that what they viewed as ‘good government' was violated by the ruling party, which could have led to demands for more democracy historically. More recently, however, in Thailand and perhaps other instances in Southeast Asia and Latin America, those with the money and leisure to follow politics closely have heard reports about the ‘bad government' of populist, democratically elected leaders, and thus have turned against them.
Attacks on Civilians in Civil War: Targeting the Achilles Heel of Democratic Governments
Lisa HultmanInternational Interactions
Previous research has indicated that democracy decreases the risk of armed conflict, while increasing the likelihood of terrorist attacks, but we know little about the effect of democracy on violence against civilians in ongoing civil conflicts. This study seeks to fill this empirical gap in the research on democracy and political violence, by examining all rebel groups involved in an armed conflict 1989-2004. Using different measures of democracy, the results demonstrate that rebels target more civilians when facing a democratic (or semi-democratic) government. Democracies are perceived as particularly vulnerable to attacks on the population, since civilians can hold the government accountable for failures to provide security, and this provides incentives for rebels to target civilians. At the same time, the openness of democratic societies provides opportunities for carrying out violent attacks. Thus, the strength of democracy - its accountability and openness - can become an Achilles heel during an internal armed conflict.
Some Dared Call It Torture: Cultural Resonance, Abu Ghraib, and a Selectively Echoing Press
Charles Rowling, Timothy Jones & Penelope Sheets Journal of Communication, December 2011, Pages 1043-1061
This study draws upon research on "indexing" and "cascading activation" to explore U.S. political and news discourse surrounding the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Specifically, we systematically analyze White House, military, congressional, and news messages. In so doing, we incorporate scholarship on social identity theory to suggest why news media challenge certain White House frames but uncritically echo others. Our data demonstrate that White House frames were consistently challenged by Democrats in the opposing party, but that these competing congressional messages were largely absent in news coverage. These results challenge previous research on news coverage of Abu Ghraib. We discuss how these patterns align with and expand Entman's cascading activation model of press-state relations, and consider the implications for future scholarship.
Subconscious Gatekeeping: The Effect of Death Thoughts on Bias Toward Outgroups in News Writing
David Cuillier, January/February 2012, Pages 4-24
This study contributes to gatekeeping theory by examining the importance of individual-level subconscious psychological factors in news story fact selection, specifically whether the thought of death increases biased writing toward outgroups. An experiment (N = 79), based on terror management theory from social psychology, indicated that college journalists primed to think about death injected into their news stories 66% more negative facts toward a rival university than those in a control condition. Implications for mass media research, particularly individual-level psychological factors overriding routine gatekeeping forces, are discussed.
Club-in-the-Club: Reform under Unanimity
Erik Berglöf et al.Journal of Comparative Economics
In many organizations, decisions are taken by unanimity giving each member veto power. We analyze a model of an organization in which members with heterogenous productivity privately contribute to a common good. Under unanimity, the least efficient member imposes her preferred effort choice on the entire organization. The threat of forming an "inner organization" can undermine the veto power of the less efficient members and coerce them to exert more effort. We also identify the conditions under which the threat of forming an inner organization is executed. Finally, we show that majority rules effectively prevent the emergence of inner organizations.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Family Values
Chris Herbst & Erdal Tekin
A complete account of the U.S. child care subsidy system requires an understanding of its implications for both parental and child well-being. Although the effects of child care subsidies on maternal employment and child development have been recently studied, many other dimensions of family well-being have received little attention. This paper attempts to fill this gap by examining the impact of child care subsidy receipt on maternal health and the quality of child-parent interactions. The empirical analyses use data from three nationally representative surveys, providing access to numerous measures of family well-being. In addition, we attempt to handle the possibility of non-random selection into subsidy receipt by using several identification strategies both within and across the surveys. Our results consistently indicate that child care subsidies are associated with worse maternal health and poorer interactions between parents and their children. In particular, subsidized mothers report lower levels of overall health and are more likely to show symptoms consistent with anxiety, depression, and parenting stress. Such mothers also reveal more psychological and physical aggression toward their children and are more likely to utilize spanking as a disciplinary tool. Together, these findings suggest that work-based public policies aimed at economically disadvantaged mothers may ultimately undermine family well-being.
The Effect of a Child's Sex on Support for Traditional Gender Roles
Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer & Neil Malhotra , September 2011, Pages 209-222
We examine whether sex of child affects parents' beliefs about traditional gender roles. Using an improved methodological approach that explicitly analyzes the natural experiment via differences in differences, we find that having a daughter (vs. having a son) causes men to reduce their support for traditional gender roles, but a female child has no such effect among women, representing less than 4 percent of the size of the standard deviation of the attitude scale.
Desiree Baolian Qin et al.Journal of Adolescence
Chinese American students are often perceived as problem-free high achievers. Recent research, however, suggests that high-achieving Chinese American students can experience elevated levels of stress, especially comparing to their peers from other ethnic groups. In this paper, we examine how family dynamics may influence psychological adjustment among a group of high-achieving adolescents. Drawing on survey data collected on 295 Chinese American and 192 European American 9th graders attending a highly selective magnet school, our findings show that Chinese American adolescents reported significantly lower levels of psychological adjustment (d = -.31), and significantly less family cohesion (d = -.34) and more conflict (d = .56) than their European American peers. Further, the ethnic differences on adjustment disappeared after controlling for perceptions of family cohesion and conflict, indicating that such perceptions may be a key factor in understanding the high academic achievement/low psychological adjustment paradoxical pattern of development among Chinese American adolescents.
Expansions in Maternity Leave Coverage and Children's Long-Term Outcomes
Christian Dustmann & Uta Schönberg
This paper evaluates the impact of three major expansions in maternity leave coverage in Germany on children's long-run outcomes. To identify the causal impact of the reforms, we use a difference-in-difference design that compares outcomes of children born shortly before and shortly after a change in maternity leave legislation in years of policy changes, and in years when no changes have taken place. We find no support for the hypothesis that the expansions in leave coverage improved children's outcomes, despite a strong impact on mothers' return to work behavior after childbirth.
Observed Gender Differences in African American Mother-Child Relationships and Child Behavior
Jelani Mandara et al.Family Relations, February 2012, Pages 129-141
African American mother-child dyads (N = 99) were observed interacting on a collaborative puzzle exercise. Raters blind to the purpose of the study rated the dyads on several mother and child behaviors. Mothers of daughters were rated as more empathetic, encouraging, warm, and accepting and less negative than mothers of sons. Male children were more challenging and less happy, relaxed, and engaged. Mediation analyses found that the differences in mother-child relationships explained the gender differences in child behavior. These patterns were consistent across different child age groups and after controlling for family socioeconomic status. It was concluded that many of the gender disparities may be reduced with empirically informed and culturally sensitive parent training interventions that teach parents the necessity of being warm and loving as well as encouraging both male and female children to excel.
Eugenio Proto, Daniel Sgroi & Andrew Oswald Experimental Economics, March 2012, Pages 1-23
High rates of divorce in western society have prompted much research on the repercussions for well-being and the economy. Yet little is known about the important topic of whether parental divorce has deleterious consequences upon adult children. By combining experimental and econometric survey-based evidence, this study attempts to provide an answer. Under controlled conditions, it measures university students' subjective well-being and productivity (in a standardized laboratory task). It finds no evidence that either of these is negatively associated with recent parental divorce. If anything, happiness and productivity appear to be slightly greater, particularly among males, if their parents have divorced. Using longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey - to control for so-called fixed effects - we then cross-check this result, and confirm the same finding, on various random samples of young British adults.
Ashley Smith Leavell et al.Sex Roles, January 2012, Pages 53-65
We examined the activities that low-income, ethnically diverse fathers of sons versus daughters engage in with their children in the preschool years. African American, Latino, and White fathers (N = 426) from research sites across the United States, were interviewed about their caregiving, play, literacy, and visiting activities when their children were 2 years, 3 years, and preschool age. Fathers of boys engaged more frequently in physical play than fathers of girls, whereas fathers of girls engaged more frequently in literacy activities. Moreover, gendered patterns of father engagement were already evident at the 2-year assessment, suggesting that fathers channel their children toward gender-typed activities well before their children have a clear understanding of gender roles. Ethnic differences were also found in fathers' activities with children, and child gender moderated ethnic patterns of behavior. For example, Black fathers of sons reported the highest levels of engagement in caregiving, play and visiting activities, and both Latino and African American fathers of sons engaged in more visiting activities compared to White fathers of sons. Fathers' education and marital status were also associated with fathers' activities. Married fathers and those with a high school diploma more frequently engaged in literacy activities than unmarried fathers without a diploma; moreover, although Latino fathers engaged less in caregiving activities than African American and White fathers, this difference attenuated after controlling for differences in fathers' education. The activities children share with their fathers vary by child gender, race/ethnicity, and family circumstances and offer insight into early gendered experiences in the family.
Child Gender And Parental Investments In India: Are Boys And Girls Treated Differently?
Silvia Barcellos, Leandro Carvalho & Adriana Lleras-Muney
Although previous research has not always found that boys and girls are treated differently in rural India, son-biased stopping rules imply that estimates of the effect of gender on parental investments are likely to be biased because girls systematically end up in larger families. We propose a novel identification strategy for overcoming this bias. We document that boys receive significantly more childcare time than girls. In addition boys are more likely to be breastfed longer, and to be given vaccinations and vitamin supplementation. We then present suggestive evidence that the differential treatment of boys is neither due to their greater needs nor to the effect of anticipated family size.
Neighborhood Effects on Working Mothers' Child Care Arrangements
Meirong Liu & Steven AndersonChildren and Youth Services Review
The implementation of stricter work requirements for low-income mothers following passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act has elevated the importance of developing quality child care options for working families. Prior research indicates that the type of child care used not only is associated with maternal labor force participation, but also affects children's later cognitive outcomes. This study used the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study to examine whether neighborhood factors were related to the types of child care selected by employed mothers of three-year old children in the post-welfare reform era. Multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that working mothers in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates were more likely to rely on relative care and family day care than on center care, and mothers in neighborhoods with higher immigrant rates were more likely to rely on family day care than center care. The findings are useful in informing social policies and interventions related to early child care education and child care provision for low-income families, particularly with respect to considering neighborhood factors in targeting parent education and child care development strategies.
The Interactive Effect of Parental Education on Language Production
Julie Hupp et al.Current Psychology, December 2011, Pages 312-323
This study examines the interactive effect of mother's and father's education on childhood language development. Parents of sixteen- and twenty-month-old children (N = 48) completed measures on their children's language production (MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences) as well as basic demographic information. There were variations in language production according to maternal education for only the older children. There was also an interaction between maternal and paternal education; children of parents with heterogeneous levels of education (that is, only one parent with a 4-year degree) had higher levels of language production than parents with homogeneous levels of education (that is, either both parents with a degree or both parents without a degree). Surprisingly, children with homogeneous levels of parental education were the ones who scored the lowest on measures of language production. This may be due to less effective parenting at both the low and high parental education levels or because disparity in parental education positively affects the home learning environment.
Should Mom go back to school? Post-natal educational attainment and parenting practices
Thurston Domina & Josipa Roksa
Although the relationship between educational attainment and parenting practices is well documented, it is typically examined at only one point in time. What happens if mothers acquire more education after the birth of their children: do they alter their parenting practices?. Panel data models based on longitudinal data from ECLS-K indicate that changes in mother's educational attainment are positively associated with increases in parental school involvement, having books in the home, and participating in non-academic family activities, but not with attitudes toward discipline. Although post-natal maternal education does not change all aspects of parenting, our findings are broadly consistent with the theory of cultural mobility and provide insights into the extent of socio-cultural mobility in contemporary American society.
Joseph Murray, Rolf Loeber & Dustin Pardini , February 2012, Pages 255-302
Explanations for the fact that crime tends to run in families have focused on the deprived social backgrounds of criminal parents, methods of child-rearing, modeling processes, and genetic mechanisms. However, parental involvement in the criminal justice system itself also might contribute to the intergenerational transmission of crime and have other adverse effects on children's well-being. We investigated the development of youth problem behavior in relation to parental arrest, conviction, and incarceration in the youngest and oldest samples of the Pittsburgh Youth Study, a longitudinal survey of 1,009 inner-city boys. Parental arrest and conviction without incarceration did not predict the development of youth problem behavior. Parental incarceration was not associated with increases in marijuana use, depression, or poor academic performance. However, boys experiencing parental incarceration showed greater increases in theft compared with a control group matched on propensity scores. The association between parental incarceration and youth theft was stronger for White youth than for Black youth. Parenting and peer relations after parental incarceration explained about half of its effects on youth theft. Because the effects of parental incarceration were specific to youth theft, labeling and stigma processes might be particularly important for understanding the consequences of parental incarceration for children.
Bruce Ellis et al.Development and Psychopathology, February 2012, Pages 317-332
Girls receiving lower quality paternal investment tend to engage in more risky sexual behavior (RSB) than peers. Whereas paternal investment theory posits that this effect is causal, it could arise from environmental or genetic confounds. To distinguish between these competing explanations, the current authors employed a genetically and environmentally controlled sibling design (N = 101 sister pairs; ages 18-36), which retrospectively examined the effects of differential sibling exposure to family disruption/father absence and quality of fathering. Consistent with a causal explanation, differences between older and younger sisters in the effects of quality of fathering on RSB were greatest in biologically disrupted families when there was a large age gap between the sisters (thus maximizing differential exposure to fathers), with greater exposure within families to higher quality fathering serving as a protective factor against RSB. Further, variation around the lower end of fathering quality appeared to have the most influence on RSB. In contrast, differential sibling exposure to family disruption/father absence (irrespective of quality of fathering) was not associated with RSB. The differential sibling-exposure design affords a new quasi-experimental method for evaluating the causal effects of fathers within families.
Jeremiah Wills & Jonathan BrauerSocial Science Research, March 2012, Pages 425-443
Drawing on previous theoretical and empirical work, we posit that maternal employment influences on child well-being vary across birth cohorts. We investigate this possibility by analyzing longitudinal data from a sample of children and their mothers drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We introduce a series of age, cohort, and maternal employment interaction terms into multilevel models predicting child well-being to assess whether any potential short-term or long-term effects of early and current maternal employment vary across birth cohorts. Results indicate that maternal employment largely is inconsequential to child well-being regardless of birth cohort, with a few exceptions. For instance, children born in earlier cohorts may have experienced long-term positive effects of having an employed mother; however, as maternal employment became more commonplace in recent cohorts, these beneficial effects appear to have disappeared. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.
Unilateral divorce versus child custody and child support in the U.S.
Rafael González-Val & Miriam Marcén, February 2012, Pages 613-643
This paper explores the response of the divorce rate to law reforms introducing unilateral divorce after controlling for law reforms concerning the aftermath of divorce, which are omitted from most previous studies. We introduce two main policy changes that have swept the US since the late 1970s: the approval of the joint custody regime and the Child Support Enforcement program. Because those reforms affect divorce decisions by counteracting the reallocation of property rights generated by the unilateral divorce procedure and by increasing the expected financial costs of divorce, it is arguable that their omissions might obscure the impact of unilateral divorce reforms on divorce rates. After allowing for changes in laws concerning the aftermath of divorce, we find that the positive impact of unilateral divorce reforms on divorce rates does not vanish over time, suggesting that the Coase theorem may not apply to changes in divorce laws. Supplemental analysis, developed to examine the frequency of permanent shocks in US divorce rates, indicates that the positive permanent changes in divorce rates can be associated with the implementation of unilateral divorce reforms and that the negative permanent changes can be related to the law reforms concerning living arrangements in the aftermath of divorce. This seems to confirm the important role of these policies in the evolution of divorce rates.
The Effect of Parental Employment on Child Schooling
John Ermisch & Marco FrancesconiJournal of Applied Econometrics
This paper presents a model that provides conditions under which a causal interpretation can be given to the association between childhood parental employment and subsequent educational attainments of children. The key parameter comes from the conditional demand function for children's future earning capacity. Its identification rests on having data on siblings and assumptions about the timing of parents' knowledge of their children's endowments. In addition to sibling differences, the use of a fixed-effects instrumental-variables estimator identifies the parameter under weaker conditions. Empirical analysis informed by the model reveals a negative and significant effect on the child's educational attainment of the months of the mother's full-time employment when the child was aged 0-5. The effect of the mother's part-time employment is smaller and less well determined, but again negative. These results suggest that the substitution effect of the mother's employment dominates the income effects. Stronger adverse effects are found for children of less-educated mothers.
Intergenerational Continuity of Taste: Parental and Adolescent Music Preferences
Tom ter Bogt et al.Social Forces, September 2011, Pages 297-319
In this article, the continuity in music taste from parents to their children is discussed via a multi-actor design. In our models music preferences of 325 adolescents and both their parents were linked, with parental and adolescent educational level as covariates. Parents' preferences for different types of music that had been popular when they were young were subsumed under the general labels of Pop, Rock and Highbrow. Current adolescent music preferences resolved into Pop, Rock, Highbrow and Dance. Among partners in a couple, tastes were similar; for both generations, education was linked to taste; and parental preferences predicted adolescent music choices. More specifically, the preference of fathers and mothers for Pop was associated with adolescent preferences for Pop and Dance. Parents' preferences for Rock seemed to indicate their daughters would also like Rock music, but not their sons. Parental passion for Highbrow music was associated with Highbrow preferences among their children. It is concluded that preferences for cultural artifacts such as (popular) music show continuity from generation to generation.
Hillary Fouts et al.Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, February 2012, Pages 328-348
Most studies of diverse populations of families within the United States have either focused predominantly on ethnicity or socioeconomic status (SES), and those that have examined both ethnicity and SES have noted difficulties in disentangling the effects of SES and ethnicity. In order to achieve a greater understanding of variation in infant experiences with parental and nonparental caregivers in differing socioeconomic and ethnic contexts, 41 infants from African American and 40 infants from European American families of lower and middle SES were observed for 12 hours each in and around their home environments. Ethnic differences were evident in the infants' overall experiences with caregivers, maternal availability, affection, caregiving, and stimulation by nonnuclear relatives; SES differences were identified for maternal and paternal holding, maternal carrying, and paternal caregiving. When caregiver availability was taken into account, variations in interactional and care experiences were predominantly predicted by ethnicity. These results underscore the need to study both ethnicity and socioeconomic variation rather than either one alone. Furthermore, the caregiving behaviors of African American mothers and fathers may be misrepresented when multiple SES contexts are not considered.
Why Parenthood, and Why Now? Gay Men's Motivations for Pursuing Parenthood
Abbie Goldberg, Jordan Downing & April Moyer Family Relations, February 2012, Pages 157-174
The current qualitative study of 35 preadoptive gay male couples (70 men) examined gay men's motivations to parent and their reasons for pursuing parenthood at the current time. Similar to heterosexual couples, gay men described a range of psychologically oriented reasons as shaping their decision to become parents. Some of these (e.g., desire to teach a child tolerance) may have been uniquely shaped by their sexual minority status, and others (e.g., desire to give a child a good home) in part reflect their adoptive status. Men named age, finances, and relationship factors, as well as unique contextual factors such as the need to find and move to gay-friendly neighborhoods, as influencing their readiness to pursue parenthood at the current time. Gay men's motivations to parent echo normative life course decision-making processes, but also reflect concerns that are uniquely informed by their sexual minority status.
Arginine vasopressin 1a receptor gene and maternal behavior: Evidence of association and moderation
Rossana Bisceglia et al.Genes, Brain and Behavior
This study examined associations between maternal sensitivity, mothers' early adversity and the Arginine Vasopressin 1a Receptor gene. Early adversity in mothers' background has been found to be associated with lower maternal sensitivity. Animal literature suggests that variation in the Arginine Vasopressin 1a Receptor gene is associated with parenting quality. The goal of the study was to examine the role of the Arginine Vasopressin 1a Receptor gene in maternal sensitivity, especially under conditions of high early adversity. Participants included 151 Caucasian women from a community sample. The women were videotaped in their home while interacting separately with two of their children (target child = 18 months, older sibling < 6 years). Evidence was found for an association between the Arginine Vasopressin 1a Receptor gene and maternal sensitivity. Mothers with two copies of the long RS3 alleles were less sensitive than mothers with one or zero copies of the long alleles. This association was strongest under conditions of high maternal early adversity.
Maternal support in early childhood predicts larger hippocampal volumes at school age
Joan Luby et al.
Early maternal support has been shown to promote specific gene expression, neurogenesis, adaptive stress responses, and larger hippocampal volumes in developing animals. In humans, a relationship between psychosocial factors in early childhood and later amygdala volumes based on prospective data has been demonstrated, providing a key link between early experience and brain development. Although much retrospective data suggests a link between early psychosocial factors and hippocampal volumes in humans, to date there has been no prospective data to inform this potentially important public health issue. In a longitudinal study of depressed and healthy preschool children who underwent neuroimaging at school age, we investigated whether early maternal support predicted later hippocampal volumes. Maternal support observed in early childhood was strongly predictive of hippocampal volume measured at school age. The positive effect of maternal support on hippocampal volumes was greater in nondepressed children. These findings provide prospective evidence in humans of the positive effect of early supportive parenting on healthy hippocampal development, a brain region key to memory and stress modulation.
Going Back Part-time: Family Leave Legislation and Women's Return to Work
Whitney SchottPopulation Research and Policy Review, February 2012, Pages 1-30
Using a multinomial logit model with data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this paper tests whether the implementation of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is associated with an increase in return to work at part-time status among first-time mothers working full-time during their pregnancy. I find a statistically significant trend of increasingly higher odds of returning to work at part-time status relative to return at full-time status, beginning in 1993 (the year in which the FMLA is implemented). Furthermore, an additional week of either state or federal leave is significantly associated with a higher odds of return at part-time status. This article provides evidence that job protection and leave legislation may help facilitate higher levels of labor force participation among women with small children, through more flexible work arrangements.
Sarah Oberlander et al.Journal of Family Psychology, December 2011, Pages 885-894
This prospective investigation used multi-informant models to examine whether parental monitoring moderated associations between child maltreatment and either emotional distress or sexual intercourse. Data included 637 youth in the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN). Child maltreatment was determined by lifetime Child Protective Service records and youth self-report and included sexual, physical, psychological abuse, and neglect (age 12). The moderating variable was youth- and caregiver-reported parental monitoring (age 12). Outcome variables were emotional distress (age 12) and sexual intercourse (age 14). Analyses included multi- and individual-informant models, adjusting for age, ethnicity/race, family income, and study site. Rates of parental monitoring did not differ by gender, but gender-specific analyses found that among girls, but not boys, youth-reported parental monitoring buffered the effect of maltreatment on emotional distress. Subtype analyses found that the buffering effects of monitoring on emotional distress were strongest for sexual and physical abuse and when youth experienced multiple subtypes of maltreatment. Caregiver-reported monitoring was not associated with reduced emotional distress. Youth and caregiver reports of parental monitoring were inversely associated with sexual intercourse, regardless of maltreatment history. Findings suggest that promoting parental monitoring among caregivers, and perceptions of monitoring among youth, may prevent early sexual intercourse regardless of maltreatment history. Promoting parental monitoring among youth with a history of maltreatment, especially girls or those who have experienced sexual or physical abuse or multiple subtypes of abuse, may reduce the likelihood of emotional distress.
Rotem Regev, Noa Gueron-Sela & Naama Atzaba-Poria Infant and Child Development, January/February 2012, Pages 34-51
This paper examines explanatory mechanisms of differences, in both positive and negative aspects of children's adjustment, between ethnic minority (i.e., Former Soviet Union-FSU origin) and ethnic majority (i.e., Israeli) children living in Israel. Seventy Israeli children (40 girls) and 75 FSU origin children (38 girls) and their parents constituted the study sample. Both mothers and fathers reported on the children's prosocial and externalizing behaviours and provided accounts of their use of corporal punishment. Analyses showed that FSU origin children displayed lower levels of prosocial behaviour as well as higher levels of externalizing problems and that their parents used more corporal punishment than their Israeli counterparts. In addition, a mediation model was determined in which both maternal and paternal use of corporal punishment mediated the link between ethnicity and the child's prosocial behaviour. Furthermore, according to the best fitting structural equation model, ethnicity did not have a direct effect on children's prosocial behaviour. This link was fully mediated by maternal and paternal corporal punishment. No mediation was revealed for the links between ethnicity and externalizing problems. The process of risk is discussed.
Maternal modulation of novelty effects on physical development
Akaysha Tang et al.
Familiarity to the mother and the novelty afforded by the postnatal environment are two contrasting sources of neonatal influence. One hypothesis regarding their relationship is the maternal modulation hypothesis, which predicts that the same neonatal stimulation may have different effects depending on the maternal context. Here we tested this hypothesis using physical development, indexed by body weight, as an endpoint and found that, among offspring of mothers with a high initial swim-stress-induced corticosterone (CORT) response, neonatal novelty exposure induced an enhancement in early growth, and among offspring with mothers of a low initial CORT response, the same neonatal stimulation induced an impairment. At an older age, a novelty-induced increase in body weight was also found among offspring of mothers with high postnatal care reliability and a novelty-induced reduction found among offspring of mothers with low care reliability. These results support a maternal modulation of early stimulation effects on physical development and demonstrate that the maternal influence originates from multiple instead of any singular sources. These results (i) significantly extend the findings of maternal modulation from the domain of cognitive development to the domain of physical development; (ii) offer a unifying explanation for a previously inconsistent literature regarding early stimulation effects on body weight; and (iii) highlight the notion that the early experience effect involves no causal primacy but higher order interactions among the initial triggering events and subsequent events involving a multitude of maternal and nonmaternal influences.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Separate and unequal
De Gustibus non est Taxandum: Theory and Evidence on Preference Heterogeneity and Redistribution
Benjamin Lockwood & Matthew Weinzierl
Preferences over consumption and leisure play no role in the standard optimal tax model, which attributes all variation in earnings to differences in income-earning ability. We show how to incorporate these preferences, which like ability are publicly unobservable, into the standard model in a tractable way. In this more general model, the policy designer must guess at the relative importance of ability and preferences in explaining variation in earnings. We show that such preferences could, in principle, increase or decrease optimal redistribution. In the most plausible specifications of the model, however, the result is clear: greater variation in preferences lowers the optimal extent of redistribution. To generate more redistribution than in standard results, one must assume that the desire for income is inversely related to income earned. This result holds even when the conventional model accurately describes the average individual, and it suggests one potential resolution to the puzzle of why observed redistribution is in some cases weaker than conventional theory would suggest. We then establish a new empirical finding that confirms this model's central policy prediction across developed countries and U.S. states. In countries and states with more heterogeneous tastes for consumption relative to leisure, redistribution is statistically significantly lower.
Financial Deprivation Prompts Consumers to Seek Scarce Goods
Eesha Sharma & Adam AlterJournal of Consumer Research
Consumers assess their wellbeing subjectively, largely by comparing the present state of their lives to the state of comparable others and to their own state earlier in time. We suggest that consumers similarly assess their financial wellbeing, and when these evaluations highlight a deficit in their financial position, they pursue strategies that mitigate the associated sense of financial deprivation. Specifically, consumers counteract the relative deficit in their financial resources by acquiring resources that are consequently unavailable to other consumers in their environment. The results from five studies suggest that the inferiority and unpleasant affect associated with financial deprivation motivates consumers to attend to, choose, and consume scarce goods rather than comparable abundant goods. These effects diminish when scarce goods are limited because other people have already obtained them, and when consumers attribute their unpleasant feelings to an extraneous source.
Democratic Legitimacy and Economic Liberty
John TomasiSocial Philosophy and Policy, January 2012, Pages 50-80
Libertarians and classical liberals typically defend private economic liberty as a requirement of self-ownership or on the basis of consequentialist arguments of various sorts. By contrast, this paper defends private economic liberty as a requirement of democratic legitimacy. In recent decades, many philosophers have converged upon a certain view about political justification. If a set of social institutions is to be just and legitimate, those institutions must be acceptable in principle to the citizens who are to lead their lives within them. This deliberative or democratic approach to justification is traditionally associated with thinkers on the left who are skeptical of the importance of private economic liberty. This article shows how the protection of private economic liberty is a requirement of citizens' developing and exercising the moral powers they have as democratic citizens. Democratic legitimacy does not require the affirmation of absolute economic liberty rights as sometimes defended by libertarians. But democratic legitimacy does require that a wide range of private economic liberties be meriting constitutional protection on a par with the civil and political liberties of democratic citizens. This opens the way for a wider defense of classical liberalism based upon the idea of democratic legitimacy.
Understanding the geography of food stamp program participation: Do space and place matter?
Tim Slack & Candice MyersSocial Science Research, March 2012, Pages 263-275
This study examines the extent to which geographic variation in Food Stamp Program (FSP) participation is explained by place-based factors, with special attention to the case of the three poorest regions of the United States: Central Appalachia, the Texas Borderland, and the Lower Mississippi Delta. We use descriptive statistics and regression models to assess the prevalence and correlates of county-level FSP participation circa 2005. Our findings show that the economic distress that has long characterized Appalachia, the Borderland, and the Delta clearly translates into greater reliance on the FSP relative to other areas of the country. State-level effects and local-level variations in poverty, labor market conditions, population structure, human capital, and residential context explain much of this reality. Yet, even after taking all of these factors into account, these regional geographies remain home to particularly high FSP participation. Our findings underscore the importance of considering these regions as key cases of study in the stratification of American society and hold a variety of implications for public policy.
Saving Rates and Poverty: The Role of Conspicuous Consumption and Human Capital
Omer Moav & Zvika NeemanEconomic Journal
Poor families around the world spend a large fraction of their income consuming goods that do not appear to alleviate poverty, while saving at low rates. We suggest that individuals care about economic status and interpret this behaviour as conspicuous consumption intended to provide a signal about unobserved income. We show that if human capital is observable and correlated with income, then a signaling equilibrium in which poor individuals tend to spend a large fraction of their income on conspicuous consumption can emerge. This equilibrium gives rise to an increasing marginal propensity to save that might generate a poverty trap.
Credit Access and Social Welfare: The Rise of Consumer Lending in the United States and France
Gunnar TrumbullPolitics & Society, March 2012, Pages 9-34
Research into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis has drawn attention to a link between growing income inequality in the United States and high household indebtedness. Most accounts trace the U.S. idea of credit-as-welfare to the period of wage stagnation and welfare retrenchment that began in the early 1970s. Using France as a comparison case, I argue that the link between credit and welfare was not unique to the United States. Indeed, U.S. charitable lending institutions that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century were modeled in part on older French financial institutions. Three historical factors drove U.S. lenders and policymakers to push for expanded credit access for the working class. First, welfare reformers in the interwar period embraced private credit as an alternative to an expansive welfare state. Second, U.S. organized labor in the wake of World War II embraced credit access as a means to sustain industrial employment and finance strike actions. Third, commercial banks in the 1950s began offering revolving credit accounts as a means to attract new depositors at a time when banking regulation restricted the interest they could offer on deposits.
Social Mobility in 20 Modern Societies: The Role of Economic and Political Context
Meir Yaish & Robert AndersenSocial Science Research
It is commonly argued that social mobility rates are influenced by economic and political conditions. Nevertheless, research on this issue has tended to be hindered by two limitations that make it difficult to draw strong conclusions about contextual effects: (1) seldom have country-level and individual-level influences been tested simultaneously, and (2) only rarely have data more recent than the 1970s been employed. We improve on previous research by employing multilevel models fitted to relatively recent survey data collected from 20 modern societies by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) and national-level characteristics derived from various official sources. Our findings demonstrate systematic cross-national variation in the association between the occupational status of respondents and their fathers. Consistent with the industrialization thesis, this variation is positively associated with per-capita GDP, suggesting that more affluent nations are characterized by more open and fluid stratification structures. Our results also suggest the importance of political regimes and migration for social mobility. In contrast, economic inequality appears to explain very little of the cross-national variation in mobility rates.
Income Inequality and Social Preferences for Redistribution and Compensation Differentials
William Kerr
In cross-sectional studies, countries with greater income inequality typically exhibit less support for government-led redistribution and greater acceptance of wage inequality (e.g., United States versus Western Europe). If individual nations evolve along this pattern, a vicious cycle could form with reduced social concern amplifying primal increases in inequality due to forces like skill-biased technical change. Exploring movements around these long-term levels, however, this study finds mixed evidence regarding the vicious cycle hypothesis. On one hand, larger compensation differentials are accepted as inequality grows. This growth in differentials is of a smaller magnitude than the actual increase in inequality, but it is nonetheless positive and substantial in size. Weighing against this, growth in inequality is met with greater support for government-led redistribution to the poor. These patterns suggest that short-run inequality shocks can be reinforced in the labor market but do not result in weaker political preferences for redistribution.
Preschoolers are able to take merit into account when distributing goods
Nicolas Baumard, Oliver Mascaro & Coralie Chevallier
Classic studies in developmental psychology demonstrate a relatively late development of equity, with children as old as 6 or even 8-10 years failing to follow the logic of merit - that is, giving more to those who contributed more. Following Piaget (1932), these studies have been taken to indicate that judgments of justice develop slowly and follow a stagelike progression, starting off with simple rules (e.g., equality: everyone receives the same) and only later on in development evolving into more complex ones (e.g., equity: distributions match contributions). Here, we report 2 experiments with 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 195) that contradict this constructivist account. Our results demonstrate that children as young as 3 years old are able to take merit into account by distributing tokens according to individual contributions but that this ability may be hidden by a preference for equality.
Do Infants Have a Sense of Fairness?
Stephanie Sloane, Renée Baillargeon & David Premack
Two experiments examined infants' expectations about how an experimenter should distribute resources and rewards to other individuals. In Experiment 1, 19-month-olds expected an experimenter to divide two items equally, as opposed to unequally, between two individuals. The infants held no particular expectation when the individuals were replaced with inanimate objects, or when the experimenter simply removed covers in front of the individuals to reveal the items (instead of distributing them). In Experiment 2, 21-month-olds expected an experimenter to give a reward to each of two individuals when both had worked to complete an assigned chore, but not when one of the individuals had done all the work while the other played. The infants held this expectation only when the experimenter could determine through visual inspection who had worked and who had not. Together, these results provide converging evidence that infants in the 2nd year of life already possess context-sensitive expectations relevant to fairness.
Legitimacy of Inequality in a Highly Unequal Context: Evidence from the Chilean Case
Juan Carlos CastilloSocial Justice Research, December 2011, Pages 314-340
Economic inequality is usually assumed to be a threat to social cohesion and democracy. Nevertheless, this opposition of inequality and democracy is based on further assumptions such as (a) that people perceive economic inequality accurately, and (b) that, by and large they consider inequality unjust. Research into distributive issues has not found consistent support for neither of these assumptions. Quite the contrary, empirical evidence indicates that economic inequality is widely misperceived and that inequality is to some extent considered legitimate. So far most of the empirical evidence in the area of legitimacy comes from experimental studies in the developed world. The present research aims at widening the scope of legitimacy studies by focusing on Chile as a case country, one of the societies with the highest economic inequality worldwide, guided by the question to what extent is economic inequality considered legitimate in a context of high economic inequality? In addressing this question, and based on previous evidence, the article proposes a way to evaluate (a) the legitimacy of inequality at a country level via survey research, and (b) the role of inequality perception and justice ideologies in the justification of economic inequality. The data to be analyzed is the public opinion survey International Social Justice Project (ISJP), implemented in Chile in the year 2007 (n = 890). Multivariate analysis results reveal signs of legitimacy of inequality in Chile, opening a series of issues regarding the acceptance and stability of unequal distributions.
The Polarizing Effect of Economic Inequality on Class Identification: Evidence from 44 Countries
Robert Andersen & Josh CurtisResearch in Social Stratification and Mobility
Using cumulative logit mixed models fitted to World Values Survey data from 44 countries, we explore the impact of economic conditions - both at the individual-level and the national-level - on social class identification. Consistent with previous research, we find a positive relationship between household income and class identification in all countries that we explore, though this relationship varies substantially. Also corroborating previous research, we find that ‘low' class identifications are more likely in poor countries than in rich ones. However, in contrast to previous research that has neglected the role of inequality, our results indicate that the effect of economic development diminishes if income inequality is considered in the same model. We further demonstrate that income inequality has an important polarizing effect on class identification. Specifically, the relationship between household income and class identity tends to be strongest in countries with a high level of income inequality.
Is wealth accumulation a luxury good?
Kiichi Tokuoka
This paper structurally estimates the Capitalist Spirit Model, in which utility derives from direct preferences for wealth. Its results support the hypothesis that wealth accumulation is a luxury good, by showing that the marginal utility from wealth declines more slowly than that from consumption.
The Dynamic Interplay of Inequality and Trust - An Experimental Study
Ben Greiner, Axel Ockenfels & Peter Werner Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, February 2012, Pages 355-365
We study the interplay of inequality and trust in a dynamic growth game, in which trust increases efficiency and thus allows higher growth of the laboratory economy in the future. We find that trust (as measured by the percentage of wealth invested in a trust game) is initially high in a treatment starting with equal endowments, but decreases over time. In a treatment with unequal endowments, trust is initially lower yet more robust. The disparity of wealth distributions across economies mitigates over time. Our findings suggest that both the level and the (exogenous or endogenous) source of inequality matters for the dynamics of trust.
Spend it like Beckham? Inequality and redistribution in the UK, 1983-2004
Andreas Georgiadis & Alan Manning, June 2012, Pages 537-563
A main activity of the state is to redistribute resources. Standard political economy models predict that a rise in inequality will lead to more redistribution. This paper shows that, for the UK in the period 1983-2004, a plausibly exogenous rise in income inequality has not been associated with increased redistribution. We explore this example of the ‘paradox of redistribution' using attitudinal data. We show that standard political economy models of the individual demand for redistribution do have explanatory power, but that other attitudes and beliefs are also very important. Moreover, these attitudes and beliefs change quite quickly so are very important in explaining variation in the demand for redistribution.
Duangkamon Chotikapanich et al., February 2012, Pages 52-73
Using a method-of-moments estimator, flexible three-parameter beta distributions are fitted to aggregate country-level income data to overcome an untenable assumption of previous studies that persons within each income group receive the same income. Regional and global income distributions are derived as weighted mixtures of country-specific distributions. Analytical expressions for Gini and Theil's measures of inequality at country, regional, and global levels are derived in terms of the parameters of the beta distributions. Application to data for 91 countries in 1993 and 2000 reveals a high degree of global inequality, with evidence of declining inequality, largely attributable to growth in China.
The Devolution of Risk and the Changing Life Course in the United States
Angela O'RandSocial Forces, September 2011, Pages 1-16
Recent patterns of labor exit in late life in the United States are increasingly heterogeneous. This heterogeneity stems from diverse employment careers that are emerging in the workplace where job security is declining. Individuals' structural locations in the labor market expose them to diverse risks for employment and income security at older ages. Among those risks are access to institutional mechanisms for retirement saving and the requirement to assume full responsibility for decisions about retirement savings that involve market risks. The spread of these individualized pressures to invest in retirement has elevated the importance of financial literacy in the 21st century. Late employment careers and patterns of financial literacy are studied in this article using the premier U.S. longitudinal dataset from the National Institute of Aging, the Health and Retirement Study initiated in 1992, which is linked to restricted Social Security earnings records that extend over several decades. These merged data afford the opportunity to observe continuous work histories in this sample from 1981 through 2006 to identify latent trajectories of employment in late life. In addition, a supplementary module attached to the 2004 wave of the HRS provides valuable information on the financial literacy of subgroups. The work-retirement trajectories and financial literacy patterns observed reflect persistent patterns of inequality amplified by modern risks in the labor market.
Estimating the long-run relationship between income inequality and economic development
Tuomas MalinenEmpirical Economics, February 2012, Pages 209-233
There are several theories describing the effect of income inequality on economic growth. These theories usually predict that there exists some optimal, steady-state growth path between inequality and development. This study uses a new measure of income distribution and panel data cointegration methods to test for the existence of such a steady-state equilibrium relation. It is shown that there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between the variables, and that this relationship is negative in developed economies.
Relative Deprivation: A Theoretical and Meta-Analytic Review
Heather Smith et al.Personality and Social Psychology Review
Relative deprivation (RD) is the judgment that one is worse off compared to some standard accompanied by feelings of anger and resentment. Social scientists use RD to predict a wide range of significant outcome variables: collective action, individual achievement and deviance, intergroup attitudes, and physical and mental health. But the results are often weak and inconsistent. The authors draw on a theoretical and meta-analytic review (210 studies composing 293 independent samples, 421 tests, and 186,073 respondents) to present a model that integrates group and individual RD. RD measures that (a) include justice-related affect, (b) match the outcome level of analysis, and (c) use higher quality measures yield significantly stronger relationships. Future research should focus on appropriate RD measurement, angry resentment, and the inclusion of theoretically relevant situational appraisals. Such methodological improvements would revitalize RD as a useful social psychological predictor of a wide range of important individual and social processes.
Long-term association of economic inequality and mortality in adult Costa Ricans
Sepideh Modrek, William Dow & Luis Rosero-Bixby Social Science & Medicine, January 2012, Pages 158-166
Despite the large number of studies, mostly in developed economies, there is limited consensus on the health effects of inequality. Recently a related literature has examined the relationship between relative deprivation and health as a mechanism to explain the economic inequality and health relationship. This study evaluates the relationship between mortality and economic inequality, as measured by area-level Gini coefficients, as well as the relationship between mortality and relative deprivation, in the context of a middle-income country, Costa Rica. We followed a nationally representative prospective cohort of approximately 16,000 individuals aged 30 and over who were randomly selected from the 1984 census. These individuals were then linked to the Costa Rican National Death Registry until Dec. 31, 2007. Hazard models were used to estimate the relative risk of mortality for all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality for two indicators: canton-level income inequality and relative deprivation based on asset ownership. Results indicate that there was an unexpectedly negative association between canton income inequality and mortality, but the relationship is not robust to the inclusion of canton fixed-effects. In contrast, we find a positive association between relative deprivation and mortality, which is robust to the inclusion of canton fixed-effects. Taken together, these results suggest that deprivation relative to those higher in a hierarchy is more detrimental to health than the overall dispersion of the hierarchy itself, within the Costa Rican context.
Manoj Atolia, Santanu Chatterjee & Stephen Turnovsky Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, March 2012, Pages 331-348
This paper examines the significance of the time path of a given productivity increase on growth and inequality. Whereas the time path impacts only the transitional paths of aggregate quantities, it has both transitional and permanent consequences for wealth and income distribution. Hence, the growth-inequality tradeoff generated by a given discrete increase in productivity contrasts sharply with that obtained when the same productivity increase occurs gradually. The latter can generate a Kuznets-type relationship between inequality and per-capita income. Our results suggest that economies with similar aggregate structural characteristics may have different outcomes for income and wealth inequality, depending on the nature of the productivity growth path.
The emergence of popular personal finance magazines and the risk shift in American society
Roei DavidsonMedia, Culture & Society, January 2012, Pages 3-20
This study considers the emergence of personal finance magazines in the US after the Second World War. It examines an instance when a possible relationship existed between a media genre's emergence and shifts in the general political economy. It suggests that the appearance of the personal finance genre was related to the shift in the American political economy from corporate liberalism to neoliberalism. Specifically, it focuses on the hailing patterns evident in personal finance magazines' editorial statements, and finds that these patterns attempt to constitute a popular and heterogeneous investing public of independent individuals in which magazines supplant other agents as sources of advice.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Interfaith
America's Grace: How a Tolerant Nation Bridges Its Religious Divides
David Campbell & Robert PutnamPolitical Science Quarterly, Winter 2011, Pages 611-640
David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam ask how America can simultaneously be religiously devout, religiously diverse, and religiously tolerant. They argue that America's relative religious harmony lies in the frequency of "religious bridging." Almost all Americans have a friend or close family member of another religion, and these personal relationships keep America's religious melting pot from boiling over.
Yavuz Fahir ZulfikarJournal of Business Ethics, February 2012, Pages 489-502
This study examines the work ethic characteristics of Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim people who are living in the US. People originally from Turkey were targeted under the Muslim group. Since a significant number of people selected "none" as their religious affiliation in the survey, this group has also been included in the final analysis. Eight hundred and three people (313 Protestants, 180 "none", 96 Muslims, 86 Catholics, and 128 other) participated in this questionnaire study. The analyses revealed that Muslim Turks reported greater scores on four of the five Protestant work ethic (PWE) characteristics. Protestants scored higher than Catholics on all characteristics, but there was no significant difference.
Are virtues shaped by national cultures or religions?
Jan Pieter van Oudenhoven et al.Swiss Journal of Psychology, January 2012, Pages 29-34
The present paper examines the relative influence of religion and nation on conceptions of virtues. In a first study, conducted in the Netherlands, 926 respondents of different profession, age, sex, and religious background rank ordered a list of 15 virtues. A comparison of Dutch Muslims and non-Muslims showed a remarkably high resemblance in their ratings of virtues. Only faith was rated as being much more important by Muslims than by non-Muslims. In the second study, the influence of national cultures was examined. Adults (N = 795) from two culturally relatively similar countries, Germany and the Netherlands, and from Spain rated the same list of virtues. Cross-national differences between the two Northern European countries and Spain by far exceeded the influence of religion on the importance ratings of virtues. The implications of the findings for the often-mentioned clash of religions are discussed. Currently, the influence of religion on the values of immigrants may be overemphasized and other important characteristics may be underestimated.
Jochen Gebauer, Constantine Sedikides & Wiebke Neberich
"The religiosity-as-social-value hypothesis posits that the psychological benefits of religiosity (benefits to social self-esteem and psychological adjustment) are culturally specific: They should be stronger in countries that tend to value religiosity more. Data from more than 180,000 individuals across 11 countries were consistent with this prediction. Overall, believers claimed greater social self-esteem and psychological adjustment than nonbelievers did. However, culture qualified this effect. Believers enjoyed psychological benefits in countries that tended to value religiosity, but did not differ from nonbelievers in countries that did not tend to value religiosity."
Religious people discount the future less
Evan Carter et al.
The propensity for religious belief and behavior is a universal feature of human societies, but religious practice often imposes substantial costs upon its practitioners. This suggests that during human cultural evolution, the costs associated with religiosity might have been traded off for psychological or social benefits that redounded to fitness on average. One possible benefit of religious belief and behavior, which virtually every world religion extols, is delay of gratification - that is, the ability to forego small rewards available immediately in the interest of obtaining larger rewards that are available only after a time delay. In this study, we found that religious commitment was associated with a tendency to forgo immediate rewards in order to gain larger, future rewards. We also found that this relationship was partially mediated by future time orientation, which is a subjective sense that the future is very close in time and is approaching rapidly. Although the effect sizes of these associations were relatively small in magnitude, they were obtained even when controlling for sex and the Big Five personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism).
Managerial Abilities: Evidence from Religious Mutual Fund Managers
Luis Ferruz, Fernando Muñoz & María Vargas Journal of Business Ethics, February 2012, Pages 503-517
In this study, we analyze the financial performance and the managerial abilities of religious mutual fund managers, implementing a comparative analysis with conventional mutual funds. We use a broad sample, free of survivorship bias, of religious equity mutual funds from the US market, for the period from January 1994 to September 2010. We build a matched-pair conventional sample in order to compare the results obtained for both kinds of mutual fund managers. We analyze stock-picking and market timing abilities, topics widely neglected for the specific case of religious mutual fund managers. We also study style timing abilities. As far as we are aware, this aspect has not been studied previously for religious mutual fund managers. Our results indicate that religious mutual fund managers underperform both the market and their conventional counterparts. This result is driven by negative stock-picking ability which could be generated by excluding "Sin" stocks from their portfolios. Moreover, they are not able to time the market or any of the following styles: size, book-to-market, and momentum.
Higher Education and Religious Liberalization among Young Adults
Damon Mayrl & Jeremy UeckerSocial Forces, September 2011, Pages 181-208
Going to college has long been assumed to liberalize students' religious beliefs. Using longitudinal data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, we compare change in the content of religious beliefs of those who do and do not attend college. We find that, in general, college students are no more likely to develop liberal religious beliefs than non-students. In some cases, collegians actually appear more likely to retain their initial beliefs. Change in religious beliefs appears instead to be more strongly associated with network effects. These findings indicate that college's effect on students' religious beliefs is both weak and fragmented, and suggest that the multiplicity of social worlds on college campuses may help to sustain religious beliefs as well as religious practice and commitment.
Intrinsic religiosity reduces intergroup hostility under mortality salience
Agnieszka Golec de Zavala et al.European Journal of Social Psychology
Results of three studies indicate that intrinsic religiosity and mortality salience interact to predict intergroup hostility. Study 1, conducted among 200 American Christians and Jews, reveals that under mortality salience, intrinsic (but not extrinsic or quest) religiosity is related to decreased support for aggressive counterterrorism. Study 2, conducted among 148 Muslims in Iran, demonstrates that intrinsic religiosity predicts decreased out-group derogation under mortality salience. Study 3, conducted among 131 Polish Christians, shows that under mortality salience, priming of intrinsic religious concepts decreases support for aggressive counterterrorism.
Renate Ysseldyk et al., January 2012, Pages 105-117
The divide between religious traditionalists and secular humanists has been widening for decades; yet, little is known about factors that attenuate hostility between these groups. Two studies examined whether (ir)religious identification could mitigate negative feelings toward (ir)religious outgroups. Following priming to make salient religious groups in daily life or group-based threat, Atheists and Christians in Britain (Study 1, n = 113), and Atheists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Protestants in Canada (Study 2, n = 181) reported intergroup feelings, ingroup evaluations, and perceptions of their group as viewed by others. Atheists reported the lowest ingroup identification and felt equally negative toward all religious groups. Likewise, religious group members generally felt most negative toward Atheists. However, identification with the (ir)religious ingroup was associated with less hostility toward the outgroup(s). This was particularly marked for Atheists who perceived that religious followers felt positively toward them. These results challenge suggestions that (ir)religious identification and threat necessarily promote intergroup hostility.
The Main Contributors to a Future Utopia
Richard Kinnier et al.Current Psychology, December 2011, Pages 383-394
Which people, events, movements, institutions, and documents in the history of humankind have contributed most to the possible realization of a future utopia (i.e., a time when the Golden Rule is universally lived by)? This study consisted of two phases. The first phase involved generating nominated lists from over 100 graduate students and professionals in a variety of fields. In the second phase, the two resultant lists of 155 people and 122 events, movements, institutions, and documents were sent to a randomly-selected list of 400 tenured and tenure-track history and philosophy professors at 40 randomly-selected public Research 1 universities. These professors were asked to select who and what would be on their ‘A' lists. The most frequently-selected people included Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Buddha. The most-frequently selected events, movements, institutions, and documents included: the Abolitionist movement, the American Bill of Rights, and the Abolishment of Apartheid in South Africa. The lists are presented and discussed.
Evolution of increased complexity in a molecular machine
Gregory Finnigan et al.Nature, 19 January 2012, Pages 360-364
Many cellular processes are carried out by molecular ‘machines' - assemblies of multiple differentiated proteins that physically interact to execute biological functions. Despite much speculation, strong evidence of the mechanisms by which these assemblies evolved is lacking. Here we use ancestral gene resurrection and manipulative genetic experiments to determine how the complexity of an essential molecular machine - the hexameric transmembrane ring of the eukaryotic V-ATPase proton pump - increased hundreds of millions of years ago. We show that the ring of Fungi, which is composed of three paralogous proteins, evolved from a more ancient two-paralogue complex because of a gene duplication that was followed by loss in each daughter copy of specific interfaces by which it interacts with other ring proteins. These losses were complementary, so both copies became obligate components with restricted spatial roles in the complex. Reintroducing a single historical mutation from each paralogue lineage into the resurrected ancestral proteins is sufficient to recapitulate their asymmetric degeneration and trigger the requirement for the more elaborate three-component ring. Our experiments show that increased complexity in an essential molecular machine evolved because of simple, high-probability evolutionary processes, without the apparent evolution of novel functions. They point to a plausible mechanism for the evolution of complexity in other multi-paralogue protein complexes.
Experimental evolution of multicellularity
William Ratcliff et al.
Multicellularity was one of the most significant innovations in the history of life, but its initial evolution remains poorly understood. Using experimental evolution, we show that key steps in this transition could have occurred quickly. We subjected the unicellular yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to an environment in which we expected multicellularity to be adaptive. We observed the rapid evolution of clustering genotypes that display a novel multicellular life history characterized by reproduction via multicellular propagules, a juvenile phase, and determinate growth. The multicellular clusters are uniclonal, minimizing within-cluster genetic conflicts of interest. Simple among-cell division of labor rapidly evolved. Early multicellular strains were composed of physiologically similar cells, but these subsequently evolved higher rates of programmed cell death (apoptosis), an adaptation that increases propagule production. These results show that key aspects of multicellular complexity, a subject of central importance to biology, can readily evolve from unicellular eukaryotes.
Jeff Levin, December 2011, Pages 852-868
Using data from the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) (N = 5,148), effects of eight religious measures were investigated in relation to two health outcomes, standard single-item indicators of self-rated health and presence of an activity-limiting health condition. Seven of the religious measures were associated bivariately with one or both health indicators. Through two-step OLS regression of each health indicator onto all of the religious measures, adjusting for age and other sociodemographic correlates, two measures of synagogue involvement remained statistically significant. Follow-up analysis revealed a net health impact of religious observance primarily limited to Orthodox and Conservative Jews.
Competition and the Strategic Choices of Churches
Adam Rennhoff & Mark Owens
In this paper, we examine how the decisions of churches are impacted by the decisions of rival churches. Using a novel data set of Christian churches in two suburban Nashville, TN counties, we estimate a model of strategic interaction, based on empirical models of discrete games, which accounts for the location and denomination of churches. We focus on a church's decision of whether to provide a weekday child care program. Empirical evidence indicates that churches compete more strongly with nearby same-denomination churches than with different-denomination churches. These effects diminish with distance. Using our estimates, we conduct counterfactual simulations to examine the impact of an increase in the number of church adherents, the number of preschool aged children, and we also remove for-profit providers from the sample.
Property rights and institutions in biblical society: The purchase of the cave of the patriarchs
Jacob Rosenberg & Avi WeissEuropean Journal of Political Economy
A market economy and civil society require specification and certification of property rights. Where property rights are recognized, allowable transactions are also institutionally specified. In this paper we describe and analyze the earliest documented transfer of property rights to land, in Hebron in the 17th century BCE when Abraham purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs from Ephron the Hittite. We show how a property rights perspective with institutional constraint on permissible transactions resolves the puzzles that have been previously noted in the bargaining between the buyer and seller.
Jennifer JacksonLanguage & Communication, January 2012, Pages 48-61
This paper examines the deployment of semiotic devices in several mass-mediated public apologies by US politicians and the reflexive awareness of apology as commodity in national political contexts. Beyond acts of contrition and deliverance from the clutches of sin, apology events are extremely dialogical, salient modes of sociality that reach across, arbitrate, and bond multiple publics. The paper examines how speakers toggle between particular chronotopes - of time, place, and personhood - to both shape and reflect particular presentation and participation frameworks. Of certain interest is how the Protestant testimonial informs the apology, makes way for, even necessitates future transgression as it shifts proximity between the sin of the Lost and the testimony of the Found, reinstating membership in and reinforcing a moral public.
The Consumer Jihad: Boycott Fatwas and Nonviolent Resistance on the World Wide Web
Leor HaleviInternational Journal of Middle East Studies, February 2012, Pages 45-70
This article deals with the origins, development, and popularity of boycott fatwas. Born of the marriage of Islamic politics and Islamic economics in an age of digital communications, these fatwas targeted American, Israeli, and Danish commodities between 2000 and 2006. Muftis representing both mainstream and, surprisingly, radical tendencies argued that jihad can be accomplished through nonviolent consumer boycotts. Their argument marks a significant development in the history of jihad doctrine because boycotts, construed as jihadi acts, do not belong to the commonplace categories of jihad as a "military" or a "spiritual" struggle. The article also demonstrates that boycott fatwas emerged, to a large degree, from below. New media, in particular interconnected computer networks, made it easier for laypersons to drive the juridical discourse. They did so before September 11 as well as, more insistently, afterward. Their consumer jihad had some economic impact on targeted multinationals, and it provoked corporate reactions.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Need Cash Now
Political Pressures on Monetary Policy during the U.S. Great Inflation
Charles WeiseAmerican Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
Drawing on an analysis of Federal Open Market Committee documents, this paper argues that political pressures on the Federal Reserve were an important contributor to the rise in inflation in the United States in the 1970s. Members of the FOMC understood that a serious attempt to tackle inflation would generate opposition from Congress and the Executive branch. Political considerations contributed to delays in monetary tightening, insufficiently aggressive anti-inflation policies, and the premature abandonment of attempts at disinflation. Empirical analysis verifies that references to the political environment at FOMC meetings are correlated with the stance of monetary policy during this period.
Martin LarchKyklos, February 2012, Pages 53-80
A bias towards running deficits is an entrenched feature of fiscal policy making in most developed economies. Our paper examines whether this tendency is in any way associated with the personal distribution of income of a country. It takes inspiration from theoretical work according to which distributional conflicts may give rise to deficit spending or to delayed fiscal adjustment. Although these theories have been around for years the empirical literature on the determinants of fiscal performance has so far paid little or no attention to the possible role played by different degrees of income inequality. Our results suggest that this neglect was not justified. Using cross-country data we find evidence that a more unequal distribution of income can weigh on a country's fiscal performance. These findings can be relevant in the aftermath of the post-2007 global financial and economic crisis in particular when designing fiscal exit strategies. The success and sustainability of such strategies may inter alia depend on their distributional implications.
Importing Corruption Culture from Overseas: Evidence from Corporate Tax Evasion in the United States
Jason DeBacker, Bradley Heim & Anh Tran
This paper studies how cultural norms and enforcement policies influence illicit corporate activities. Using confidential IRS audit data, we show that corporations with owners from countries with higher corruption norms engage in higher amounts of tax evasion in the U.S. This effect is strong for small corporations and decreases as the size of the corporation increases. In the mid-2000s, the United States implemented several enforcement measures which significantly increased tax compliance. However, we find that these enforcement efforts were less effective in reducing tax evasion by corporations whose owners are from countries with higher corruption norms. This suggests that cultural norms can be a challenge to legal enforcement.
Desperately seeking the positive impact of undervaluation on growth
Ridha Nouira & Khalid SekkatJournal of Macroeconomics
This paper contributes to a current and intense debate among economists on whether real exchange rate undervaluation can boost growth. It focuses on addressing econometric and empirical issues that casts doubt about the validity of such positive impact. It also allows for the possibilities that the effect of undervaluation on growth operates with delay or dependent on the persistence or the level of undervaluation. We did not find any convincing support to the claim that a depreciated real exchange rate promotes economic growth. We argue that the contrast between our results and the documented examples of a successful adoption of undervaluation strategy reported in the literature reveals that undervaluation alone is not enough to boost growth. The simultaneous adoption of companion policies may be behind the claimed success.
Fairness Spillovers - The Case of Taxation
Thomas Cornelissen, Oliver Himmler & Tobias Koenig Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
It is standardly assumed that individuals react to perceived unfairness or norm violations in precisely the same area or relationship where the original offense has occurred. However, grievances over being exposed to injustice may have even broader consequences and also spill over to other contexts, causing non-compliant behavior there. We present evidence that such 'fairness spillovers' can incur large economic costs: A belief that there is unfairness in taxation in the sense that the rich don't pay enough taxes is associated with a twenty percent higher level of paid absenteeism from work.
Empirical Evidence on the Aggregate Effects of Anticipated and Unanticipated U.S. Tax Policy Shocks
Morten Ravn & Karel MertensAmerican Economic Journal: Economic Policy
We provide empirical evidence on the dynamics effects of tax liability changes in the United States. We distinguish between surprise and anticipated tax changes using a timing-convention. We document that pre-announced but not yet implemented tax cuts give rise to contractions in output, investment and hours worked while real wages increase. In contrast, there are no significant anticipation effects on aggregate consumption. Implemented tax cuts, regardless of their timing, have expansionary and persistent effects on output, consumption, investment, hours worked and real wages. Results are shown to be very robust. We argue that tax shocks are empirically important impulses to the U.S. business cycle and that anticipation effects have been important during several business cycle episodes.
Earnings Determination and Taxes: Evidence From a Cohort-Based Payroll Tax Reform in Greece
Emmanuel Saez, Manos Matsaganis & Panos Tsakloglou , February 2012, Pages 493-533
This article analyzes the response of earnings to payroll tax rates using a cohort-based reform in Greece. Individuals who started working on or after 1993 face permanently a much higher earnings cap for payroll taxes, creating a large and permanent discontinuity in marginal payroll tax rates by date of entry in the labor force for upper earnings workers. Using full-population administrative social security data and a regression discontinuity design, we estimate the long-term labor supply effects and incidence of payroll tax rates on earnings. Standard theory predicts that in the long run, new regime workers should bear the entire burden of the payroll tax increase (relative to old regime workers). In contrast, we find that employers compensate new regime workers for the extra employer payroll taxes but not for the extra employee payroll taxes. We do not find any evidence of labor supply responses along the extensive or intensive margins around the discontinuity, suggesting low efficiency costs of payroll taxes. We discuss various possible explanations for those results.
Expectation traps in a new Keynesian open economy model
David ArseneauEconomic Theory, January 2012, Pages 81-112
This paper illustrates that the presence of a money demand distortion in an otherwise standard new Keynesian open economy model results in multiple discretionary equilibria that arise in the form of expectations traps. If private sector inflation expectations become sufficiently unanchored, the model predicts that a monetary authority can easily be trapped into validating these expectations, thereby pushing the economy to a lower welfare equilibrium. Given the ease with which expectation traps arise in the presence of international linkages, the main result presented here suggests that maintaining well-anchored inflation expectations is a critically important policy goal for central banks in open economies.
A note on America's 1920-21 depression as an argument for austerity
Daniel KuehnCambridge Journal of Economics, January 2012, Pages 155-160
This note argues that recent interest in the 1920-21 depression in the USA as a historical precedent for austerity is inappropriate. Most of the austerity measures preceded the depression, which had already begun receding by the time Warren Harding implemented the relatively modest spending and tax cuts that are cited by modern proponents of austerity. The evidence suggests that the 1920-21 depression was the result of a variety of supply constraints, rather than a deficiency of effective demand, and is therefore a poor test of the efficacy of Keynesian fiscal policy.
Effects of Fiscal Stimulus in Structural Models
Günter Coenen et al.American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, January 2012, Pages 22-68
The paper subjects seven structural DSGE models, all used heavily by policymaking institutions, to discretionary fiscal stimulus shocks using seven different fiscal instruments, and compares the results to those of two prominent academic DSGE models. There is considerable agreement across models on both the absolute and relative sizes of different types of fiscal multipliers. The size of many multipliers is large, particularly for spending and targeted transfers. Fiscal policy is most effective if it has moderate persistence and if monetary policy is accommodative. Permanently higher spending or deficits imply significantly lower initial multipliers.
On the optimality of age-dependent taxes and the progressive U.S. tax system
Martin GervaisJournal of Economic Dynamics and Control
In life-cycle economies, where an individual's optimal consumption-work plan is almost never constant, the optimal marginal tax rates on capital and labor income vary with age. Conversely, the progressivity imbedded in the U.S. tax code implies that marginal tax rates vary with age because tax rates vary with earnings and earnings vary with age. Using numerical simulations, this paper shows that if the tax authority is prevented from conditioning tax rates on age, some degree of progressivity is desirable as progressive taxation better imitates optimal age-dependent taxes than an optimal age-independent tax system. This role for progressive taxation emanates from efficiency reasons and does not rely on any insurance nor re-distribution arguments.
Fiscal Policy and the Firm: Do Low Corporate Tax Rates Attract Multinational Corporations?
Nathan JensenComparative Political Studies
The existing literature on the political economy of taxation explores how the mobility of firms affects the ability of governments to tax capital. In this article the author tests the relationship between corporate tax rates and multinational investment decisions in advanced, industrialized economies. He utilizes a time-series cross-sectional general error correction model to explore the impact of corporate taxation rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in up to 19 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development economies from 1980 to 2000. To mitigate potential endogeneity problems, the author's identification strategy takes advantage of delays between the passage of tax reductions and the implementation of these policies. The author finds no relationship between corporate tax rates and flows of foreign direct investment. This finding has implications on the link between globalization and domestic politics.
Do Agglomeration Economies Reduce the Sensitivity of Firm Location to Tax Differentials?
Marius Brülhart, Mario Jametti & Kurt Schmidheiny Economic Journal
Recent theoretical work in economic geography has shown that agglomeration forces can mitigate ‘race-to-the-bottom' tax competition, by partly or fully offsetting firms' sensitivity to tax differentials. We test this proposition using data on firm births across Swiss municipalities. We find that corporate taxes deter firm births less in more spatially concentrated sectors. Firms in sectors with an agglomeration intensity in the top quintile are less than half as responsive to differences in corporate tax burdens as firms in sectors with an agglomeration intensity in the bottom quintile. Hence, agglomeration economies do appear to attenuate the impact of tax differentials on firms' location choices.
Identification of Preferences and Evaluation of Income Tax Policy
Charles Manski
The merits of alternative income tax policies depend on the population distribution of preferences for income, leisure, and public goods. Standard theory, which supposes that persons want more income and more leisure, does not predict how they resolve the tension between these desires. Empirical studies of labor supply have been numerous but have not shed much light on the matter. A persistent problem is that empirical researchers have imposed strong preference assumptions that lack foundation. This paper examines anew the problem of inference on preferences and considers the implications for comparison of tax policies. I first perform a basic revealed-preference analysis that imposes no assumptions on the preference distribution beyond the presumption that persons prefer more income and leisure. This shows that observation of a person's labor supply under a status quo tax policy may bound his labor supply under a proposed policy or may have no implications, depending on the shapes of the two tax schedules and the location of status quo labor supply. I next explore the identifying power of two assumptions restricting the population distribution of income-leisure preferences. One assumes that groups of persons who face different choice sets have the same distribution of preferences, while the other adds restrictions on the shape of this distribution. I then address utilitarian policy comparison with partial knowledge of preferences. Partial knowledge of preferences implies partial knowledge of the welfare function. Hence, it may not be possible to rank policies.
Overconfidence, Monetary Policy Committees and Chairman Dominance
Carl Andreas Claussen et al.Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, February 2012, Pages 699-711
Monetary policy decisions are typically characterized by three features: (i) decisions are made by a committee, (ii) the committee members often disagree, and (iii) the chairman is almost never on the losing side in the vote. We show that the combination of overconfident policymakers and a chairman with agenda-setting rights can explain all these features. The optimal agenda-setting power to the chairman is a strictly concave function of the degree of overconfidence. We also show that the quality of advice produced by the central bank staff is higher in a flat organization than in a hierarchical one.
Equity Risk Incentives and Corporate Tax Aggressiveness
Sonja Olhoft RegoJournal of Accounting Research
This study examines equity risk incentives as one determinant of corporate tax aggressiveness. Prior research finds that equity risk incentives motivate managers to make risky investment and financing decisions, since risky activities increase stock return volatility and the value of stock option portfolios. Aggressive tax strategies involve significant uncertainty and can impose costs on both firms and managers. As a result, managers must be incentivized to engage in risky tax avoidance that is expected to generate net benefits for the firm and its shareholders. We predict that equity risk incentives motivate managers to undertake risky tax strategies. Consistent with this prediction we find that larger equity risk incentives are associated with greater tax risk and the magnitude of this effect is economically significant. Our results are robust across four measures of tax risk, but do not vary across several proxies for strength of corporate governance. We conclude that equity risk incentives are a significant determinant of corporate tax aggressiveness.
Estimating Dynamic Income Responses to Tax Reform
Bertil Holmlund & Martin SöderströmB.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, November 2011
We study income responses to income tax changes by using a large panel of Swedish tax payers over the period 1991-2002. Changes in statutory tax rates as well as changes in tax bracket thresholds provide exogenous variations in tax rates that can be used to identify income responses. We estimate dynamic income models which allow us to distinguish between short-run and long-run effects in a straightforward fashion. For men, the estimates of the long-run elasticity of income with respect to the net-of-tax rate hover in a range between 0.10 and 0.30. The estimates for women are statistically insignificant. We simulate the fiscal consequences of a tax reform that reduces the top marginal tax rate by five percentage points. Such a reform may have negligible effects on tax revenues when the interactions between income taxes and other taxes are taken into account.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Help
The Martyrdom Effect: When Pain and Effort Increase Prosocial Contributions
Christopher Olivola & Eldar ShafirJournal of Behavioral Decision Making
Most theories of motivation and behavior (and lay intuitions alike) consider pain and effort to be deterrents. In contrast to this widely held view, we provide evidence that the prospect of enduring pain and exerting effort for a prosocial cause can promote contributions to the cause. Specifically, we show that willingness to contribute to a charitable or collective cause increases when the contribution process is expected to be painful and effortful rather than easy and enjoyable. Across five experiments, we document this "martyrdom effect," show that the observed patterns defy standard economic and psychological accounts, and identify a mediator and moderator of the effect. Experiment 1 showed that people are willing to donate more to charity when they anticipate having to suffer to raise money. Experiment 2 extended these findings to a non-charity laboratory context that involved real money and actual pain. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the martyrdom effect is not the result of an attribute substitution strategy (whereby people use the amount of pain and effort involved in fundraising to determine donation worthiness). Experiment 4 showed that perceptions of meaningfulness partially mediate the martyrdom effect. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrated that the nature of the prosocial cause moderates the martyrdom effect: the effect is strongest for causes associated with human suffering. We propose that anticipated pain and effort lead people to ascribe greater meaning to their contributions and to the experience of contributing, thereby motivating higher prosocial contributions. We conclude by considering some implications of this puzzling phenomenon.
Reconceptualizing Stars: Scientist Helpfulness and Peer Performance
Alexander Oettl
It is surprising that the prevailing performance taxonomy for scientists (star versus nonstar) focuses only on individual output and ignores social behavior, because innovation is often characterized as a communal process. To develop a deeper understanding of the mechanisms by which scientists influence the productivity of others, I expand the traditional taxonomy of scientists that focuses solely on productivity and add a second, social dimension: helpfulness to others. Using a combination of academic paper publications and citations to capture scientist productivity and the receipt of academic paper acknowledgments to measure helpfulness, I examine the change in publishing output of the coauthors of 149 scientists that die. Coauthors of highly helpful scientists that die experience a decrease in output quality but not output quantity. Meanwhile, the deaths of high productivity scientists that are not highly helpful do not influence their coauthors' output. In addition, scientists who are helpful with conceptual feedback (critique and advice) have a larger impact on the performance of their coauthors than scientists who provide help with material access, scientific tools, or technical work. Within the context of evaluating scientific productivity, it may be time to update our conceptualization of a "star."
Agata Gasiorowska, Tomasz Zaleskiewicz & Sandra Wygrab Journal of Economic Psychology
The research presented in this paper shows that merely activating the idea of money affects the social behavior and social preferences of young children who do not understand the economic functions of money. From an economic point of view, money is universal, instrumental, and can be defined by the functions that it provides. From the psychological point of view, money is more symbolic and emotional than instrumental, and can serve as social resource in interpersonal and intrapersonal regulation. These effects of money are connected with its symbolic, rather than its instrumental, nature. To test whether the symbolic and instrumental meanings of money are developing at appropriate ages, we conducted two experiments on 5-8 year olds. After money activation, children were more selfish in economic games, revealing less pro-social preferences and were less prone to help the experimenter than children from the control group. Even if children at this stage do not understand the economic mechanisms of money and are not able to use money properly in the instrumental context, they react to symbolic activation. This might imply that the symbolic meaning of money is more primal than the instrumental meaning.
Memory lane and morality: How childhood memories promote prosocial behavior
Francesca Gino & Sreedhari DesaiJournal of Personality and Social Psychology
Although research has established that autobiographical memory affects one's self-concept, little is known about how it affects moral behavior. We focus on a specific type of autobiographical memory: childhood memories. Drawing on research on memory and moral psychology, we propose that childhood memories elicit moral purity, which we define as a psychological state of feeling morally clean and innocent. In turn, heightened moral purity leads to greater prosocial behavior. In Experiment 1, participants instructed to recall childhood memories were more likely to help the experimenter with a supplementary task than were participants in a control condition, and this effect was mediated by moral purity. In Experiment 2, the same manipulation increased the amount of money participants donated to a good cause, and both implicit and explicit measures of moral purity mediated the effect. Experiment 3 provides further support for the process linking childhood memories and prosocial behavior through moderation. In Experiment 4, we found that childhood memories led to punishment of others' ethically questionable actions. Finally, in Experiment 5, both positively valenced and negatively valenced childhood memories increased helping compared to a control condition.
Social Welfare as Small-Scale Help: Evolutionary Psychology and the Deservingness Heuristic
Michael Bang PetersenAmerican Journal of Political Science, January 2012, Pages 1-16
Public opinion concerning social welfare is largely driven by perceptions of recipient deservingness. Extant research has argued that this heuristic is learned from a variety of cultural, institutional, and ideological sources. The present article provides evidence supporting a different view: that the deservingness heuristic is rooted in psychological categories that evolved over the course of human evolution to regulate small-scale exchanges of help. To test predictions made on the basis of this view, a method designed to measure social categorization is embedded in nationally representative surveys conducted in different countries. Across the national- and individual-level differences that extant research has used to explain the heuristic, people categorize welfare recipients on the basis of whether they are lazy or unlucky. This mode of categorization furthermore induces people to think about large-scale welfare politics as its presumed ancestral equivalent: small-scale help giving. The general implications for research on heuristics are discussed.
Testing for Altruism and Social Pressure in Charitable Giving
Stefano DellaVigna, John List & Ulrike Malmendier Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2012, Pages 1-56
Every year, 90% of Americans give money to charities. Is such generosity necessarily welfare enhancing for the giver? We present a theoretical framework that distinguishes two types of motivation: individuals like to give, for example, due to altruism or warm glow, and individuals would rather not give but dislike saying no, for example, due to social pressure. We design a door-to-door fund-raiser in which some households are informed about the exact time of solicitation with a flyer on their doorknobs. Thus, they can seek or avoid the fund-raiser. We find that the flyer reduces the share of households opening the door by 9% to 25% and, if the flyer allows checking a Do Not Disturb box, reduces giving by 28% to 42%. The latter decrease is concentrated among donations smaller than $10. These findings suggest that social pressure is an important determinant of door-to-door giving. Combining data from this and a complementary field experiment, we structurally estimate the model. The estimated social pressure cost of saying no to a solicitor is $3.80 for an in-state charity and $1.40 for an out-of-state charity. Our welfare calculations suggest that our door-to-door fund-raising campaigns on average lower the utility of the potential donors.
Avoiding The Ask: A Field Experiment on Altruism, Empathy, and Charitable Giving
James Andreoni, Justin Rao & Hannah Trachtman
What triggers giving? We explore this in a randomized natural field experiment during the Salvation Army's annual campaign. Solicitors were at one or both of two main entrances to a supermarket, making the solicitation either easy or difficult to avoid. Additionally, solicitors were either silent, or asked "please give" to passersby. We observed over 17,000 passings over four days, and found dramatic avoidance of the solicitors, but only during a direct ask. Furthermore, asking increased donations 75%. Across all conditions, seeking the solicitor was exceedingly rare. The results do not support static views of altruism, such as inequity aversion, and instead highlight the importance of social cues and psychological features of the giver-receiver interaction. We argue that avoidance could evidence a lack of altruism or self-control strategy to deal with empathic reflexes to give.
Do fundraisers select charitable donors based on gender and race? Evidence from survey data
Barış Yörük, December 2011, Pages 219-243
Recent studies document that people are much more likely to donate to charity and volunteer their time when they are asked to. Using household surveys of giving and volunteering in the United States conducted from 1992 to 2001, which contain questions on whether the respondent was personally asked to give or volunteer, this paper investigates the factors associated with the probability of receiving a charitable solicitation and presents substantial evidence that race and gender differences play key roles in the selection of potential donors. In particular, males, blacks, and Hispanics are less likely to be solicited compared with females and whites. Using non-linear decomposition techniques, I find that differences in observable characteristics of individuals explain most of the racial gap in the probability of being solicited for charitable causes, but they fail to explain the gender gap in the probability of being asked to volunteer. Furthermore, these results are robust to alternative specifications. I also discuss related policy implications and argue that the economic impact of selecting potential donors based on gender and race can be considerable.
The Role of Fear of Crime in Donating and Volunteering: A Gendered Analysis
Sarah Britto, David Van Slyke & Teresa Francis , December 2011, Pages 414-434
Extensive empirical studies have established that women fear crime more than men and theoretical arguments have suggested this difference produces consequences ranging from increased medical and psychological problems to restricted movement and limited exposure to social networks and opportunities resulting in restrictive informal social control and reduced social capital. More recently, a number of studies have begun to test the theoretical link between fear and behavior, with some suggesting fear will restrict prosocial behavior and others suggesting fear will motivate behavior that improves personal and communal well-being. This study adds to this emerging literature by exploring how fear of crime affects two measures of philanthropic behavior - donating and volunteerism. Using a stratified random telephone survey of 2,361 individuals living in the 20 counties that compose the greater Metro Atlanta area, the authors explore the role of fear of crime as an independent variable in models of donating and volunteering time to a charitable organization. Additionally, interaction terms are included in models of volunteering to control for the possibility that the strength of the relationship may vary based on sex. The results indicate that fear of crime is an important predictor of volunteering, but not donating, and that the effects are stronger for women than men.
Cheapened altruism: Discounting personally affected prosocial actors
Fern Lin-Healy & Deborah SmallOrganizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, March 2012, Pages 269-274
Are charitable donors always perceived as charitable? Three studies suggest that although having a personal connection to a cause motivates much charitable giving, donors who have been personally affected by the target cause are given less "credit" for their donations, i.e., are perceived as less intrinsically charitable. These donors are perceived as having selfish motivations even when they have nothing economic or social to gain from the donation. More specifically, personally-affected donors are perceived as driven by emotional selfishness, or a desire to improve their own hedonic state rather a desire to improve the welfare of others, which lessens the charitable credit that they receive. In addition, although donors who have been personally affected by the target cause are seen as less charitable, they are perceived more favorably in other ways (e.g., more loyal).
Relative Earnings and Giving in a Real-Effort Experiment
Nisvan Erkal, Lata Gangadharan & Nikos Nikiforakis , December 2011, Pages 3330-3348
This paper investigates the relationship between relative earnings and giving in a two-stage, real-effort experiment. In the first stage, four players compete in a tournament that determines their earnings. In the second stage, they decide whether to make a transfer to one or more of their group members. Our main finding is that those ranked first are significantly less likely to give than those ranked second. This difference disappears if individuals learn about the second stage after earning their income or if earnings are randomly determined. This suggests that our main finding is driven by selection based on other-regarding preferences.
Hey Look at Me: The Effect of Giving Circles on Giving
Dean Karlan & Margaret McConnellNBER Working Paper, January 2012
Theories abound for why individuals give to charity. We conduct a field experiment with donors to a Yale University service club to test the impact of a promise of public recognition on giving. Some may claim that they respond to an offer of public recognition not to improve their social standing, but rather to motivate others to give. To tease apart these two theories, we conduct a laboratory experiment with undergraduates, and find no evidence to support the alternative, altruistic motivation. We conclude that charitable gifts increase in response to the promise of public recognition primarily because of individuals' desire to improve their social image.
Sorting in Experiments with Application to Social Preferences
Edward Lazear, Ulrike Malmendier & Roberto Weber , January 2012, Pages 136-163
Individuals sort into and out of economic environments based on their preferences and in response to relative prices. We demonstrate the importance of such sorting for the measurement of social preferences, using two laboratory experiments. First, allowing subjects to avoid environments in which sharing is possible significantly reduces sharing. This reveals the existence of a type of individual who shares reluctantly, preferring to avoid the opportunity to share. Second, after subsidizing the sharing environment, the aggregate amount shared increases, but less is shared, on average, by those who enter. Thus, subsidies intended to induce more sharing have weak effects since they attract those who share the least.
Substitution or Symbiosis? Assessing the Relationship between Religious and Secular Giving
Jonathan Hill & Brandon VaidyanathanSocial Forces, September 2011, Pages 157-180
Research on philanthropy has not sufficiently examined whether charitable giving to religious causes impinges on giving to secular causes. Examining three waves of national panel data, we find that the relationship between religious and secular giving is generally not of a zero-sum nature; families that increase their religious giving also increase their secular giving. We argue that this finding is best accounted for by a practice theory of social action which emphasizes how religious congregations foster skills and practices related to charitable giving. We also argue that denominational variation in the influence of religious giving is best accounted for by the financial structuring of the denomination. We conclude with the implications for studies of religious causal influence more generally.
Fairness as a Constraint on Reciprocity: Playing Simultaneously as Dictator and Trustee
Aaron NicholasJournal of Socio-Economics, April 2012, Pages 211-221
The dictator and trust games are two common games used to identify the existence of social preferences. However, in many social interactions, individuals face the environments in both games simultaneously: for example we are often engaged in charitable donations to strangers, as well as reciprocal exchange with family members and colleagues. As giving in one game could be prioritised over giving in the other, it is important to have participants play both as a dictator in the dictator game and as a trustee in a trust game simultaneously. The results indicate that when the recipient in the dictator game is significantly poorer relative to the dictator, the dictator tends to return an amount to the trustor such that the trustor neither makes a loss nor profit from trusting. This suggests that the presence of a sufficiently strong incentive to make transfers as a dictator may completely crowd-out any monetary returns to trust.
Discrimination in wealth and power intergroup structures
Simon-Pierre Harvey & Richard BourhisGroup Processes & Intergroup Relations, January 2012, Pages 21-38
This study investigated the combined influence of wealth and power on discrimination. Participants (N = 243) were assigned to a 2 (ingroup wealth: rich/poor) × 2 (ingroup power: dominant/subordinate) × 2 (outgroup target wealth: rich/poor) minimal group study. After personally receiving money depending on their group ascription, participants distributed their personal money to ingroup and outgroup others. Overall, regardless of their wealth or power, participants discriminated against outgroup members. Poor group members discriminated more than rich group members and participants discriminated more when the outgroup was rich than when it was poor. Results suggest that social identity and group interest but not self-interest, explain discriminatory behaviors within wealth and power intergroup structures.
Dariusz DolinskiApplied Psychology
In the literature on the foot-in-the-door technique it is usually assumed that the first of the two sequentially posed requests should not be extremely easy (trivial). An uncomplicated request would not activate self-perception mechanisms which, as it is commonly understood, lie behind the effectiveness of the technique. This article proposes that when the initial request is exceptional or odd, then even if it is easy and is fulfilled by nearly everyone it will still enhance people's inclination to fulfill the subsequent, much more complicated request. This assumption was verified in three experiments.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Deliberate
When Budgeting Backfires: How Self-Imposed Price Restraints Can Increase Spending
Jeffrey Larson & Ryan HamiltonJournal of Marketing Research
A common strategy for controlling spending is to impose a price restraint on oneself. For example, a consumer who is concerned with limiting expenses may decide before going shopping that he or she only wants to spend approximately $100 for a particular purchase. Although conventional wisdom predicts that self-imposed price restraints will decrease consumer spending, the authors show that salient price restraints can actually increase consumers' preferences for high-priced, high-quality items. The authors propose that making a price restraint salient has the effect of partitioning consumers' evaluations of price and quality, leading to larger differences in perceived quality between options and a greater focus on quality during the final decision. Thus, while budgets and other types of price restraints can limit spending by eliminating some high-priced options from consideration, this research suggests that they can also have the ironic effect of increasing consumers' spending relative to a situation in which consumers have not imposed a price restraint.
Kurt Gray
The experience of physical stimuli would seem to depend primarily on their physical characteristics - chocolate tastes good, getting slapped hurts, and snuggling is pleasurable. This research examined, however, whether physical experience is influenced by the interpersonal context in which stimuli occur. Specifically, three studies examined whether perceiving benevolent intentions behind stimuli can improve their experience. Experiment 1 tested whether benevolently intended shocks hurt less, Experiment 2 tested whether benevolently intended massages were more pleasurable, and Experiment 3 tested whether benevolently intended candy tastes sweeter. The results confirm that good intentions - even misguided ones - can sooth pain, increase pleasure, and make things taste better. More broadly, these studies suggest that basic physical experience depends upon how we perceive the minds of others.
Benefiting From Misfortune: When Harmless Actions Are Judged to Be Morally Blameworthy
Yoel Inbar, David Pizarro & Fiery Cushman Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, January 2012, Pages 52-62
Dominant theories of moral blame require an individual to have caused or intended harm. However, the current four studies demonstrate cases where no harm is caused or intended, yet individuals are nonetheless deemed worthy of blame. Specifically, individuals are judged to be blameworthy when they engage in actions that enable them to benefit from another's misfortune (e.g., betting that a company's stock will decline or that a natural disaster will occur). Evidence is presented suggesting that perceptions of the actor's wicked desires are responsible for this phenomenon. It is argued that these results are consistent with a growing literature demonstrating that moral judgments are often the product of evaluations of character in addition to evaluations of acts.
The psychosemantics of free riding: Dissecting the architecture of a moral concept
Andrew Delton et al.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
For collective action to evolve and be maintained by selection, the mind must be equipped with mechanisms designed to identify free riders-individuals who do not contribute to a collective project but still benefit from it. Once identified, free riders must be either punished or excluded from future collective actions. But what criteria does the mind use to categorize someone as a free rider? An evolutionary analysis suggests that failure to contribute is not sufficient. Failure to contribute can occur by intention or accident, but the adaptive threat is posed by those who are motivated to benefit themselves at the expense of cooperators. In 6 experiments, we show that only individuals with exploitive intentions were categorized as free riders, even when holding their actual level of contribution constant (Studies 1 and 2). In contrast to an evolutionary model, rational choice and reinforcement theory suggest that different contribution levels (leading to different payoffs for their cooperative partners) should be key. When intentions were held constant, however, differences in contribution level were not used to categorize individuals as free riders, although some categorization occurred along a competence dimension (Study 3). Free rider categorization was not due to general tendencies to categorize (Study 4) or to mechanisms that track a broader class of intentional moral violations (Studies 5A and 5B). The results reveal the operation of an evolved concept with features tailored for solving the collective action problems faced by ancestral hunter-gatherers.
Psychological Distance and Subjective Experience: How Distancing Reduces the Feeling of Difficulty
Manoj Thomas & Claire TsaiJournal of Consumer Research
Psychological distance can reduce the subjective experience of difficulty caused by task complexity and task anxiety. Four experiments were conducted to test several related hypotheses. Psychological distance was altered by activating a construal mind-set and by varying bodily distance from a given task. Activating an abstract mind-set reduced the feeling of difficulty. A direct manipulation of distance from the task produced the same effect: participants found the task to be less difficult when they distanced themselves from the task by leaning back in their seats. The experiments not only identify psychological distance as a hitherto unexplored but ubiquitous determinant of task difficulty but also identify bodily distance as an antecedent of psychological distance.
Stepping Back While Staying Engaged: When Facing an Obstacle Increases Psychological Distance
Janina Marguc, Gerben Van Kleef & Jens Förster
When do people respond to obstacles by mentally "stepping back" and taking a more distanced perspective? Manipulating obstacles to social goals, to personal goals, and in a computer game, three studies tested the hypothesis that people should increase psychological distance upon facing an obstacle primarily when distancing is relevant, that is, when the obstacle appears on their own path to a goal or when they are engaged and motivated to follow through with activities. As expected, participants who imagined a goal-relevant versus a goal-irrelevant obstacle indicated greater estimates for an unrelated spatial distance (Study 1). Moreover, chronically engaged participants provided smaller font size estimates after thinking about how to reach a personal goal with versus without an obstacle (Study 2), and participants primed with engagement indicated greater estimates for an unrelated spatial distance after navigating a maze with versus without an obstacle (Study 3). Implications for related research are discussed.
The price of your soul: Neural evidence for the non-utilitarian representation of sacred values
Gregory Berns et al.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 5 March 2012, Pages 754-762
Sacred values, such as those associated with religious or ethnic identity, underlie many important individual and group decisions in life, and individuals typically resist attempts to trade off their sacred values in exchange for material benefits. Deontological theory suggests that sacred values are processed based on rights and wrongs irrespective of outcomes, while utilitarian theory suggests that they are processed based on costs and benefits of potential outcomes, but which mode of processing an individual naturally uses is unknown. The study of decisions over sacred values is difficult because outcomes cannot typically be realized in a laboratory, and hence little is known about the neural representation and processing of sacred values. We used an experimental paradigm that used integrity as a proxy for sacredness and which paid real money to induce individuals to sell their personal values. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that values that people refused to sell (sacred values) were associated with increased activity in the left temporoparietal junction and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, regions previously associated with semantic rule retrieval. This suggests that sacred values affect behaviour through the retrieval and processing of deontic rules and not through a utilitarian evaluation of costs and benefits.
Rationality and Emotionality: Serotonin Transporter Genotype Influences Reasoning Bias
Melanie Stollstorff et al.Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Reasoning often occurs under emotionally charged, opinion-laden circumstances. The belief-bias effect indexes the extent to which reasoning is based upon beliefs rather than logical structure. We examined whether emotional content increases this effect, particularly for adults genetically predisposed to be more emotionally reactive. SS/SLG carriers of the serotonin transporter genotype (5-HTTLPR) were less accurate selectively for evaluating emotional relational reasoning problems with belief-logic conflict relative to LALA carriers. Trait anxiety was positively associated with emotional belief-bias and the 5-HTTLPR genotype significantly accounted for the variance in this association. Thus, deductive reasoning, a higher cognitive ability, is sensitive to differences in emotionality rooted in serotonin neurotransmitter function.
The effects of mortality salience on escalation of commitment
Chih-Long Yen & Chun-Yu LinInternational Journal of Psychology, January/February 2012, Pages 51-57
Based on propositions derived from terror management theory (TMT), the current study proposes that people who are reminded of their mortality exhibit a higher degree of self-justification behavior to maintain their self-esteem. For this reason, they could be expected to stick with their previous decisions and invest an increasing amount of resources in those decisions, despite the fact that negative feedback has clearly indicated that they might be on a course toward failure (i.e., "escalation of commitment"). Our experiment showed that people who were reminded of their mortality were more likely to escalate their level of commitment by maintaining their current course of action. Two imaginary scenarios were tested. One of the scenarios involved deciding whether to send additional troops into the battlefield when previous attempts had failed; the other involved deciding whether to continue developing an anti-radar fighter plane when the enemy had already developed a device to detect it. The results supported our hypothesis that mortality salience increases the tendency to escalate one's level of commitment.
Decision Quicksand: How Trivial Choices Suck Us In
Aner Sela & Jonah BergerJournal of Consumer Research
People often get unnecessarily mired in trivial decisions. Four studies support a metacognitive account for this painful phenomenon. Our central premise is that people use subjective experiences of difficulty while making a decision as a cue to how much further time and effort to spend. People generally associate important decisions with difficulty. Consequently, if a decision feels unexpectedly difficult, due to even incidental reasons, people may draw the reverse inference that it is also important and consequently increase the amount of time and effort they expend. Ironically, this process is particularly likely for decisions that initially seemed unimportant because people expect them to be easier (whereas important decisions are expected to be difficult to begin with). Our studies demonstrate that unexpected difficulty not only causes people to get caught up in unimportant decisions but also to voluntarily seek more options, which can increase decision difficulty even further.
Considering the situation: Why people are better social psychologists than self-psychologists
Emily Balcetis & David DunningSelf and Identity
Are people better self- or social psychologists when they predict prosocial behavior? Why might people be more or less accurate when predicting their own and others' actions? In two studies, participants considered variants of situations classically known to influence helping behavior (being alone vs. in a group, being in a good rather than bad mood). Participants made predictions about how they and their peers would act. Their predictions revealed that participants incorporated situational variations into social predictions, yet failed to do so when making self-predictions. These errors in self-prediction were not generated by response scale-type. This evidence suggests that people more appropriately use their knowledge of situational pressures when engaging in social rather than self-predictions.
The Least Likely Act: Overweighting Atypical Past Behavior in Behavioral Predictions
Carey Morewedge & Alexander TodorovSocial Psychological and Personality Science
When people predict the future behavior of a person, thinking of that target as an individual decreases the accuracy of their predictions. The present research examined one potential source of this bias, whether and why predictors overweight the atypical past behavior of individuals. The results suggest that predictors do indeed overweight the atypical past behavior of an individual. Atypical past behavior is more cognitively accessible than typical past behavior, which leads it to be overweighted in the impressions that serve as the basis for their predictions. Predictions for group members appear less susceptible to this bias, presumably because predictors are less likely to form a coherent impression of a group than an individual before making their predictions.
Gigerenzer's Evolutionary Arguments against Rational Choice Theory: An Assessment
Armin SchulzPhilosophy of Science, December 2011, Pages 1272-1282
I critically discuss a recent innovation in the debate surrounding the plausibility of rational choice theory (RCT): the appeal to evolutionary theory. Specifically, I assess Gigerenzer and colleagues' claim that considerations based on natural selection show that, instead of making decisions in a RCT-like way, we rely on ‘simple heuristics'. As I try to make clearer here, though, Gigerenzer and colleagues' arguments are unconvincing: we lack the needed information about our past to determine whether the premises on which they are built are true - and, hence, we cannot tell whether they, in fact, speak against RCT.
Triggering Self-Presentation Efforts Outside of People's Conscious Awareness
James TylerPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Three studies utilized priming techniques to examine whether self-presentations can be activated without conscious awareness. The results across all experiments consistently demonstrated nonconscious self-presentation effects, in that people were unaware that their self-presentations were triggered automatically and that their self-presentations were comparable to participants who were explicitly instructed to self-present. The findings are novel because they are the first to demonstrate that self-presentations can be triggered without conscious awareness in a manner similar to self-presentations that are strategically selected. In addition, the results help undermine the common misconception that self-presentation typically involves conscious deliberation, pretense, or outright deception.
Distraction and Placebo: Two Separate Routes to Pain Control
Jason Buhle et al.
An explosion of recent research has studied whether placebo treatments influence health-related outcomes and their biological markers, but almost no research has examined the psychological processes required for placebo effects to occur. This study tested whether placebo treatment and cognitive distraction reduce pain through shared or independent processes. We tested the joint effects of performance of an executive working memory task and placebo treatment on thermal pain perception. An interactive effect of these two manipulations would constitute evidence for shared mechanisms, whereas additive effects would imply separate mechanisms. Participants (N = 33) reported reduced pain both when they performed the working memory task and when they received the placebo treatment, but the reductions were additive, a result indicating that the executive demands of the working memory task did not interfere with placebo analgesia. Furthermore, placebo analgesia did not impair task performance. Together, these data suggest that placebo analgesia does not depend on active redirection of attention and that expectancy and distraction can be combined to maximize pain relief.
Times flies faster if a person has a high working-memory capacity
James Woehrle & Joseph MaglianoActa Psychologica, February 2012, Pages 314-319
Attention affects the perception of time, and the ability to control attention is reflected in measures of working-memory capacity. Individuals with low working memory capacity have more difficulty maintaining focus on a task than high-capacity individuals, particularly when faced with contextual distracters. This experiment examined the effect of working-memory capacity on the perception of temporal duration while performing a cognitive task. We predicted that low-capacity participants would be more likely to direct attention away from the cognitive task and towards the contextual distraction of time, and consequently perceive temporal duration more accurately, and perform the cognitive task less accurately, than high-capacity participants. The results showed that when performing both tasks simultaneously, low-capacity participants were less accurate than high-capacity participants on the cognitive task, but were more accurate on the timing task. High-capacity participants, conversely, were more accurate in the non-temporal cognitive task at the cost of monitoring duration.
Friday, January 27, 2012
We polarize, you decide
Idealistic advice and pragmatic choice: A psychological distance account
Shai Danziger, Ronit Montal & Rachel Barkan Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
In 6 studies, we found that advice is more idealistic than choice in decisions that trade off idealistic and pragmatic considerations. We propose that because advisers are more psychologically distant from the choosers' decision problem, they construe the dilemma at a higher construal level than do choosers (Trope & Liberman, 2003, 2010). Consequently, advisers are more influenced by idealistic considerations that are salient at a high-level construal, whereas choosers are more influenced by pragmatic considerations that are salient at a low-level construal. Consistent with this view, Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that compared with choosers, advisers weigh idealistic considerations more heavily and pragmatic considerations less heavily, place greater emphasis on ends (why) than on means to achieve the end (how), and generate more reasons (pros) in favor of acting idealistically. Studies 3 and 4 provide converging support for our account by demonstrating that making advisers focus on a lower construal level results in more pragmatic recommendations. In Study 3, we manufactured more pragmatic recommendations by priming a low-level implementation mind-set in a purportedly unrelated task, whereas in Study 4 we did so by reducing advisers' psychological distance from the dilemma by asking them to consider what they would choose in the situation. The results of Study 4 suggest advisers do not spontaneously consider self-choice. Finally, in Studies 5 and 6, we demonstrate the choice-advice difference in consequential real-life decisions.
International polarity and America's polarization
Joseph Bafumi & Joseph ParentInternational Politics, January 2012, Pages 1-35
There is a growing consensus that the United States is undergoing a period of political polarization, particularly among elites. The causes of this polarization remain under-researched. We argue that shifts in the international distribution of power influence America's polarization. To demonstrate the argument, this article analyzes changes in power and polarization quantitatively and qualitatively from 1945 to 2005. A key finding is that greater relative power on the world stage substantially increases polarization and some of its correlates, like income inequality. The argument also measures the extent of international influence on domestic polarization and makes novel predictions on when and why polarization will fall.
India Johnson & Kentaro FujitaPsychological Science
People are motivated to defend and rationalize the status quo, a phenomenon known as system justification. We propose the existence of a second, countervailing system-level motivation: system-change motivation, which is concerned with bettering the status quo over time. The opportunity to receive diagnostic information about the status quo pits the two system-level motives against each other. Whereas system justification promotes a preference for positive information about the status quo, system-change motivation promotes a preference for negative information about the status quo. In three experiments, we found that people preferred negative over positive feedback about the status quo when it was presented as being changeable. Our findings are the first to suggest the operation of a system-change motive.
Ethnocentrism as a Short-Term Force in the 2008 American Presidential Election
Cindy Kam & Donald KinderAmerican Journal of Political Science
Faced with a choice between John McCain and Barack Obama, voters in 2008 were swayed by the familiar play of factors - party identification, policy preferences, and economic conditions - but also, we find, by ethnocentrism, a deep-seated psychological predisposition that partitions the world into ingroups and outgroups - into "us" and "them." The effect of ethnocentrism was significant and substantial, and it appeared over and above the effects due to partisanship, economic conditions, policy stances, political engagement, and several varieties of conservatism. Two features of Obama were primarily responsible for triggering ethnocentrism in 2008: his race and his imagined Muslim faith. As such, we demonstrate that ethnocentrism was much more important in 2008 than in the four presidential elections immediately preceding 2008, and we show that it was much more important in the actual contest between Senator McCain and Senator Obama than in a hypothetical contest between Senator McCain and Senator Clinton.
Seth Masket, Jonathan Winburn & Gerald WrightPS: Political Science & Politics, January 2012, Pages 39-43
Redistricting received substantial attention in the popular media in 2011, as states redrew state legislative and congressional district boundaries. Many reformers continue to argue for a de-politicization of the redistricting process, claiming that partisan redistricting is responsible for declining electoral competition and increasing legislative polarization. Our analysis of evidence from state legislatures during the last decade suggests that the effects of partisan redistricting on competition and polarization are small, considerably more nuanced than reformers would suggest, and overwhelmed by other aspects of the political environment.
Electoral Institutions and Legislative Behavior: The Effects of Primary Processes
Michael Alvarez & Betsy SinclairPolitical Research Quarterly
Electoral institutions can affect the voting behavior of legislators who are elected through those institutions. In this article, the authors apply social network theory to study patterns of legislative choices under different primary election systems, and this approach leads the authors to study how electoral institutions affect legislative behavior differently than most previous research - that is, they focus on how electoral institutions affect the interactions between legislators. The authors use data on legislative voting behavior from the California State Assembly and exploit the changes that have been implemented in California's primary elections process over the past two decades. Specifically, they hypothesize that legislators who were elected during the years in which a nonpartisan blanket primary was used in California (1998 and 2000) will be more centrally networked and more likely to compromise with other legislators. They find evidence to support their hypothesis: legislators elected under the nonpartisan blanket primary are more likely to agree with other legislators. Electoral institutions, especially primary elections, have important effects on legislative behavior. The authors' results have implications for highly polarized state legislatures.
Incumbent positioning, ideological heterogeneity and mobilization in U.S. House elections
Michael EnsleyPublic Choice, April 2012, Pages 43-61
This article examines whether the need to mobilize citizens pushes incumbents to the ideological extremes in U.S. House elections. We test whether incumbents are more ideologically extreme as the ideological heterogeneity of the district increases and if turnout increases as incumbents become more extreme. These tests combined with the observation that divergence decreases with competitiveness suggest that candidates balance the need to attract swing voters with the need to mobilize supporters. The results also suggest that the growth in elite polarization is linked to the growing ideological heterogeneity in the electorate.
Legislative Coalitions, Polarization, and the U.S. Senate
Daniel DiSalvoThe Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics
In recent years, scholars have marshaled a vast amount of evidence to show that the congressional parties are increasingly polarized. However, David Mayhew demonstrated that most standard legislative enactments in the second half of the twentieth century passed with the support of large majorities of both parties. This article investigates whether the partisan polarization of the past two decades has crept into the temple of consensual lawmaking that hitherto characterized Senate action on final passage votes. The findings reveal that unilateral votes by one party are better explained by unified government than the rise of partisan polarization. In that light, the import of polarization may be overstated. Institutional features of the political system, coupled with the electoral incentives of lawmakers, offset ideological polarization at the final passage stage of important legislation.
Young Mie Kim et al.
This study examines how the campaign information environment influences individuals' ambivalence reduction and polarization. Based on the 2008 presidential television campaign advertising data and individuals' electoral behavior data in 2008 designated market areas nationwide, this study utilizes multilevel modeling to better understand the interactions between the effects of individual-level predispositions and that of the contextual-level campaign information environment. The findings of the study indicate that the campaign information environment does matter in ambivalence reduction and polarization. Individuals living in a media market where the volume of campaign advertising is relatively high are less ambivalent and more polarized in candidate evaluations. The patterns appear to be amplified among partisans, suggesting the campaign information environment functions as a "motivator." The partisan bias of the ads in a media market, however, exerts only limited influence. The implications for the functioning of democracy are discussed.
Thermostatic Voting: Presidential Elections in Light of New Policy Data
Jørgen BølstadPS: Political Science & Politics, January 2012, Pages 44-50
Existing studies imply a model of "thermostatic voting" - a phenomenon characterized by negative feedback from government policy to election outcomes, suggesting that a party's success in setting policy diminishes its electoral prospects. This phenomenon could give politicians an incentive to constrain the fulfillment of public demands, which would conflict with the notion of electoral accountability, which also forms part of the theoretical framework in question. This article addresses this paradox and provides new data that expand an existing time series of American policy liberalism. Employing the new data, the article identifies thermostatic voting in American presidential elections, but in light of the analysis, certain empirical features are also identified that reduce the possible incentive to withhold promised policy changes.
Through the Looking Glass, Darkly: What has Become of the Senate?
Sarah BinderThe Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, December 2011
Some twenty years ago, Richard F. Fenno, Jr. published "The Senate Through the Looking Glass" - a particularly illuminating and trenchant assessment of the state of the Senate. Listening to senators debate whether to allow television cameras into the chamber, Fenno concluded that the Senate was still capable of thoughtful deliberation and consensual decision-making. In this article, I take a Fenno-inspired peek through the looking glass at the contemporary Senate, using a recent parliamentary dispute to probe senators' views about their institution. The view is unusually dark. Two decades after Fenno's assessment, rising partisanship has made the Senate nearly ungovernable - leaving a chamber that struggles to fulfill its most basic constitutional duties.
Cognitive Biases and the Strength of Political Arguments
Kevin ArceneauxAmerican Journal of Political Science
Competition in political debate is not always sufficient to neutralize the effects of political rhetoric on public opinion. Yet little is known about the factors that shape the persuasiveness of political arguments. In this article, I consider whether cognitive biases influence the perceived strength of political arguments, making some arguments more persuasive than others. Lessons from neurobiology and recent political psychology research on emotion lead to the expectation that individuals are more likely to be persuaded by political arguments that evoke loss aversion via a fearful response - even in the face of a counterargument. Evidence from two experiments corroborates this expectation. I consider the normative implications of these empirical findings and potential avenues for future research.
The Impact of Health Care and Immigration Reform on Latino Support for President Obama and Congress
Gabriel Sanchez, Jillian Medeiros & Shannon Sanchez-Youngman Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, February 2012, Pages 3-22
At the start of their term, the Obama administration pledged to reform two failing policy systems in the United States: immigration and health care. The Latino populations' attitudes toward these two critical policy areas are particularly relevant due to the large foreign born population in the Latino community and the large number of Latinos who lack health insurance. Yet studies have not examined what factors shape Latino approval ratings and whether support for health and immigration reform affect Latino approval ratings of the current administration. We use the 2009 Latino Decisions survey and find that the foundations of Latino approval ratings are political in nature, with support for health and immigration policy reform driving support of the current administration. Given the vital role the Latino electorate played during the 2008 election, the success of these two policy reform efforts may have major implications for the 2012 elections.
Hanging With the Filibuster Pivot
Randall StrahanThe Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, December 2011
This essay takes Richard Fenno's concept of the senatorial career and Keith Krehbiel's generalization about the importance of the pivotal 60th senator as points of departure for an account of a day spent on Capitol Hill with Senator George LeMieux (R-FL) in July 2010. The goal of the essay is to describe a day in the career of a senator who took full advantage of opportunities presented by being the pivotal senator on a major piece of legislation.
Putting on the Brakes or Pressing on the Gas? Media Attention and the Speed of Policymaking
Michelle WolfePolicy Studies Journal, February 2012, Pages 109-126
Media attention is fundamental to the policy process and policy change in punctuated equilibrium theory. In this literature, media attention is usually conceptualized as fomenting or contributing to shifts in attention, positive feedback, and large-scale policy change. This article extends how we understand the role of the media and punctuated equilibrium by arguing that media coverage can also contribute to negative feedback and stability in the political system. Media attention should also slow down the speed of policymaking and the momentum for policy change as new policy participants and problem definitions enter the debate. Using event history analysis, this article tests the effects of media coverage on the length of time it takes legislation, once introduced, to become law for public laws from the 109th U.S. Congress (2005-06). Findings provide support for media attention "putting the brakes" on policymaking. Controlling for other factors, the speed of bill passage slows down as media attention increases. This effect decays over time for high levels of media coverage.
Alan Gerber et al.American Journal of Political Science
Social networks play a prominent role in the explanation of many political phenomena. Using data from a nationally representative survey of registered voters conducted around the 2008 U.S. presidential election, we document three findings. First, we show that during this period, people discussed politics as frequently as (or more frequently than) other topics such as family, work, sports, and entertainment with frequent discussion partners. Second, the frequency with which a topic is discussed is strongly and positively associated with reported agreement on that topic among these same discussion partners. Supplementary experimental evidence suggests this correlation arises because people avoid discussing politics when they anticipate disagreement. Third, we show that Big Five personality traits affect how frequently people discuss a variety of topics, including politics. Some of these traits also alter the relationship between agreement and frequency of discussion in theoretically expected ways. This suggests that certain personality types are more likely to be exposed to divergent political information, and that not everyone is equally likely to experience cross-cutting discourse, even in heterogeneous networks.
The Electoral Risks of Senate Majority Leadership, or How Tom Daschle Lost and Harry Reid Won
Andrea HatcherThe Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, December 2011
Senate majority leaders risk electoral defeat despite advantages of incumbency. In 2010, according to conventional wisdom, Harry Reid seemed likely to lose re-election, as had his predecessor. Nevertheless, he won a decisive victory. This paper seeks to answer the basic question - how did Reid escape electoral defeat? - as a means of elucidating the conditions under which Senate majority leaders lose re-elections. This research can be couched in a broader study of Senate majority leadership that understands the role as one that balances the constraints of multiple constituencies of state, party, Senate, and president. In these terms, and based on the cases of Tom Daschle and Harry Reid, I hypothesize that Reid's electoral victory was no surprise in light of his state's ideological position and support of President Barack Obama. As a rule, a Senate majority leader faces an electoral threat when he opposes a president that his state has supported, but gains electoral security when he serves a president his state has supported.
A Gender Gap in Policy Representation in the U.S. Congress?
John Griffin, Brian Newman & Christina Wolbrecht Legislative Studies Quarterly, February 2012, Pages 35-66
In the first article to evaluate the equality of dyadic policy representation experienced by women, we assess the congruence between U.S. House members' roll-call votes and the policy preferences of their female and male constituents. Employing two measures of policy representation, we do not find a gender gap in dyadic policy representation. However, we uncover a sizeable gender gap favoring men in districts represented by Republicans, and a similarly sizeable gap favoring women in districts represented by Democrats. A Democratic majority further improves women's dyadic representation relative to men, but having a female representative (descriptive representation) does not.
Exile Politics and Republican Party Affiliation: The Case of Cuban Americans in Miami
Chris Girard, Guillermo Grenier & Hugh Gladwin Social Science Quarterly
Objectives: We test the hypothesis that exile politics - measured by support for anti-Castro policies - contribute to the overwhelming preference for the Republican Party among South Florida's Cuban Americans.
Methods: Logistic regression is used to analyze six surveys conducted in South Florida between 1995 and December 2008.
Results: Among Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade County, measures of exile politics account for a recent downward shift in Republican registration, as well as for much of the variation in Republican registration by race and age. Also, measures of exile politics partly explain differences between Cubans and non-Cubans with regard to partisan preference.
Conclusion: Although some scholars argue that domestic issues have taken a back seat in guiding party preferences for Miami's Cubans, a decline in support for anti-Castro policies appears to have created a greater opening for domestic concerns in the 2008 election cycle.
What the Filibuster Tells Us About the Senate
Eric Schickler & Gregory WawroThe Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, December 2011
We argue that even as the Senate filibuster poses serious governance challenges in today's Congress, it persists because most senators prefer to maintain the minority's right to obstruct. We consider what this rank-and-file support for the filibuster tells us about the nature of individual senators' preferences and about the Senate as an institution. We believe that continued support for the filibuster underscores the importance of personal power and publicity goals, the ability of rules to provide "political cover" for legislators, and the role of shared understandings about the appropriate use of rules and about the Senate's place in the political system. Where nineteenth-century senators propagated a set of beliefs that limited the legitimate use of obstruction, today's senators have developed an alternative set of beliefs that bolsters the institutional role of the filibuster. Under these circumstances, reform will likely require substantial pressure from outside the institution rather than emerging from within the Senate.
Kathleen Bawn & Zeynep Somer-TopcuAmerican Journal of Political Science
We argue that governing status affects how voters react to extreme versus moderate policy positions. Being in government forces parties to compromise and to accept ideologically unappealing choices as the best among available alternatives. Steady exposure to government parties in this role and frequent policy compromise by governing parties lead voters to discount the positions of parties when they are in government. Hence, government parties do better in elections when they offset this discounting by taking relatively extreme positions. The relative absence of this discounting dynamic for opposition parties, on the other hand, means that they perform better by taking more moderate positions, as the standard Downsian model would predict. We present evidence from national elections in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, 1971-2005, to support this claim.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Regime Change
Guns, Butter, and Human Rights: The Congressional Politics of U.S. Aid to Egypt
Lars BergerAmerican Politics Research
In February 2011, the dramatic ouster of Hosni Mubarak threw into the spotlight the U.S. policy of granting generous and unconditional aid to the Egyptian regime at a time when the strategic rationale for such aid had become less obvious and calls for inserting human rights considerations into foreign aid allocations more prominent. Focusing on an unprecedented set of roll call votes taken in the U.S. House of Representatives during the years 2004 to 2007, this article offers the first quantitative assessment of the determinants of Congressional support for U.S. economic and military aid for Egypt. It challenges conventional wisdom on the limited role of campaign contributions in Congressional decision making by highlighting the central role of defense lobby contributions in maintaining the Congressional coalition that shielded Egypt's prerevolutionary regime from increased U.S. pressure in the years leading up to its eventual demise.
Testing Islam's Political Advantage: Evidence from Indonesia
Thomas Pepinsky, William Liddle & Saiful Mujani American Journal of Political Science
Across the Muslim world, Islamic political parties and social organizations have capitalized upon economic grievances to win votes and popular support. But existing research has been unable to disentangle the role of Islamic party ideology from programmatic economic appeals and social services in explaining these parties' popular support. We argue that Islamic party platforms function as informational shortcuts to Muslim voters, and only confer a political advantage when voters are uncertain about parties' economic policies. Using a series of experiments embedded in an original nationwide survey in Indonesia, we find that Islamic parties are systematically more popular than otherwise identical non-Islamic parties only under cases of economic policy uncertainty. When respondents know economic policy platforms, Islamic parties never have an advantage over non-Islamic parties. Our findings demonstrate that Islam's political advantage is real, but critically circumscribed by parties' economic platforms and voters' knowledge of them.
Political model of social evolution
Daron Acemoglu, Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 December 2011, Pages 21292-21296
Almost all democratic societies evolved socially and politically out of authoritarian and nondemocratic regimes. These changes not only altered the allocation of economic resources in society but also the structure of political power. In this paper, we develop a framework for studying the dynamics of political and social change. The society consists of agents that care about current and future social arrangements and economic allocations; allocation of political power determines who has the capacity to implement changes in economic allocations and future allocations of power. The set of available social rules and allocations at any point in time is stochastic. We show that political and social change may happen without any stochastic shocks or as a result of a shock destabilizing an otherwise stable social arrangement. Crucially, the process of social change is contingent (and history-dependent): the timing and sequence of stochastic events determine the long-run equilibrium social arrangements. For example, the extent of democratization may depend on how early uncertainty about the set of feasible reforms in the future is resolved.
Globalization, Economic Freedom, and Human Rights
Axel Dreher, Martin Gassebner & Lars-H. R. Siemers Journal of Conflict Resolution
Using the KOF Index of Globalization and two indices of economic freedom, the authors empirically analyze whether globalization and economic liberalization affect governments' respect for human rights in a panel of 106 countries over the 1981-2004 period. According to their results, physical integrity rights significantly and robustly increase with globalization and economic freedom, while empowerment rights are not robustly affected. Due to the lack of consensus about the appropriate level of empowerment rights as compared to the outright rejection of any violation of physical integrity rights, the global community is presumably less effective in promoting empowerment rights.
Fabrice Murtin & Romain WacziargNBER Working Paper, September 2011
Abstract:Over the last two centuries, many countries experienced regime transitions toward democracy. We document this democratic transition over a long time horizon. We use historical time series of income, education and democracy levels from 1870 to 2000 to explore the economic factors associated with rising levels of democracy. We find that primary schooling, and to a weaker extent per capita income levels, are strong determinants of the quality of political institutions. We find little evidence of causality running the other way, from democracy to income or education.
An evolutionary dynamic of revolutions
Nicolas Olsson-YaouzisPublic Choice, June 2012, Pages 497-515
Abstract:It has been argued that rational choice theory is unable to explain the occurrence of social revolutions. This paper argues that if social revolutions are modeled in an evolutionary setting it is possible to predict when revolutions occur. It is shown that revolutions are expected to occur when regimes lose their determination to punish revolutionary activity early and severely. In the process of constructing the model some results about public good provision are generalized.
Comparing the spread of capitalism and democracy
Peter Leeson, Russell Sobel & Andrea Dean Economics Letters, January 2012, Pages 139-141
Abstract:We apply Leeson and Dean's (2009) method for studying democratic dominoes to capitalist spillovers to compare the rates at which capitalism and democracy spread between countries. We find that capitalism and democracy spread at approximately the same modest rate.
Riding the Wave: World Trade and Factor-Based Models of Democratization
John Ahlquist & Erik WibbelsAmerican Journal of Political Science
Abstract:Studies of "waves" of regime change, in which large numbers of countries experience similar political transitions at roughly similar periods of time, though once popular, have fallen from favor. Replacing the "third wave" arguments are several competing models relating domestic social structure - specifically, the distribution of income and factor ownership - to regime type. If any of these distributive models of regime type is correct, then global trade has an important explanatory role to play. Under factor-based models, changes in the world trading system will have systematic effects on regime dynamics. Trade openness determines labor's factor income and ultimately its political power. As world trade expands and contracts, countries with similar labor endowments should experience similar regime pressures at the same time. We propose a novel empirical specification that addresses the endogeneity and data-quality problems plaguing previous efforts to examine these arguments. We investigate the conditional impact of the global trading system on democratic transitions across 130 years and all of the states in the international system. Our findings cast doubt on the utility of factor-based models of democratization, despite their importance in fueling renewed interest in the topic.
Time under Autocratic Rule and Economic Growth
Art Carden & Harvey James
Abstract:We investigate how the length of time a country's regime was autocratic between 1920 and 2000 is correlated with economic growth and per capita income. We find that the longer a country was within an autocracy, the lower is the country's economic performance, even after controlling for other factors. We also find the length of time a country is not autocratic is positively related to growth and income. We claim this evidence is consistent with the thesis that one reason why some countries have had difficulty adjusting to life after autocracy is that the human and social capital necessary to make markets "work" eroded under autocratic regimes and take time to develop afterward.
Toward a theory of leadership and state building
Roger MyersonProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 December 2011, Pages 21297-21301
Abstract:We present a theory of the state based on political leadership and reputational equilibria. A political leader first needs a reputation for reliably rewarding loyal supporters. Reputational expectations between political leaders and their supporters become the fundamental political laws on which the enforcement of all other constitutional laws may be based. Successful democratic development requires a plentiful supply of leaders who have good reputations for using public funds responsibly to serve the public at large and not just giving jobs to their active supporters. It is argued that decentralized democracy may be the best way to improve the chances for successful democracy.
Shadi Gholizadeh & Derek HookJournal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, March/April 2012, Pages 174-186
Abstract:This article examines the discursive construction of the 1978-1979 social movement that ultimately became the Iranian Revolution, as constructed through the discourse of the charismatic leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. This article illustrates that Khomeini was able to strategically co-opt the Shiite symbolism of the Battle of Karbala to bring together the most unlikely of bedfellows to unite in one common opposition movement. We first provide a summary of the socio-political events that contextualised Khomeini's discourse and then examine two commemorative declarations given by Khomeini in the key months before the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime. We will illustrate, via a discourse-historical analysis, that the two primary narratives prominent in Khomeini's discourse are as follows: (i) the continuation of the Battle of Karbala and (ii) the idea of a foreign conspiracy and a dangerous foreign other. We will also describe various discursive strategies that rendered Khomeini's discourse purposefully vague enough to appeal to Iran's fragmented opposition. Although the conspiratorial appeal of Khomeini's speeches has been discussed in the literature, we seek to show that it is the co-opting of a national myth in an all-encompassing language that drives the mass appeal of the discourse. The methods described in this study can be utilised by social and community psychologists seeking to understand how political actors discursively construct history in such a way as to serve their political ends.
Do pro-market economic reforms drive human rights violations? An empirical assessment, 1981-2006
Indra de Soysa & Krishna Chaitanya Vadlammanati Public Choice
Abstract:Liberals argue that economic policy reforms will benefit most in terms of better access to goods, less inflation and better economic opportunities. Critics of market reforms, among them Marxists, critical theorists, skeptics of globalization as well as a large portion of the NGO community, see the majority as losers from such reform, expecting resistance that would lead to political repression. They suggest that free-market policy reforms are analogous to "swallowing the bitter pill." We make use of the change in the Index of Economic Freedom as a measure of market liberalizing reforms, employing data from a panel of 117 countries for the period from 1981-2006. Our results show a strong positive association between reforms towards more free markets with regard to governments' respect for human rights, controlling for a host of relevant factors, including the possibility of endogeneity. The results are robust in relation to sample size, alternative data and methods, and a sample of only developing countries; and they are substantively quite large. Our results support those who argue that freer markets generate better economic conditions and higher levels of social harmony and peace, and it seems as if getting there is less problematic than people generally think - in fact, halfhearted measures and backsliding that prolong crises could be more dangerous to human rights.
The Perils of Unearned Foreign Income: Aid, Remittances, and Government Survival
Faisal AhmedAmerican Political Science Review
Abstract:Given their political incentives, governments in more autocratic polities can strategically channel unearned government and household income in the form of foreign aid and remittances to finance patronage, which extends their tenure in political office. I substantiate this claim with duration models of government turnover for a sample of 97 countries between 1975 and 2004. Unearned foreign income received in more autocratic countries reduces the likelihood of government turnover, regime collapse, and outbreaks of major political discontent. To allay potential concerns with endogeneity, I harness a natural experiment of oil price-driven aid and remittance flows to poor, non-oil producing Muslim autocracies. The instrumental variables results confirm the baseline finding that authoritarian governments can harness unearned foreign income to prolong their rule. Finally, I provide evidence of the underlying causal mechanisms that governments in autocracies use aid and remittances inflows to reduce their expenditures on welfare goods to fund patronage.
James FearonQuarterly Journal of Economics, November 2011, Pages 1661-1708
Abstract:If democracy is to have the good effects said to justify it, it must be self-enforcing in that incumbents choose to hold regular, competitive elections and comply with the results. I consider models of electoral accountability that allow rulers a choice of whether to hold elections and citizens whether to rebel. When individuals observe diverse signals of government performance, coordination to pose a credible threat of protest if the ruler "shirks" is problematic. The convention of an electoral calendar and known rules can provide a public signal for coordinating rebellion if elections are suspended or blatantly rigged, while the elections themselves aggregate private observations of performance. Two threats to this solution to political moral hazard are considered. First, a ruling faction that controls the army may prefer to fight after losing an election, and ex post transfers may not be credible. A party system in which today's losers may win in the future can restore self-enforcing democracy, though at the cost of weaker electoral control. Second, subtle electoral fraud can undermine the threat of coordinated opposition that maintains elections. I show that when there are organizations in society that can observe and announce a signal of the extent of popular discontent, the incumbent may prefer to commit to fair elections over an "accountable autocratic" equilibrium in which public goods are provided but costly rebellions periodically occur.
Rule of law and the size of government
Randall Holcombe & Cortney Rodet
Journal of Institutional Economics, March 2012, Pages 49-69Abstract:
If those with political power benefit from corrupt institutions, rulers might not adopt the rule of law so the ruling class can command a larger share of a smaller pie. An empirical analysis reveals that the size of government is larger in those countries that enforce the rule of law. If government expenditures provide some measure of the ability of the ruling class to command resources, this suggests that those with political power could benefit from imposing a fairer and more objective legal structure. Another conjecture is that those in power maintain corrupt governments to pay off their supporters and enhance their ability to remain in power. However, the rule of law is also positively associated with political stability, so better enforcement of the rule of law also enhances the ability of incumbent governments to remain in power.Yury Bosin
International Studies QuarterlyAbstract:
Recent studies find that US democracy assistance has helped build new democratic regimes across the globe. Nearly two decades of democracy assistance in the former Soviet Union (FSU), however, appear to have had a negligible impact on democracy in the region. This research uses a time-series cross-sectional statistical analysis to establish that US democracy assistance efforts in the FSU have failed to enhance democracy in the region. The incentives that FSU leaders had to misrepresent their commitment to democracy and the United States' understandable misperception of these leaders' actions help to explain this failure.----------------------
Endogenous constitutions: Politics and politicians matter, economic outcomes don't
Bernd Hayo & Stefan Voigt
Journal of Economic Behavior & OrganizationAbstract:
We study changes in the form of government as an example of endogenously determined constitutions. For a sample of 202 countries over the period 1950-2006, we find that most changes are relatively small and roughly equally likely to be either in the direction of more parliamentarian or more presidential systems. Based on a fixed effects ordered logit panel data model estimated over the period 1951-2000 for 146 countries, we find that such changes in the constitution can be explained by characteristics of the political system, internal and external political conflicts, and political leaders, whereas economic and socio-demographic variables do not matter.----------------------
Carly Elizabeth Schall
Sociological Inquiry, February 2012, Pages 123-144Abstract:
The development of supranational (European) social rights, and therefore social citizenship, is undermined by strong, direct relationships between citizens and national welfare states. Social policies contribute to national identities because they entail direct relationships between states and citizens. In well-developed European welfare states strong relationships between citizens and their member-states are expected. This may prevent the development of a similar relationship at the European level. The U.S. provides a comparison case, wherein a successful transference of citizenship identity from a lower to higher level has occurred, partly as a result of the building of national-level social citizenship, at least for certain classes of people. Revolutionary War Pensions provide an example of how social policy influences national identity. The lack of EU-level social policy precludes the possibility of this type of identity formation. Finally, the interplay of social citizenship and democracy in both cases is explored. T.H. Marshall's work regarding citizenship as the basis for democracy is used to understand how the inability to create a common social policy in the EU is harmful to democracy.----------------------
Which Dictators Produce Quality of Government?
Nicholas Charron & Victor Lapuente
Studies in Comparative International Development, December 2011, Pages 397-423Abstract:
This study deals with the effects of authoritarian regimes on state capacity or the quality of government (QoG): do some types of dictatorship (military, monarchy, and civilian) perform better than others? More importantly, which are the mechanisms through which different authoritarian rulers produce better government? The article argues theoretically, first, that single-party regimes are more responsive to citizens' demands than other types of authoritarian rule because they have a structured mechanism to channel citizens' "voices" (the single party). As a consequence, they will provide QoG following societal demands, which are low in low-income countries and high in high-income ones. Second, the effect of the other relevant authoritarian types - monarchies and military regimes - is exclusively conditional on rulers' self-interests. We predict that with short-sighted rulers, monarchies and military regimes will tend to under-provide QoG. In contrast, when monarchs and military rulers have long-term horizons, these types of authoritarian regimes will have a positive effect on QoG. Employing a sample of over 70 authoritarian countries from 1983 to 2003, we find empirical support for these interactive effects. In single-party autocracies, the higher (lower) the average income, the higher (the lower) the QoG; while albeit weaker support than the first finding, in monarchies in particular, the longer (shorter) the government's time horizon, the higher (the lower) the QoG.----------------------
Shades of blue: Confidence in the police in the world
Liqun Cao, Yung-Lien Lai & Ruohui Zhao
, January-February 2012, Pages 40-49Purpose: The present study tests the hypothesis that regime nature as a structural characteristic explains variations in public confidence in the police.
Methods: Combining five sources of data from 50 nations with 69,309 respondents, the current article extends the extant research by using hierarchical logistic regression analyses with ample sample sizes at both levels to test the hypothesis with a series of control variables.
Findings: In addition to the largely consistent findings from the individual-level predictors, the results show that that there is a U-shaper convex curvilinear relationship between the levels of democracy and confidence in the police. Residents in long-term stable authoritarian regimes as well as in long-term stable democracies display elevated levels of confidence in the police, whereas short-term or unstable authoritarian nations and nations in democratic transition have the lowest level of confidence in the police. Besides, confidence in the police is higher among citizens in nations with more government efficiency and is lower among residents of countries with higher homicide rates.
Conclusion: Regime nature is important in understanding confidence in the police. In addition, governments should make more efforts to promote their efficiency in order to win citizens' support and they are expected to reduce homicide rates.
----------------------
Dependence Networks and the International Criminal Court
Jay Goodliffe et al.
International Studies QuarterlyAbstract:
This article explores why governments commit to human rights enforcement by joining the International Criminal Court (ICC). Compared with other international institutions, the ICC has substantial authority and autonomy. Since governments traditionally guard their sovereignty carefully, it is puzzling that the ICC was not only established, but established so rapidly. Looking beyond traditional explanations for joining international institutions, this study identifies a new causal factor: a country's dependence network, which consists of the set of other states that control resources the country values. This study captures different dimensions of what states value through trade relations, security alliances, and shared memberships in international organizations. Using event history analysis on monthly data from 1998 to 2004, we find that dependence networks strongly affect whether and when a state signs and ratifies the ICC. Some types of ratification costs also influence state commitment, but many conventional explanations of state commitment receive little empirical support.----------------------
One man, one vote, one time? A model of democratization in the Middle East
Lisa Blaydes & James Lo
Journal of Theoretical Politics, January 2012, Pages 110-146Abstract:
The protests associated with the 2011 Arab Spring represent a serious and sustained challenge to autocratic rule in the Middle East. Under what conditions will Arab protest movements translate into a full-fledged 'fourth wave' of democratization? We argue that questions about the commitment of Islamic political opposition to democracy beyond a country's first free election may hinder Middle Eastern democratization. We extend Przeworski's canonical model of political liberalization as described in Democracy and the Market (1991) and find that transition to democracy is only possible under two conditions. First, uncertainty regarding the preferences of key elite actors is a necessary condition for democratic transition. Second, the repressive capacity of the state must lie above a minimum threshold. Given these conditions, democracy can occur when two types of political actors meet - regime liberalizers who prefer democracy to a narrowed dictatorship, and civil society elite who honor democratic principles. While a series of influential studies have argued that authoritarian elites block democratic transition because of their fear of the economic redistributive preferences of the median voter, this study suggests that regime liberalizers in the Middle East suspect political openings could become a vehicle for Islamists to seize power through free elections only to deny the median voter another chance to express their will.Wednesday, January 25, 2012
The Sky is Falling
Innovation and Climate Change Policy
Joshua Gans
American Economic Journal: Economic PolicyAbstract:
This paper examines the notion that more stringent climate change policies will induce innovation in environmentally friendly technologies. While past work has raised the concern that such policies may stimulate such innovation at the expense of innovation elsewhere in the economy, the model presented here challenges the presumption that environmentally friendly innovation will advance without additional assistance. This paper demonstrates that a tighter emissions cap will reduce the scale of fossil fuel usage and that this effect will diminish incentives to improve fossil fuel efficiencies. At the same time, while such policies may stimulate the relative demand for innovations that improve the efficiency of alternative energy, carbon scarcity may diminish innovation incentives overall. Only for offsetting technologies that directly abate carbon pollution will there be an unambiguously positive impact on the rate of innovation. These results have implications for the setting of climate change targets and the design of climate change policy.----------------------
Do actions speak louder than words? An empirical investigation of corporate environmental reputation
Charles Cho et al.
Accounting, Organizations and Society, January 2012, Pages 14-25Abstract:
In this study, we investigate the extent to which firms' environmental performance is reflected in perceptions of their environmental reputation and whether environmental disclosure serves to mediate the negative aspects of poorer environmental performance associated with those assessments. We also examine whether differences in environmental performance and environmental disclosure appear to be associated with membership selection to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), a factor we also believe may be associated with perceptions of environmental reputation. Based on a cross-sectional sample of 92 US firms from environmentally sensitive industries, we find that environmental performance measured using Trucost environmental performance scores is negatively related to both reputation scores and membership in the DJSI. We argue this is due to the more extensive disclosure levels of firms that are worse performers and the finding of a significant positive relation between environmental disclosure and both the environmental reputation measures and DJSI membership. Finally, we show that the DJSI designation positively influences perceptions of corporate reputation. Overall, our results suggest that voluntary environmental disclosure appears to mediate the effect of poor environmental performance on environmental reputation. Perhaps more troubling, our results also suggest that membership in the DJSI appears to be driven more by what firms say than what they do. Thus, like voluntary disclosure, the DJSI may actually be hindering improved future corporate environmental performance.----------------------
Simultaneously Mitigating Near-Term Climate Change and Improving Human Health and Food Security
Drew Shindell et al.
, 13 January 2012, Pages 183-189Abstract:
Tropospheric ozone and black carbon (BC) contribute to both degraded air quality and global warming. We considered ~400 emission control measures to reduce these pollutants by using current technology and experience. We identified 14 measures targeting methane and BC emissions that reduce projected global mean warming ~0.5°C by 2050. This strategy avoids 0.7 to 4.7 million annual premature deaths from outdoor air pollution and increases annual crop yields by 30 to 135 million metric tons due to ozone reductions in 2030 and beyond. Benefits of methane emissions reductions are valued at $700 to $5000 per metric ton, which is well above typical marginal abatement costs (less than $250). The selected controls target different sources and influence climate on shorter time scales than those of carbon dioxide-reduction measures. Implementing both substantially reduces the risks of crossing the 2°C threshold.----------------------
The Impact of a Corporate Culture of Sustainability on Corporate Behavior and Performance
Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou & George Serafeim
Harvard Working Paper, November 2011Abstract:
We investigate the effect of a corporate culture of sustainability on multiple facets of corporate behavior and performance outcomes. Using a matched sample of 180 companies, we find that corporations that voluntarily adopted environmental and social policies many years ago - termed as High Sustainability companies - exhibit fundamentally different characteristics from a matched sample of firms that adopted almost none of these policies - termed as Low Sustainability companies. In particular, we find that the boards of directors of these companies are more likely to be responsible for sustainability and top executive incentives are more likely to be a function of sustainability metrics. Moreover, they are more likely to have organized procedures for stakeholder engagement, to be more long-term oriented, and to exhibit more measurement and disclosure of nonfinancial information. Finally, we provide evidence that High Sustainability companies significantly outperform their counterparts over the long-term, both in terms of stock market and accounting performance. The outperformance is stronger in sectors where the customers are individual consumers instead of companies, companies compete on the basis of brands and reputations, and products significantly depend upon extracting large amounts of natural resources.----------------------
Oil Prices, Exhaustible Resources, and Economic Growth
James Hamilton
NBER Working Paper, January 2012Abstract:
This paper explores details behind the phenomenal increase in global crude oil production over the last century and a half and the implications if that trend should be reversed. I document that a key feature of the growth in production has been exploitation of new geographic areas rather than application of better technology to existing sources, and suggest that the end of that era could come soon. The economic dislocations that historically followed temporary oil supply disruptions are reviewed, and the possible implications of that experience for what the transition era could look like are explored.----------------------
The Human-Environment Dialog in Award-winning Children's Picture Books
Allen Williams et al.
Sociological Inquiry, February 2012, Pages 145-159Abstract:
Picture books often play an important role in childhood socialization. Given the seriousness of environmental problems, we ask how natural, modified, and built environments have been portrayed in children's books. To answer this question, we analyze the 296 books receiving Caldecott awards from 1938 to 2008. Two possibilities are explored with respect to content change. Growing concern about critical environmental problems, such as decline in biodiversity and deforestation, may have led to an increase in illustrations and stories about wild animals and the natural environment. Alternatively, the increasing isolation of people from the natural world may have resulted in a decline in the perceived relevance of these environmental issues and resulted in fewer stories and depictions. Our findings support the isolation hypothesis. There have been significant declines in depictions of natural environments and animals while built environments have become much more common. These findings suggest that today's generation of children are not being socialized, at least through this source, toward an understanding and appreciation of the natural world and the place of humans within it.----------------------
Climate Change, Crop Yields, and Internal Migration in the United States
Shuaizhang Feng, Michael Oppenheimer & Wolfram Schlenker
NBER Working Paper, January 2012Abstract:
We investigate the link between agricultural productivity and net migration in the United States using a county-level panel for the most recent period of 1970-2009. In rural counties of the Corn Belt, we find a statistically significant relationship between changes in net outmigration and climate-driven changes in crop yields, with an estimated semi-elasticity of about -0.17, i.e., a 1% decrease in yields leads to a 0.17% net reduction of the population through migration. This effect is primarily driven by young adults. We do not detect a response for senior citizens, nor for the general population in eastern counties outside the Corn Belt. Applying this semi-elasticity to predicted yield changes under the B2 scenario of the Hadley III model, we project that, holding other factors constant, climate change would on average induce 3.7% of the adult population (ages 15-59) to leave rural counties of the Corn Belt in the medium term (2020-2049) compared to the 1960-1989 baseline, with the possibility of a much larger migration response in the long term (2077-2099). Since there is uncertainty about future warming, we also present projections for a range of uniform climate change scenarios in temperature or precipitation.----------------------
Uncertain outcomes and climate change policy
Robert Pindyck
Journal of Environmental Economics and ManagementAbstract:
I incorporate distributions for temperature change and its economic impact in an analysis of climate change policy. As a measure of willingness to pay (WTP), I estimate the fraction of consumption w(τ) that society would be willing to sacrifice to ensure that any increase in temperature at a future point is limited to τ. Using information on distributions for temperature change and economic impact from recent studies assembled by the IPCC and others, I fit displaced gamma distributions for these variables. These fitted distributions, which roughly reflect the "state of knowledge" regarding warming and its impact, generally yield values of w(τ) below 2%, even for small values of τ, consistent with moderate abatement policies. I also calculate WTP for shifts in the mean and standard deviation of the temperature distribution, and show how WTP, and thus the demand for abatement, are driven more by outcome uncertainty than expected outcomes.----------------------
The Competitiveness Impacts of Climate Change Mitigation Policies
Joseph Aldy & William Pizer
Abstract:
In order to clarify ongoing debates over the competitiveness impacts of climate change regulation, we develop a precise definition that can be estimated with available domestic production, trade, and energy price data. We use this definition and a 20+ year panel of 400+ U.S. manufacturing industries to estimate and predict the effects a U.S.-only $15 per ton CO2 price. We find competitiveness effects on the order of a 1.0 to 1.3 percent decline in production among energy-intensive manufacturing industries, representing about one-third of the policy's impacts on these firms' output.
----------------------Cenozoic climate change influences mammalian evolutionary dynamics
Borja Figueirido et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 January 2012, Pages 722-727Abstract:
Global climate change is having profound impacts on the natural world. However, climate influence on faunal dynamics at macroevolutionary scales remains poorly understood. In this paper we investigate the influence of climate over deep time on the diversity patterns of Cenozoic North American mammals. We use factor analysis to identify temporally correlated assemblages of taxa, or major evolutionary faunas that we can then study in relation to climatic change over the past 65 million years. These taxa can be grouped into six consecutive faunal associations that show some correspondence with the qualitative mammalian chronofaunas of previous workers. We also show that the diversity pattern of most of these chronofaunas can be correlated with the stacked deep-sea benthic foraminiferal oxygen isotope (δ18O) curve, which strongly suggests climatic forcing of faunal dynamics over a large macroevolutionary timescale. This study demonstrates the profound influence of climate on the diversity patterns of North American terrestrial mammals over the Cenozoic.----------------------
Maximilian Auffhammer & Anin Aroonruengsawat
Climatic Change, December 2011, Pages 191-210Abstract:
This study simulates the impacts of higher temperatures resulting from anthropogenic climate change on residential electricity consumption for California. Flexible temperature response functions are estimated by climate zone, which allow for differential effects of days in different temperature bins on households' electricity consumption. The estimation uses a comprehensive household level dataset of electricity bills for California's three investor-owned utilities (Pacific Gas and Electric, San Diego Gas and Electric, and Southern California Edison). The results suggest that the temperature response varies greatly across climate zones. Simulation results using a downscaled version of the National Center for Atmospheric Research global circulation model suggest that holding population constant, total consumption for the households considered may increase by up to 55% by the end of the century. The study further simulates the impacts of higher electricity prices and different scenarios of population growth. Finally, simulations were conducted consistent with higher adoption of cooling equipment in areas which are not yet saturated, as well as gains in efficiency due to aggressive energy efficiency policies.----------------------
How Will Energy Demand Develop in the Developing World?
Catherine Wolfram, Orie Shelef & Paul Gertler
NBER Working Paper, January 2012Abstract:
Most of the medium-run growth in energy demand is forecast to come from the developing world, which consumed more total units of energy than the developed world in 2007. We argue that the main driver of the growth is likely to be increased incomes among the poor and near-poor. We document that as households come out of poverty and join the middle class, they acquire appliances, such as refrigerators, and vehicles for the first time. These new goods require energy to use and energy to manufacture. The current forecasts for energy demand in the developing world may be understated because they do not accurately capture the dramatic increase in demand associated with poverty reduction.----------------------
Does Fairness Matter in the Context of Anger About Nuclear Energy Decision Making?
John Besley
, January 2012, Pages 25-38Abstract:
Several recent studies have questioned whether nonoutcome forms of fairness matter in decision-making situations where individuals feel strongly engaged by the issue at hand. This survey-based study focuses on perceptions about a decision-making process related to a proposal to expand a nuclear power plant in the U.S. Southeast. It finds that anger moderates the impacts of outcome and procedural fairness on willingness to accept a decision process as satisfactory and legitimate. The more anger a person said he or she would feel if a decision were to contradict that person's point of view, the more perceived outcome and procedural fairness mattered. The study also finds that interpersonal fairness is also moderated by anger, but in the opposite direction. Interpersonal fairness had less of an impact on willingness to accept a decision for those who said they would feel angry if the decision did not go their preferred way.----------------------
A Social Capital Basis for Environmental Concern: Evidence from Northern New England
Thomas Macias & Elysia Nelson
Rural Sociology, December 2011, Pages 562-581Abstract:
This study, based on a random-digit-dialing telephone survey of adults in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, uses ordinary least squares regression to examine a relatively neglected element in the sociological literature on environmental concern, namely, the influence of an individual's social capital on the formation of environmental attitudes. We argue that it is those individuals with a greater diversity of social connections who are most likely to be influenced by ecological perspectives grounded in conservation and environmental protection. Controlling for other theoretically relevant variables, we regress an index of environmental concern that gives special emphasis to environmental-economic trade-offs on our measures of relational and community social capital. While confirming much of the earlier work in this area, our model provides evidence that connections to other people play an important role in determining individual concern for the environment. Specifically, the number of respondents' "weak ties" - that is, not their closest relationships - and the average occupational status of respondents' social ties, in general, were both positively correlated with environmental concern. Additionally, one of our three measures of community social capital, the number of visits from friends over the past month, was statistically significant and negatively correlated with environmental concern.----------------------
Current and future impacts of extreme events in California
Michael Mastrandrea et al.
Climatic Change, December 2011, Pages 43-70Abstract:
In the next few decades, it is likely that California must face the challenge of coping with increased impacts from extreme events such as heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and floods. This study presents new projections of changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme events in the future across climate models, emissions scenarios, and downscaling methods, and for each California county. Consistent with other projections, this study finds significant increases in the frequency and magnitude of both high maximum and high minimum temperature extremes in many areas. For example, the frequency of extreme temperatures currently estimated to occur once every 100 years is projected to increase by at least ten-fold in many regions of California, even under a moderate emissions scenario. Under a higher emissions scenario, these temperatures are projected to occur close to annually in most regions. Also, consistent with other projections, analyses of precipitation extremes fail to detect a significant signal of change, with inconsistent behavior when comparing simulations across different GCMs and different downscaling methods.----------------------
Tension between reducing sea-level rise and global warming through solar-radiation management
P.J. Irvine, R.L. Sriver & K. Keller
Nature Climate ChangeAbstract:
Geoengineering using solar-radiation management (SRM) is gaining interest as a potential strategy to reduce future climate change impacts1, 2, 3. Basic physics and past observations suggest that reducing insolation will, on average, cool the Earth. It is uncertain, however, whether SRM can reduce climate change stressors such as sea-level rise or rates of surface air temperature change1, 4, 5, 6. Here we use an Earth system model of intermediate complexity to quantify the possible response of sea levels and surface air temperatures to projected climate forcings7 and SRM strategies. We find that SRM strategies introduce a potentially strong tension between the objectives to reduce (1) the rate of temperature change and (2) sea-level rise. This tension arises primarily because surface air temperatures respond faster to radiative forcings than sea levels. Our results show that the forcing required to stop sea-level rise could cause a rapid cooling with a rate similar to the peak business-as-usual warming rate. Furthermore, termination of SRM was found to produce warming rates up to five times greater than the maximum rates under the business-as-usual CO2 scenario, whereas sea-level rise rates were only 30% higher. Reducing these risks requires a slow phase-out of many decades and thus commits future generations.----------------------
Potential impacts of increased coastal flooding in California due to sea-level rise
Matthew Heberger et al.
Climatic Change, December 2011, Pages 229-249Abstract:
California is likely to experience increased coastal flooding and erosion caused by sea-level rise over the next century, affecting the state's population, infrastructure, and environment. As part of a set of studies on climate change impacts to California, this paper analyzes the potential impacts from projected sea-level rise if no actions are taken to protect the coast (a "no-adaptation scenario"), focusing on impacts to the state's population and infrastructure. Heberger et al. (2009) also covered effects on wetlands, costs of coastal defenses, and social and environmental justice related to sea-level rise. We analyzed the effect of a medium-high greenhouse gas emissions scenario (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A2 in IPCC 2000) and included updated projections of sea-level rise based on work by Rahmstorf (Science 315(5810): 368, 2007). Under this scenario, sea levels rise by 1.4 m by the year 2100, far exceeding historical observed water level increases. By the end of this century, coastal flooding would, under this scenario, threaten regions that currently are home to approximately 480,000 people and $100 billion worth of property. Among those especially vulnerable are large numbers of low-income people and communities of color. A wide range of critical infrastructure, such as roads, hospitals, schools, emergency facilities, wastewater treatment plants, and power plants will also be at risk. Sea-level rise will inevitably change the character of California's coast; practices and policies should be put in place to mitigate the potentially costly and life-threatening impacts of sea-level rise.----------------------
Economics and Climate Change: Integrated Assessment in a Multi-Region World
John Hassler & Per Krusell
NBER Working Paper, January 2012Abstract:
This paper develops a model that integrates the climate and the global economy --- an integrated assessment model --- with which different policy scenarios can be analyzed and compared. The model is a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium setup with a continuum of regions. Thus, it is a full stochastic general-equilibrium version of RICE, Nordhaus's pioneering multi-region integrated assessment model. Like RICE, our model features traded fossil fuel but otherwise has no markets across regions --- there is no insurance nor any intertemporal trade across them. The extreme form of market incompleteness is not fully realistic but arguably not a decent approximation of reality. Its major advantage is that, along with a set of reasonable assumptions on preferences, technology, and nature, it allows a closed-form model solution. We use the model to assess the welfare consequences of carbon taxes that differ across as well as within oil-consuming and -producing regions. We show that, surprisingly, only taxes on oil producers can improve the climate: taxes on oil consumers have no effect at all. The calibrated model suggests large differences in views on climate policy across regions.----------------------
Effect of climate change on field crop production in California's Central Valley
Juhwan Lee, Steven De Gryze & Johan Six
Climatic Change, December 2011, Pages 335-353Abstract:
Climate change under various emission scenarios is highly uncertain but is expected to affect agricultural crop production in the 21st century. However, we know very little about future changes in specific cropping systems under climate change in California's Central Valley. Biogeochemical models are a useful tool to predict yields as it integrates crop growth, nutrient dynamics, hydrology, management and climate. For this study, we used DAYCENT to simulate changes in yield under A2 (medium-high) and B1 (low) emission scenarios. In total, 18 climate change predictions for the two scenarios were considered by applying different climate models and downscaling methods. The following crops were selected: alfalfa (hay), cotton, maize, winter wheat, tomato, and rice. Sunflower was also selected because it is commonly included in rotations with the other crops. By comparing the 11-year moving averages for the period 1956 to 2094, changes in yield were highly variable depending on the climate change scenarios across times. Furthermore, yield variance for the crops increased toward the end of the century due to the various degrees of climate model sensitivity. This shows that future climate, suggested by each of the emission scenarios, has a broad range of impacts on crop yields. Nevertheless, there was a general agreement in trends of yield changes. Under both A2 and B1, average modeled cotton, sunflower, and wheat yields decreased by approximately 2% to 9% by 2050 compared to the 2009 average yields. The other crops showed apparently no decreases in yield for the period 2010-2050. In comparison, all crop yields except for alfalfa significantly declined by 2094 under A2, but less under B1. Under A2, yields decreased in the following order: cotton (25%) > sunflower (24%) > wheat (14%) > rice (10%) > tomato and maize (9%). Under A2 compared to B1, the crop yield further decreased by a range of 2% (alfalfa) to 17% (cotton) by 2094, with more variation in yield change in the southern counties than the northern counties. The CO2 fertilization effects were predicted to potentially offset these yield declines (>30%) but may be overestimated. Our results suggest that climate change will decrease California crop yields in the long-term, except for alfalfa, unless greenhouse gas emissions and resulting climate change is curbed and/or adaptation of new management practices and improved cultivars occurs.----------------------
Human activity and anomalously warm seasons in Europe
Nikolaos Christidis et al.
International Journal of Climatology, February 2012, Pages 225-239Abstract:
Seasonal mean temperatures averaged over the European region have warmed at a rate of 0.35-0.52 K/decade since 1980. The last decade has seen record-breaking seasonal temperatures in Europe including the summer of 2003 and the spring, autumn, and winter of 2007. Previous studies have established that European summer warming since the early twentieth century can be attributed to the effects of human influence. The attribution analysis described here employs temperature data from observations and experiments with two climate models and uses optimal fingerprinting to partition the climate response between its anthropogenic and natural components. These responses are subsequently combined with estimates of unforced climate variability to construct distributions of the annual values of seasonal mean temperatures with and without the effect of human activity. We find that in all seasons, anthropogenic forcings have shifted the temperature distributions towards higher values. We compute the associated change in the likelihood of having seasons whose temperatures exceed a pre-specified threshold. We first set the threshold equal to the seasonal temperature observed in a particular year to assess the effect of anthropogenic influences in past seasons. We find that in the last decade (1999-2008) it is extremely likely (probability greater than 95%) that the probability has more than doubled under the influence of human activity in spring and autumn, while for summer it is extremely likely that the probability has at least quadrupled. One of the two models employed in the analysis indicates it is extremely likely the probability has more than doubled in winter too. We also compute the change in probability over a range of temperature thresholds which enables us to provide updates on the likely change in probability attributable to human influence as soon as observations become available. Such near-real time information could be very useful for adaptation planning.----------------------
Anders Levermann et al.
Climatic Change, February 2012, Pages 845-878Abstract:
We discuss potential transitions of six climatic subsystems with large-scale impact on Europe, sometimes denoted as tipping elements. These are the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica, the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, Arctic sea ice, Alpine glaciers and northern hemisphere stratospheric ozone. Each system is represented by co-authors actively publishing in the corresponding field. For each subsystem we summarize the mechanism of a potential transition in a warmer climate along with its impact on Europe and assess the likelihood for such a transition based on published scientific literature. As a summary, the 'tipping' potential for each system is provided as a function of global mean temperature increase which required some subjective interpretation of scientific facts by the authors and should be considered as a snapshot of our current understanding.----------------------
Is There an Energy Efficiency Gap?
Hunt Allcott & Michael Greenstone
NBER Working Paper, January 2012Abstract:
Many analysts have argued that energy efficiency investments offer an enormous "win-win" opportunity to both reduce negative externalities and save money. This overview paper presents a simple model of investment in energy-using capital stock with two types of market failures: first, uninternalized externalities from energy consumption, and second, forces such as imperfect information that cause consumers and firms not to exploit privately-profitable energy efficiency investments. The model clarifies that only if the second type of market failure cannot be addressed directly through mechanisms such as information provision, energy efficiency subsidies and standards may be merited. We therefore review the empirical work on the magnitude of profitable unexploited energy efficiency investments, a literature which frequently does not meet modern standards for credibly estimating the net present value of energy cost savings and often leaves other benefits and costs unmeasured. These problems notwithstanding, recent empirical work in a variety of contexts implies that on average the magnitude of profitable unexploited investment opportunities is much smaller than engineering-accounting studies suggest. Finally, there is tremendous opportunity and need for policy-relevant research that utilizes randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental techniques to estimate the returns to energy efficiency investments and the welfare effects of energy efficiency programs.----------------------
Yiping Wu, Shuguang Liu & Omar Abdul-Aziz
Climatic Change, February 2012, Pages 977-1003Abstract:
Increased atmospheric CO2 concentration and climate change may significantly impact the hydrological and meteorological processes of a watershed system. Quantifying and understanding hydrological responses to elevated ambient CO2 and climate change is, therefore, critical for formulating adaptive strategies for an appropriate management of water resources. In this study, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was applied to assess the effects of increased CO2 concentration and climate change in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). The standard SWAT model was modified to represent more mechanistic vegetation type specific responses of stomatal conductance reduction and leaf area increase to elevated CO2 based on physiological studies. For estimating the historical impacts of increased CO2 in the recent past decades, the incremental (i.e., dynamic) rises of CO2 concentration at a monthly time-scale were also introduced into the model. Our study results indicated that about 1-4% of the streamflow in the UMRB during 1986 through 2008 could be attributed to the elevated CO2 concentration. In addition to evaluating a range of future climate sensitivity scenarios, the climate projections by four General Circulation Models (GCMs) under different greenhouse gas emission scenarios were used to predict the hydrological effects in the late twenty-first century (2071-2100). Our simulations demonstrated that the water yield would increase in spring and substantially decrease in summer, while soil moisture would rise in spring and decline in summer. Such an uneven distribution of water with higher variability compared to the baseline level (1961-1990) may cause an increased risk of both flooding and drought events in the basin.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Red Tape
Justices and Legal Clarity: Analyzing the Complexity of U.S. Supreme Court Opinions
Ryan Owens & Justin WedekingLaw & Society Review, December 2011, Pages 1027-1061
Legal clarity is important to understand and measure because of its connection to the rule of law. We provide the first systematic examination of the clarity of Supreme Court opinions and discover five important results. First, certain justices systematically craft clearer opinions than others. Justices Scalia and Breyer write the clearest opinions, while Justice Ginsburg consistently writes the most complex opinions. Second, ideology does not predict clarity in majority or concurring opinions. Third, all justices write clearer dissents than majority opinions, while minimum winning coalitions produce the clearest majority opinions. Fourth, justices across the board write clearer opinions in criminal procedure cases than in any other issue area. Finally, opinions that formally alter Court precedent render less clear law, potentially leading to a cycle of legal ambiguity.
Do We Need Speed Limits on Freeways?
Arthur van BenthemyStanford Working Paper, December 2011
When choosing his speed, a driver faces a trade-off between private benefits (time savings) and private costs (fuel cost and own damage and injury). Driving faster also has external costs (pollution, adverse health impacts and injury to other drivers). This paper uses large-scale speed limit increases in the western United States in 1987 and 1996 to address three related questions. First, do the social benefits of raising speed limits exceed the social (private plus external) costs? Second, do the private benefits of driving faster as a result of higher speed limits exceed the private costs? Third, could completely eliminating speed limits improve efficiency? I find that a 10 mph speed limit increase on highways leads to a 3-4 mph increase in travel speed, 9-15% more accidents, 34-60% more fatal accidents, and elevated pollutant concentrations of 14-25% (carbon monoxide), 9-16% (nitrogen oxides), 1-11% (ozone) and 9% higher fetal death rates around the affected freeways. I use these estimates to calculate private and external benefits and costs, and find that the social costs of speed limit increases are three to ten times larger than the social benefits. In contrast, many individual drivers would enjoy a net private benefit from driving faster. Privately, a value of a statistical life (VSL) of $6.0 million or less justifies driving faster, but the social planner's VSL would have to be below $0.9 million to justify higher speed limits. The substantial difference between private and social optimal speed choices provides a strong rationale for having speed limits. Although speed limits are blunt instruments that differ from an ideal Pigovian tax on speed, it is highly unlikely that any hidden administrative costs or unforeseen behavioral adjustments could make eliminating speed limits an efficiency-improving proposition.
Sean FarhangLaw & Social Inquiry
Examining qualitative historical evidence from cases of federal regulation in the areas of labor, civil rights, and environmental policy, this article provides support for the hypothesis that divergence between legislative and executive preferences - a core and distinctive feature of the American constitutional order - creates an incentive for Congress to rely upon private lawsuits, as an alternative to administrative power, to achieve its regulatory goals. It also shows that this mechanism encouraging statutory mobilization of private litigants had been operative long before its powerful growth started in the late 1960s, that it operated in similar fashion with Republican legislators facing Democratic presidents and Democratic legislators facing Republican presidents, and that it remained a source of controversy and an active influence on congressional decision making throughout the half century covering the 1940s through the 1980s.
Inconsistent Regulators: Evidence From Banking
Sumit Agarwal et al.NBER Working Paper, January 2012
US state chartered commercial banks are supervised alternately by state and federal regulators. Each regulator supervises a given bank for a fixed time period according to a predetermined rotation schedule. We examine differences between federal and state regulators for these banks. Federal regulators are significantly less lenient, downgrading supervisory ratings about twice as frequently as state supervisors. Under federal regulators, banks report higher nonperforming loans, more delinquent loans, higher regulatory capital ratios, and lower ROA. There is a higher frequency of bank failures and problem-bank rates in states with more lenient supervision relative to the federal benchmark. Some states are more lenient than others. Regulatory capture by industry constituents and supervisory staff characteristics can explain some of these differences. These findings suggest that inconsistent oversight can hamper the effectiveness of regulation by delaying corrective actions and by inducing costly variability in operations of regulated entities.
The Anti-Federalist Strand in Progressive Politics and Political Thought
Elvin LimPolitical Research Quarterly, forthcoming
In this article, the author argues that the Progressives can be as much characterized as the antistatists of the nineteenth century as the statists of the twentieth century because their overriding goal was the destruction of the party state and not, directly, the creation of the bureaucratic state. They found in Anti-Federalist political thought a general antistatist template that they used to articulate their specific objection to the nineteenth-century party state. This template comprised a mutual commitment to simple government, the common good as a preinstitutional reality, democracy, direct and responsive government, fear of elite rule, civic education, and cultural homogeneity.
Todd McFall & Julianne TremeApplied Economics Letters, Spring 2012, Pages 763-768
This study examines how PGA Tour golfers' playing strategies offset a ban on technologically superior golf club grooves and how the strategy changes translated into performance changes. The ban, which was implemented at the beginning of the 2010 season, effectively decreased golfers' abilities to spin the golf ball from all on-course environments and offers a unique opportunity to examine offsetting behaviour in the light of a ban on the type of technology. We compare 2009 and 2010 PGA Tour results in a manner consistent with previous studies of offsetting behaviour and golf club groove construction. Our results suggest that offsetting behaviour mitigated the effects of the technological regulations on golf clubs in an economically and statistically significant way, as golfers' performances improved following the technological ban.
Eric ZitzewitzNBER Working Paper, January 2012
Transparency is usually thought to reduce favoritism and corruption by facilitating monitoring by outsiders, but there is concern it can have the perverse effect of facilitating collusion by insiders. In response to vote trading scandals in the 1998 and 2002 Olympics, the International Skating Union (ISU) introduced a number of changes to its judging system, including obscuring which judge issued which mark. The stated intent was to disrupt collusion by groups of judges, but this change also frustrates most attempts by outsiders to monitor judge behavior. I find that the "compatriot-judge effect", which aggregates favoritism (nationalistic bias from own-country judges) and corruption (vote trading), actually increased slightly after the reforms.
Major League Baseball's First Year Player Draft: A Natural Laboratory for the Study of Bargaining
Christopher GarmonJournal of Sports Economics
Major League Baseball's (MLB) Draft is a natural laboratory for the study of bargaining: There are no bonus restrictions, draft picks cannot be traded, and there are no commitment issues (i.e., players "declaring" for the draft). This article tests the implications of bargaining theory using data from the 2003-2010 MLB drafts. In 2007, new draft rules were introduced, but not uniformly across the draft, making it possible to estimate the effect of each change. Although the rule changes were designed to lower bonuses, they had the opposite effect. The rule changes led to $178 million in extra compensation to drafted players.
Revolving door laws and state public utility commissioners
Marc Law & Cheryl LongRegulation & Governance, December 2011, Pages 405-424
This paper investigates the effects of revolving door regulations - laws that restrict the post-government employment opportunities of public sector workers - on the characteristics of state public utility commissioners. We find that commissioners from states with revolving door regulations have less expertise, serve shorter terms, and are less likely to be subsequently employed by the private sector, compared with their counterparts from states without revolving door laws. These findings suggest that revolving door regulations may have costly unintended consequences.
Legal Origin or Colonial History?
Daniel Klerman et al.Journal of Legal Analysis
Economists have documented pervasive correlations between legal origins, modern regulation, and economic outcomes around the world. Where legal origin is exogenous, however, it is almost perfectly correlated with another set of potentially relevant background variables: the colonial policies of the European powers that spread the "origin" legal systems through the world. We attempt to disentangle these factors by exploiting the imperfect overlap of colonizer and legal origin, and looking at possible channels, such as the structure of the legal system, through which these factors might influence contemporary economic outcomes. We find strong evidence in favor of non-legal colonial explanations for economic growth. For other dependent variables, the results are mixed.
Legal institutions, social norms, and entrepreneurship in Britain (c.1890-c.1939)
Paolo Di MartinoEconomic History Review, February 2012, Pages 120-143
This article analyses the functioning of debt-discharge procedures in England and Wales in the light of the debate on entrepreneurial failure in the years between the late Victorian age and the interwar period. Using an original dataset and an empirical approach, it is argued that social norms, cultural elements, and class considerations influenced the outcome of decisions in a way that could have reduced the incentives for economic agents to engage with productive activity. Results show that over the entire period judges paid disproportionate attention to moral issues, and often gave lighter sentences to members of the elite who went into bankruptcy for personal reasons, and tougher ones to entrepreneurs who failed because of engagement with economic activity.
James Hollyer, Peter Rosendorff & James Raymond Vreeland Journal of Politics, October 2011, Pages 1191-1205
Abstract:Are democracies more transparent than other types of political regimes? Many people believe that the presence of elections alone is not sufficient for a country to be considered democratic and that transparency must be included as part of the definition of political regime. We agree that contestability of elections and transparency of policymaking are analytically distinct concepts. Adopting minimalist approaches to democracy and transparency, we ask a basic question: do electoral politics provide incentives for governments to disseminate data? We thus investigate theoretically the relationship between regime type and the willingness of policy makers to provide credible announcements on policy-relevant variables. And we demonstrate empirically that the availability (or absence) of policy-relevant data is correlated with regime type, even after controlling for GDP per capita, IMF participation, country fixed-effects, and time trends. Democracies are indeed more transparent.
On the Optimal Number of Courts
Stefan VoigtInternational Review of Law and Economics
Abstract:This is the first paper to investigate whether the number of high courts in a country has systematic effects both on the quality of its legal system and on its level of economic development more generally. It is theorized that due to the division of labor and a higher degree of specialization, high courts might be advantageous in terms of court productivity. Yet, they might also be disadvantageous in terms of a less coherent legal system. It is empirically tested whether the positive or the negative effects prevail. Results show that a larger number of high courts never has any positive effects on very broad outcome variables; indeed, with regard to some of these, a greater number of high courts is correlated with worse outcomes.
Nudges and norms: On the political economy of soft paternalism
Jan Schnellenbach
European Journal of Political EconomyAbstract:
This paper discusses soft (or libertarian) paternalism, as proposed among others by Thaler and Sunstein (2008). It is argued that soft paternalism should not be understood as an efficiency-enhancing, but as a redistributive concept. The relationship between soft paternalism and social norms is discussed in detail. In particular, it is argued that soft paternalism increases the stability of given social norms, which in turn need not be efficient, nor in the material self-interest of a majority of individuals. Soft paternalism is argued to be an essentially conservative concept of policy-making in the sense that it tends to increase the longevity of status quo social norms.----------------------
Does Planning Regulation Protect Independent Retailers?
Raffaella Sadun
Harvard Working Paper, December 2011Abstract:
Entry regulations against big-boxes have been introduced in many countries to protect independent retailers. Analyzing a planning reform launched in the U.K. in the 1990s, I show that entry regulations may in fact accelerate the decline of independents by increasing the attractiveness of smaller in-town store formats for retail chains. The causal impact of planning regulation is estimated using variation in local political control across the U.K., which exogenously affects the ease of entry for big-boxes in this specific institutional framework. The analysis shows that up to 17% of the independents' employment decline between 1998 and 2004 can be attributed to the regulatory reform.----------------------
Historic Preservation and Residential Property Values: Evidence from Quantile Regression
Velma Zahirovic-Herbert & Swarn Chatterjee
Urban Studies, February 2012, Pages 369-382Abstract:
Historic designation is increasingly used as a means to achieve both preservation and community economic development. This study considered the effects of historic designation on residential property values in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. The results support the well-established notion in urban economics literature that historic preservation has a positive impact on property values. However, appreciation of property values may displace less-affluent residents of historic districts after designation takes place. The results also show that the lower-end properties gain the most value from historic preservation. Thus, it must indeed be recognised that with increasing values comes the very real possibility that displacement of neighbourhood residents can occur.----------------------
Robert Bird & Donald Smythe
Law & Social InquiryAbstract:
This article reports the results of a study that uses social network analysis to compare the persuasiveness of legal precedents in the diffusion of the strict liability rule for manufacturing defects. This new study tests which legal precedents were most influential and also whether certain state judicial variables influenced the diffusion process. The results are striking. The federal circuit regions appear to define an important reference group in the diffusion process, and social network effects dominate economic and political variables. In addition, the de facto separation of powers in the enactment of new state legislation appears to influence courts' propensities to adopt the strict liability rule. When the executive and legislative branches were controlled by the same political party, regardless of whether it was Republican or Democratic, state courts were more inclined to adopt the strict liability rule.----------------------
The Determinants of State-Level Caps on Punitive Damages: Theory and Evidence
Thomas Miceli & Michael Stone
Contemporary Economic PolicyAbstract:
Under the standard economic model of torts, punitive damages correct for imperfect detection. Incorporating litigation costs into the model provides a justification for punitive damage caps. At the optimum, caps balance deterrence against the cost of litigation. Empirical testing of the model is performed via Cox proportional and parametric hazard analyses, using a panel dataset from 1981 to 2007. The results reveal a positive relationship between legal services employment (a proxy for legal costs) and cap enactment, and a negative relationship between state gross state product (a proxy for damages) and cap enactment. Cap enactment is also influenced by political ideology.----------------------
Mitchel Herian et al.
Journal of Public Administration Research and TheoryAbstract:
The purpose of this article is to test whether the use of public participation by a local government increases perceptions of procedural fairness among the public and to propose an explanation for why fairness is a strong predictor of satisfaction with governmental decisions. To do this, we draw on the uncertainty management model to hypothesize that indications of procedural fairness can increase public support for government and its decisions and that fairness effects are greater for individuals who are more uncertain (less knowledgeable) about the governmental body in question. To test the hypothesis, we embedded an experiment in a survey of the public that was used by a local government to inform its budgetary decisions. The results provide support for the notion that governmental use of public input does increase perceptions of governmental fairness and that, in turn, perceptions of fairness have stronger relationships with overall governmental assessments for those who are relatively uncertain about a governmental institution.----------------------
Do smoke-free laws affect revenues in pubs and restaurants?
Hans Olav Melberg & Karl Lund
European Journal of Health Economics, February 2012, Pages 93-99Abstract:
In the debate about laws regulating smoking in restaurants and pubs, there has been some controversy as to whether smoke-free laws would reduce revenues in the hospitality industry. Norway presents an interesting case for three reasons. First, it was among the first countries to implement smoke-free laws, so it is possible to assess the long-term effects. Second, it has a cold climate so if there is a negative effect on revenue one would expect to find it in Norway. Third, the data from Norway are detailed enough to distinguish between revenue from pubs and restaurants. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) intervention analysis of bi-monthly observations of revenues in restaurants and pubs show that the law did not have a statistically significant long-term effect on revenue in restaurants or on restaurant revenue as a share of personal consumption. Similar analysis for pubs shows that there was no significant long-run effect on pub revenue.----------------------
Michael Sosin
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, forthcomingAbstract:
Although decentralization and devolution in some ways increase state governments' discretion, they in other ways may limit that discretion. The current study tests the thesis that, at least in the early 2000s, discretion declined in some states' substance abuse service systems; states experiencing a financial shortfall came to adopt the federal government's service priorities. These states largely acted because of the institutional dominance of the federal government. The thesis is supported by analyses of two waves of data from a nationally representative sample of providers of outpatient substance abuse services. The study considers several uses of the findings: supplementing the perspective that argues that states lose discretion due to decentralization and devolution-induced economic disincentives, understanding the diffusion of federal policies relating to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Family program, generally suggesting some limits to state discretion, and thus helping to reconceptualize the benefits and costs of decentralization and devolution.----------------------
Incentives and Adaptation: Evidence from Highway Procurement in Minnesota
Gregory Lewis & Patrick Bajari
Abstract:
Procurement projects often encounter unanticipated problems. Deadlines and penalties are one important instrument used to incentivize contractors to adapt their plans. We develop a theory of highway procurement in which contractors must modify their construction rate following a productivity shock. We model how time incentives affect the work rate and time taken, characterizing the efficient contract design. Using new micro-level data from Minnesota that includes day-by-day information on work plans, actual outcomes and delays, we find strong evidence supporting the theory. As an application, we build an econometric model that endogenizes adaptation, and simulate how different incentive structures affect outcomes and the variance of contractor payments. Accounting for the traffic delays caused by construction, switching to a more efficient design would substantially increase welfare without substantially increasing risk.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Reproductivity
The GOP's Abortion Strategy: Why Pro-Choice Republicans Became Pro-Life in the 1970s
Daniel WilliamsJournal of Policy History, Winter 2011, Pages 513-539
"When the Republican national convention convened in Kansas City in 1976, the party's pro-choice majority did not expect a significant challenge to their views on abortion. Public opinion polls showed that Republican voters were, on average, more pro-choice than their Democratic counterparts, a view that the convention delegates shared; fewer than 40 percent of the delegates considered themselves pro-life. The chair of the Republican National Committee, Mary Louise Smith, supported abortion rights, as did First Lady Betty Ford, who declared Roe v. Wade a 'great, great decision.' Likewise, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, who had taken a leading role in the fight for abortion rights in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was solidly pro-choice. Even some of the party's conservatives, such as Senator Barry Goldwater, supported abortion rights. But in spite of the Republican Party's pro-choice leadership, the GOP adopted a platform in 1976 that promised an antiabortion constitutional amendment. The party's leadership viewed the measure as a temporary political ploy that would increase the GOP's appeal among traditionally Democratic Catholics, but the platform statement instead became a rallying cry for social conservatives who used the plank to build a religiously based coalition in the GOP and drive out many of the pro-choice Republicans who had initially adopted the platform...In 1940, the GOP became the first major party to endorse the Equal Rights Amendment. Republicans in state legislatures also led the fight against Catholic clergy to expand the public availability of contraceptives. Planned Parenthood's Republican supporters included Senator Prescott Bush (R-Conn.) and his son, George H. W. Bush; Senator Barry Goldwater's wife, Peggy Goldwater, who founded an Arizona chapter of the organization; and President Dwight Eisenhower, who served as the organization's honorary co-chair in the 1960s...In early 1967, Reagan, at the urging of Republican legislators, signed into law a bill that gave women the right to an abortion when their physical or mental health was in danger. That same year, Colorado's Republican governor signed into law the nation's first abortion liberalization bill, which a Republican-dominated legislature had passed by a 2-1 margin...Democrats in some states were also willing to vote for abortion liberalization, but only if they did not have to worry about a backlash from Catholic voters. In North Carolina, a predominantly Baptist state where Catholics made up only 1 percent of the population, the Democratic state legislature approved an abortion liberalization measure by overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate in 1967...Republicans shifted their position on abortion only after they decided to bid for Catholic votes. Republicans were a minority party in the 1960s and 1970s, but strategists associated with Richard Nixon believed that if the GOP could find a way to appeal to Catholics, the party could improve its electoral prospects...Kevin Phillips's The Emerging Republican Majority, which Nixon politicos treated as a campaign bible as soon as it appeared in 1969, argued that social issues were producing a political realignment that would benefit Republicans, and that the GOP could begin winning national elections if it found a way to carry the 'heartland' of the industrial Midwest, including the heavily Catholic regions of Michigan and northern Illinois. After Phillips's book was published, Harry Dent, who handled Nixon's campaign operations below the Mason-Dixon line and was widely viewed as the architect of the president's 'southern strategy,' told the president that Midwestern Catholics would be just as vital as southerners in the president's reelection calculations. He urged Nixon to find a way to bring conservative Catholics 'into the Republican camp by a moderately conservative policy.' Nixon had received only 33 percent of the Catholic vote in 1968, but he resolved to increase his support among that constituency by developing a 'Catholic strategy' during his first year in office. At first, Nixon resisted the idea of making abortion policy part of his 'Catholic strategy,' because he believed that a shift to the right on the issue would alienate some of his traditional Republican supporters. During his first year in office, he defied the Catholic clergy by expanding the federal government's family-planning initiatives, declaring that 'no American woman should be denied access to family planning services because of her economic condition.' He also appointed John D. Rockefeller III, a leading proponent of contraceptive distribution, as head of the Commission on Population Growth...[O]nly a few days after Muskie introduced the issue of abortion into the campaign, Nixon issued his own statement on the subject in order to eliminate any advantage that the Democratic candidate might have gained with conservative Catholics. Picking up on the senator's use of the phrase 'sanctity of human life,' Nixon said that he, too, believed in the 'sanctity of human life - including the life of the yet unborn.'...In early April 1971, Nixon also issued a new policy requiring military hospitals to conform to state abortion laws, which would reduce the availability of abortion on many military bases. Only eight months earlier, Nixon had raised no objection when his Defense Department created a policy that would increase the availability of legal abortion for military personnel and their spouses, but after Muskie's speech he felt the need to secure his administration from potential criticism on the issue from socially conservative Catholics, so he overturned his Defense Department's directive...In May 1972, Nixon took the unprecedented step of intervening in a state's legislative debate on abortion. He chose New York as his battleground, which was politically problematic because the most prominent defender of the state's liberal abortion law - and the one who was leading the fight to block its repeal - was Republican governor Nelson Rockefeller, who was also managing the president's reelection campaign in the state...That same week, Nixon repudiated a recommendation for abortion law liberalization that came from his own Commission on Population Growth. When Nixon had set up the commission in 1970, population control had not been particularly controversial in Republican Party circles, but as Nixon prepared for a reelection campaign in which he thought he would need the support of socially conservative Catholics, he did not want to associate himself with the contentious policy recommendations of the commission. During the two years in which the commission had met, Nixon had moved to the right on abortion, and the commission recognized the president's new stance on the issue by emphasizing in its report that women should not rely on abortion as their primary means of birth control. But the commission's cautious language on the subject was not enough for Nixon, who insisted that the panel's recommendation for 'unrestricted abortion policies would demean human life.' Nixon's conservative overtures on abortion in the spring of 1972 may have been a reaction to Democratic presidential contender Hubert Humphrey's use of the issue to win Catholic votes, just as the president's shift to the right on abortion the previous year had come in response to Muskie's statements...Yet even if the White House viewed abortion primarily as a 'Catholic issue,' there were also signs that it had broader appeal among a larger contingent of social conservatives who perhaps had been amenable to abortion law liberalization at one time, but who were turning against the idea because of their opposition to feminism and the sexual revolution...Yet Nixon could not swing too far to the right on abortion without losing support from abortion rights advocates in his party. Rita Hauser, the vice-chair of the Committee to Reelect the President, was a supporter of abortion rights, as were many of the women who served as delegates to the Republican National Convention. Jill Ruckelshaus, whose husband headed the Environmental Protection Agency, led a Republican women's campaign to get the Platform Committee to endorse the liberalization of state abortion laws, arguing that after McGovern's 'betrayal' of his core constituency on abortion, the Republican Party could pick up votes from disillusioned feminist Democrats by endorsing abortion rights...Nixon became the first Republican presidential candidate in American history to win a majority of the Catholic vote, even though his opponent had chosen a Catholic running mate...Compared to the public outcry that had greeted the Court's landmark decisions on school desegregation in 1954 and school prayer in 1962, the initial opposition to Roe seemed weak. While politicians ignored the issue, religious activists at the grassroots level galvanized a national pro-life movement that largely escaped the attention of the national media...Christianity Today, which had published some articles in the late 1960s suggesting that abortion for health-related reasons was acceptable, abandoned its earlier position and denounced Roe as a sign that the 'American state no longer supports, in any meaningful sense, the laws of God.' Although most politicians did not realize the depth of anger against Roe in Catholic and evangelical circles, one astute senator who did was Bob Dole (R-Kans.), who was facing a tough reelection fight against medical doctor William Roy in the fall of 1974. In the immediate aftermath of Watergate and President Gerald Ford's pardon of his predecessor, Republican incumbents faced almost insurmountable odds in their reelection bids, even in Dole's conservative Kansas. Dole was behind in the polls until his campaign team ran advertisements pointing out that his opponent had performed abortions in his medical practice and that Dole, in contrast, supported an antiabortion constitutional amendment. After some of his supporters blanketed Catholic church parking lots with attacks on Roy's abortion record, Dole won reelection by a narrow victory...In 1972, Republican pro-choice women had taken their party's endorsement of the ERA for granted, and had felt free to mount a campaign for a platform plank endorsing abortion rights. But by 1976, after four years of Schlafly's grassroots campaign, Republican women recognized that the party had already begun to move to the cultural right and that they had no chance of persuading the party to adopt a pro-choice platform. In such a situation, they were willing to sacrifice their pro-choice position in order to save the party's endorsement of the ERA. Ford had his own reasons for silence; in the interest of promoting harmony at a convention in which Reagan was still a contender for the nomination, he wanted to defuse the abortion issue by adopting the platform committee's recommendations in order to avoid a contentious floor fight. If the promise of a pro-life constitutional amendment was necessary to appease some of Reagan's culturally conservative delegates, Ford was willing to pay that price...By the end of the Carter administration, rising abortion rates and concerns about sexual promiscuity prompted evangelical pastors and televangelists, such as Jerry Falwell, to begin speaking out on the issue and to create a national political coalition that made opposition to abortion a central theme...In 1996, when Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole suggested modifications in the party's platform statement on abortion to soften the position that he had helped to create twenty years earlier, Christian Right leaders and pro-life activists overruled the nominee's wishes and insisted that the party retain its support for a 'human life' amendment...The political strategists in the Nixon and Ford administrations who engineered a shift in the party's stance on abortion set in motion a process that reshaped the party in ways they had never envisioned."
The political economy of fertility
Thorsten JanusPublic Choice
This paper studies the political economy of fertility. Specifically, I argue that fertility may be a strategic choice for ethnic groups engaged in redistributive conflict. I first present a simple conflict model where high fertility is optimal for each ethnic group if and only if the economy's ethnic diversity is high, institutions are weak, or both. I then test the model in a cross-national dataset. Consistent with the theory, I find that economies where the product of ethnic diversity and a measure of institutional weakness is high have increased fertility rates. I conclude that fertility may depend on political factors.
The Association of Television and Radio with Reproductive Behavior
Charles Westoff & Dawn KoffmanPopulation and Development Review, December 2011, Pages 749-759
This note analyzes the association between media exposure and reproductive behavior in 48 developing countries. A summary of part of a more extensive Demographic and Health Surveys report, it shows strong connections between media exposure and the use of modern contraception, the number of children desired, and recent fertility. Television viewing is particularly important; it is assumed to expose viewers to aspects of modern life that compete with traditional attitudes toward the family and is associated with greater use of modern contraceptive methods, with a desire for fewer children, and with lower fertility. These relationships are particularly noteworthy because the data measure only the frequency of media exposure with no information about its content.
Too Many Men? Sex Ratios and Women's Partnering Behavior in China
Katherine Trent & Scott SouthSocial Forces, September 2011, Pages 247-267
The relative numbers of women and men are changing dramatically in China, but the consequences of these imbalanced sex ratios have received little empirical attention. We merge data from the Chinese Health and Family Life Survey with community-level data from Chinese censuses to examine the relationship between cohort- and community-specific sex ratios and women's partnering behavior. Consistent with demographic-opportunity theory and sociocultural theory, we find that high sex ratios (indicating more men relative to women) are associated with an increased likelihood that women marry before age 25. However, high sex ratios are also associated with an increased likelihood that women engage in premarital and extramarital sexual relationships and have more than one sexual partner, findings consistent with demographic-opportunity theory but inconsistent with sociocultural theory.
Getting Past Nature as a Guide to the Human Sex Ratio
Timothy MurphyBioethics
Sex selection of children by pre-conception and post-conception techniques remains morally controversial and even illegal in some jurisdictions. Among other things, some critics fear that sex selection will distort the sex ratio, making opposite-sex relationships more difficult to secure, while other critics worry that sex selection will tilt some nations toward military aggression. The human sex ratio varies depending on how one estimates it; there is certainly no one-to-one correspondence between males and females either at birth or across the human lifespan. Complications about who qualifies as ‘male' and ‘female' complicate judgments about the ratio even further. Even a judiciously estimated sex ratio does not have, however, the kind of normative status that requires society to refrain from antenatal sex selection. Some societies exhibit lopsided sex ratios as a consequence of social policies and practices, and pragmatic estimates of social needs are a better guide to what the sex ratio should be, as against looking to ‘nature'. The natural sex ratio cannot be a sound moral basis for prohibiting parents from selecting the sex of their children, since it ultimately lacks any normative meaning for social choices.
M.T. Higginson & L.W. AarssenThe Open Anthropology Journal, November 2011, Pages 60-65
In most developed countries, gender equality and neutrality have been widely promoted and embraced - through public policy - as a socio-cultural goal since at least the mid-twentieth century. Accordingly, we predicted that a population of highly educated youth from a relatively wealthy developed country (mostly students from a Canadian university) would display little or no significant gender bias with respect to offspring preferences. We rejected this hypothesis based on data collected in an online survey from over 2000 respondents. Participants were asked whether they had any preference regarding: (i) the gender of their firstborn child; (ii) the gender ratio of their offspring; or (iii) the gender of an only child. In all cases, there was a significant offspring gender preference, but the direction of bias depended on the respondent's gender; males significantly preferred sons whereas females significantly preferred daughters. These data show that strong gender biases in offspring preferences are still conspicuous, even within segments of modern societies where we might least expect to find them. We offer interpretations of these results in the context of evolutionary theory - as products of selection for genetic(biological) and memetic (cultural) legacy.
Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat & Daniel Hungerman Review of Economics and Statistics
This paper considers how the diffusion of oral contraception to young unmarried women affected the number and parental characteristics of children born to these women. In the short term, pill access caused declines in fertility and increases in both the share of children born with low birthweight and the share born to poor households. In the long term, access led to negligible changes in fertility while increasing the share of children with college-educated mothers and decreasing the share with divorced mothers. The short-term effects appear to be driven by upwardly mobile women opting out of early childbearing, while the long-term effects appear to be driven by a retiming of births to later ages. These effects differ from those of abortion legalization, although we find suggestive evidence that pill diffusion lowered abortions. Our results suggest that abortion and the pill are on average used for different purposes by different women, but on the margin, some women substitute from abortion toward the pill when both are available.
Does welfare reform affect fertility? Evidence from the UK
Mike Brewer, Anita Ratcliffe & Sarah Smith Journal of Population Economics, December 2011, Pages 245-266
This paper provides evidence on the effect of welfare reform on fertility, focusing on UK reforms in 1999 that increased per-child spending by 50% in real terms. We use a difference-in-differences approach, exploiting the fact that the reforms were targeted at low-income households. The reforms were likely to differentially affect the fertility of women in couples and single women because of the opportunity cost effects of the welfare-to-work element. We find no increase in births among single women, but evidence to support an increase in births (by around 15%) among coupled women.
Fasting During Pregnancy and Children's Academic Performance
Douglas Almond, Bhashkar Mazumder & Reyn van Ewijk
We consider the effects of daytime fasting by pregnant women during the lunar month of Ramadan on their children's test scores at age seven. Using English register data, we find that scores are .05 to .08 standard deviations lower for Pakistani and Bangladeshi students exposed to Ramadan in early pregnancy. These estimates are downward biased to the extent that Ramadan is not universally observed. We conclude that the effects of prenatal investments on test scores are comparable to many conventional educational interventions but are likely to be more cost effective and less subject to "fade out".
Armed conflict and birth weight: Evidence from the al-Aqsa Intifada
Hani Mansour & Daniel ReesJournal of Development Economics
No previous study has estimated the effect of intrauterine exposure to armed conflict on pregnancy outcomes. Drawing on data from the 2004 Palestinian Demographic and Health Survey, which was conducted approximately four years after the start of the al-Aqsa Intifada, we find that an additional conflict-related fatality 9-6 months before birth is associated with a modest increase in the probability of having a child who weighed less than 2,500 grams. There is also evidence, albeit less consistent, of a positive relationship between fatalities in late pregnancy and low birth weight.
Surrogate Motherhood Revisited: Maternal Identity from a Jewish Perspective
Alan JotkowitzJournal of Religion and Health, December 2011, Pages 835-840
A new bill regulating ovum donation in Israel is set to pass its second and third readings in the Israel Parliament in the upcoming months. The new law will expand the number of locally donated ova available, as previously Israeli women were prohibited from donating eggs unless they were undergoing fertility treatment. Parallel to this legislative initiative, there has been a change in rabbinical thinking over who is considered the mother in a case of surrogacy. Previously, the consensus has been that the birth mother is to be considered the mother, but over the last few years there has been a change in thinking and the genetic mother is now considered the mother. The purpose of this paper is to present the ethical and legal issues from a Jewish perspective in determining maternal identity. The dilemma also demonstrates some of the difficulties in applying Talmudic law to modern problems and the various methodologies used to overcome these issues.
Michael LoganHuman Ecology, December 2011, Pages 727-742
Interethnic marriage represents a major trend in the demographic history of American Indians. While the majority of these unions involved Indian women and Caucasian men, a sizeable number occurred between Indians and African Americans. The children of these bicultural marriages were "mixed bloods" who in turn typically married non-Indians or other mixed bloods. Using data from the 1910 Census on American Indians in the United States and Alaska, this article explores why American Indians with African ancestry enjoyed high fertility. Differential rates of fertility among American Indians in the past were due to a number of underlying genetic, cultural, and environmental factors. By identifying these factors, the paradox of why Indian women with African heritage did so well in terms of fertility largely disappears. African admixture, however, greatly complicates Indian social identity.
Jessica Todd, Paul Winters & Guy Stecklov Journal of Population Economics, December 2011, Pages 267-290
Evaluating the impact of poverty-reduction programs on fertility is complicated given that changes in incentives to have children take time to be incorporated into decision making and evaluation periods are usually quite brief. We explore the use of birth spacing as a short-run indicator of the impact of poverty-reduction programs on fertility. The data come from a Nicaraguan conditional cash transfer program that offers incentives for poor households to invest in children's health, nutrition, and education. We estimate a stratified Cox proportional hazard model and find that the program decreased the hazard of a birth, indicating an increase in birth spacing.
"I'm Not Supporting His Kids": Nonresident Fathers' Contributions Given Mothers' New Fertility
Daniel Meyer & Maria CancianJournal of Marriage and Family, February 2012, Pages 132-151
The authors examined whether nonresident fathers provide informal support to their children and whether support stops if their ex-partner goes on to have a child with a new man. A logistic regression analysis of longitudinal survey and administrative data for 434 women who received welfare in Wisconsin showed that fathers are less likely to provide informal support when their ex-partner has a child with a new partner. Alternative models that control for unobserved characteristics suggest somewhat different results, providing stronger evidence of declines in support that can be shared across family members than in support that can be directed to a particular child.
Sensation seeking in fathers: The impact on testosterone and paternal investment
Tiziana Perini et al.
Paternal care is associated with a reduced likelihood of engaging in competitive or mating behavior and an increased likelihood of providing protection when necessary. Over recent years, there has been increasing evidence to assume that the steroid testosterone (T) in men might reflect the degree of mating effort. In line with this, decreased T levels were shown in fathers compared to non-fathers and it was suggested that paternal care, and most behavior positively associated with T, might be incompatible with each other. Independently of this, the personality trait sensation seeking (SS) has been related to mating behavior and also to elevated T in men. Aiming to integrate these different lines of research in a longitudinal approach, we explored the impact of SS on T levels in the context of the transition to fatherhood. Thirty-seven fathers and 38 men without children but in committed, romantic relationships (controls) were recruited. At two time points (for fathers: four weeks prior to (t1) and eight weeks after birth (t2)), all subjects repeatedly collected saliva samples for T measurement, filled in a protocol of activities during the course of these days and completed an online questionnaire. In line with our hypotheses, the results show significantly lower aggregated (AUC-T) T levels in fathers compared with non-fathers. Furthermore, moderation analyses revealed a significant interaction between group and SS at t2, with the lowest T levels in low SS fathers. These data suggest that adaptation processes of the transition to fatherhood are influenced by individual differences in personality traits.
Lifestyles of the rich and polygynous in Cote d'Ivoire
Eric Gould, Omer Moav & Avi SimhonEconomics Letters
This paper investigates whether the sources of income, not just the levels, determine whether an individual is monogamous. Our results support the idea that polygyny stunts development by allowing wealthy men to acquire wives rather than investing in child quality.
The effects of teenage childbearing on the short- and long-term health behaviors of mothers
Jason FletcherJournal of Population Economics, December 2011, Pages 201-218
A national sample of US teenagers combined with a complementary sample of US adults are used to examine the effects of teenage childbearing on health behaviors by comparing female siblings in both the teenage sample and a sample of adults. Additionally, miscarriage information available in the teenage sample is used to form comparison groups. Unlike previous estimates of the effects of teenage childbearing on health behaviors, the results using these US samples and research designs suggest that teenage childbearing has negligible effects on several measures of unhealthy behaviors for mothers and may be protective for drug use and binge drinking.
Monday, January 16, 2012
School Play
The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood
Raj Chetty, John Friedman & Jonah Rockoff
Are teachers' impacts on students' test scores ("value-added") a good measure of their quality? This question has sparked debate largely because of disagreement about (1) whether value-added (VA) provides unbiased estimates of teachers' impacts on student achievement and (2) whether high-VA teachers improve students' long-term outcomes. We address these two issues by analyzing school district data from grades 3-8 for 2.5 million children linked to tax records on parent characteristics and adult outcomes. We find no evidence of bias in VA estimates using previously unobserved parent characteristics and a quasi-experimental research design based on changes in teaching staff. Students assigned to high-VA teachers are more likely to attend college, attend higher- ranked colleges, earn higher salaries, live in higher SES neighborhoods, and save more for retirement. They are also less likely to have children as teenagers. Teachers have large impacts in all grades from 4 to 8. On average, a one standard deviation improvment in teacher VA in a single grade raises earnings by about 1% at age 28. Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5% with an average teacher would increase students' lifetime income by more than $250,000 for the average classroom in our sample. We conclude that good teachers create substantial economic value and that test score impacts are helpful in identifying such teachers.
Cracks in the Melting Pot: Immigration, School Choice, and Segregation
Elizabeth Cascio & Ethan LewisAmerican Economic Journal: Economic Policy
We examine whether low-skilled immigration to the U.S. has contributed to immigrants' residential isolation by reducing native demand for public schools. We address endogeneity in school demographics using established Mexican settlement patterns in California and use a comparison group to account for immigration's broader effects. We estimate that between 1970 and 2000, the average California school district lost more than 14 non-Hispanic households with children to other districts in its metropolitan area for every 10 additional households enrolling low-English Hispanics in its public schools. By disproportionately isolating children, the native reaction to immigration may have longer-run consequences than previously thought.
Family Instability, School Context, and the Academic Careers of Adolescents
Shannon Cavanagh & Paula FombySociology of Education, January 2012, Pages 81-97
An emerging literature suggests that the increasingly complex family histories of American children are linked with multiple domains of adolescent development. Much of this scholarship focuses on associations at the individual level. Here, the authors consider whether key dimensions of the school context, specifically the aggregate level of family instability and the academic press within schools, moderate the link between family instability and young people's course-taking patterns in mathematics in high school. Using the school-based design and the retrospective reports of family structure in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the linked academic transcript data in the Adolescent Health and Achievement Study (n = 6,545), the authors find that students from unstable families do more poorly when they attend schools with a high proportion of academically oriented students. The prevalence of family instability in a school does not moderate the individual experience of family instability in predicting course-taking patterns.
Who Benefits from Student Aid? The Economic Incidence of Tax-Based Federal Student Aid
Nicholas TurnerEconomics of Education Review
Federal benefit programs, including federal student aid, are designed to aid targeted populations. Behavioral responses to these programs may alter the incidence of their benefits, a possibility that receives less attention in the literature compared to tax incidence. I demonstrate the importance of benefit incidence analysis by showing that the intended cost reductions of tax-based federal student aid are substantially offset by institutional price increases for a sample of 4-year colleges and universities. Contrary to the goal of policymakers, I find that tax-based aid crowds out institutional aid roughly dollar-for-dollar. Unfortunately, it is not clear how institutions utilize these captured resources, so that the ultimate incidence of the programs is uncertain.
The For-Profit Postsecondary School Sector: Nimble Critters or Agile Predators?
David Deming, Claudia Goldin & Lawrence Katz
Private for-profit institutions have been the fastest growing part of the U.S. higher education sector. For-profit enrollment increased from 0.2 percent to 9.1 percent of total enrollment in degree-granting schools from 1970 to 2009, and for-profit institutions account for the majority of enrollments in non-degree granting postsecondary schools. We describe the schools, students, and programs in the for-profit higher education sector, its phenomenal recent growth, and its relationship to the federal and state governments. Using the 2004 to 2009 Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS) longitudinal survey we assess outcomes of a recent cohort of first-time undergraduates who attended for-profits relative to comparable students who attended community colleges or other public or private non-profit institutions. We find that relative to these other institutions, for-profits educate a larger fraction of minority, disadvantaged, and older students, and they have greater success at retaining students in their first year and getting them to complete short programs at the certificate and associate degree levels. But we also find that for-profit students end up with higher unemployment and "idleness" rates and lower earnings six years after entering programs than do comparable students from other schools, and that they have far greater student debt burdens and default rates on their student loans.
Grade Inflation, Social Background, and Labour Market Matching
Robert SchwagerJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization
A model is presented where workers of differing abilities and from different social backgrounds are assigned to jobs based on grades received at school. It is examined how this matching is affected if good grades are granted to some low-ability students. Such grade inflation is shown to reduce the aggregate wage of the lower class workers because employers use social origin as a signal for productivity if grades are less than fully informative. Moreover, the high-ability students from the higher class may benefit from grade inflation since this shields them from the competition on the part of able students from the lower classes.
Where to Attend? Estimating the Effects of Beginning College at a Two-year Institution
Lockwood ReynoldsEconomics of Education Review
Two-year colleges are an important part of the higher education system in the United States but there are concerns as to how attendance at these institutions affects educational attainment and labor market outcomes. This paper uses data from a nationally representative survey to examine the impact of students beginning their college career at a two-year college instead of a four-year college. Treatment effects are estimated using both standard regression techniques as well as propensity score matching. As these estimates may be contaminated because of selection on unobservable characteristics this paper will also employ a number of sensitivity analyses to consider the potential bias. The results show large negative impacts on both educational attainment and labor market outcomes for men and women who begin at a two-year college, even for those students who expect to complete a bachelor's degree. The evidence from the sensitivity analyses suggest that to eliminate these large effects there would need to be substantial, and arguably implausible, selection on unobservable characteristics.
Jason Schnittker & Jere BehrmanSocial Science Research
Although some point to the large effects of schooling on civic engagement (usually measured in terms of volunteering and participation in civic organizations) and social cohesion (usually measured in terms of social networks and relationship quality), the effects of schooling on social outcomes have not been estimated with the same rigor as the effects of schooling on labor-market outcomes, such as earnings. In particular, previous research has failed to consider (i) the many potential and often unobserved confounding factors ("endowments") influencing both schooling and social outcomes, including family upbringing, innate characteristics, and personality, and (ii) the ways in which schooling pushes individuals in multiple directions simultaneously, including toward greater social engagement, but also toward more independent and market-driven pursuits. Using samples of unrelated persons, ordinary siblings, and identical twins, this study explores the effects of schooling on measures of civic engagement and social relationships, as well as labor-force earnings and labor-force participation. The siblings models reveal a more complex picture than typically suggested by standard individual estimates. On one hand, the results reveal a robust positive effect of schooling on earnings: well-schooled persons work more and earn more, albeit not as much as associations without control for endowments suggest. On the other hand, the results reveal more tenuous and occasionally negative effects of schooling on social outcomes. The effects of schooling on volunteering and membership in civic organizations, for example, disappear almost entirely with control for endowments. Also, within-identical-twins models reverse the positive effects of schooling on reports of support from friends, family, and coworkers. These results may reflect the tension schooling creates between market and non-market commitments, as well as between independence and interpersonal reliability. Schooling may, indeed, induce some pro-social behaviors, but schooling allows individuals choices of whether to pursue more personal interests as well.
Do High-School Teachers Really Matter?
Kirabo JacksonNBER Working Paper, January 2012
Unlike in elementary schools, high school teacher effects may be confounded with unobserved track-level treatments (such as the AVID program) that are correlated with individual teachers. I present a strategy that exploits detailed course-taking information to credibly estimate the effects of 9th grade Algebra and English teachers on test scores. I document substantial bias due to track-specific treatments and I show that traditional tests for the existence of teacher effects are flawed. After accounting for bias, I find sizable algebra teacher effects and little evidence of English teacher effects. I find little evidence of teacher spillovers across subjects.
School Competition and Teacher Labor Markets: Evidence from Charter School Entry in North Carolina
Kirabo Jackson
I analyze changes in teacher turnover, hiring, effectiveness, and salaries at traditional public schools after the opening of a nearby charter school. While I find small effects on turnover overall, difficult to staff schools (low-income, high-minority share) hired fewer new teachers and experienced small declines in teacher quality. I also find evidence of a demand side response where schools increased teacher compensation to better retain quality teachers. The results are robust across a variety of alternate specifications to account for non-random charter entry.
Philip Babcock, Kelly Bedard & Jennifer Schulte Journal of Urban Economics
Much of the debate over the allocation of education resources focuses on the alleged benefits of smallness - of classroom or school - and is based on evidence from small-scale studies. This paper reframes the question in terms of cohort size. Using national data, we find that a 10-percent increase in kindergarten enrollment yields a 0.5 percent increase in cohort shrinkage across early grade transitions, which implies that larger cohorts feature higher rates of retention. Consistent with previous work on class and school size in more restricted settings, this cohort-tracking exercise provides robust evidence at the national level that smallness confers benefits.
Fraternities and Labor Market Outcomes
Sergey Popov & Dan BernhardtAmerican Economic Journal: Microeconomics
We model how student choices to rush a fraternity, and fraternity admission choices, interact with signals firms receive about student productivities to determine labor-market outcomes. The fraternity and students value wages and fraternity socializing values. We provide sufficient conditions under which, in equilibrium, most members have intermediate abilities: weak students apply, but are rejected unless they have high socializing values, while most able students do not apply to avoid taint from association with weaker members. We show this equilibrium reconciles the ability distribution of fraternity members at the University of Illinois, and estimate the fraternity's welfare impact on different students.
The Effects of Reducing Tracking in Upper Secondary School: Evidence from a Large-Scale Pilot Scheme
Caroline HallJournal of Human Resources, Winter 2012, Pages 237-269
By exploiting an extensive pilot scheme that preceded an educational reform, this paper evaluates the effects of introducing a more comprehensive upper secondary school system in Sweden. The reform reduced the differences between academic and vocational tracks through prolonging and increasing the academic content of the latter. As a result, all vocational students became eligible for university studies. The results suggest that the policy change increased the amount of upper secondary schooling obtained among vocational students, but did not affect enrollment in university studies or students'earnings later in life.
Should we transfer resources from college to basic education?
Marisa Hidalgo-Hidalgo & Iñigo Iturbe-Ormaetxe Journal of Economics, January 2012, Pages 1-27
We analyze public intervention in two educational levels: basic education and college education. The government decides per capita expenditure at each level and the subsidy for college education. We explore the effect of transferring money from one level to the other on equity and efficiency. We prove the existence of an Equity-Efficiency Frontier (EEF), and analyze which policy reforms are optimal when the society is not at the EEF. For developed countries, this policy consists of transferring resources from college education to basic education.
An Empirical Investigation of the Option Value of College Enrollment
Kevin StangeAmerican Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2012, Pages 49-84
This paper quantifies the option value arising from sequential schooling decisions made in the presence of uncertainty and learning about academic ability. College attendance has option value since enrolled students have the option, but not obligation, to continue in school after learning their aptitude and tastes. I estimate that option value accounts for 14 percent of the total value of the opportunity to attend college for the average high school graduate and is greatest for moderate-aptitude students. Students' ability to make decisions sequentially in response to new information increases welfare and also makes educational outcomes less polarized by background.
School Context and Educational Outcomes: Results from a Quasi-Experimental Study
Rebecca Casciano & Douglas MasseyUrban Affairs Review
In this study we draw on data from a quasi-experimental study to test whether moving into a subsidized housing development in an affluent suburb yields educational benefits to the children of residents, compared to the educations they would have received had they not moved into the development. Results suggest that resident children experienced a significant improvement in school quality compared with a comparison group of students whose parents also had applied for residence. Parents who were residents of the development also displayed higher levels of school involvement compared with the comparison group of nonresident parents, and their children were exposed to significantly lower levels of school disorder and violence within school and spent more time reading outside of school. Living in the development did not influence GPA directly, but it did indirectly increase GPA by increasing the time residents spent reading outside of school.
John Papay et al.
The Boston Teacher Residency is an innovative practice-based preparation program in which candidates work alongside a mentor teacher for a year before becoming a teacher of record in Boston Public Schools. We find that BTR graduates are more racially diverse than other BPS novices, more likely to teach math and science, and more likely to remain teaching in the district through year five. Initially, BTR graduates for whom value-added performance data are available are no more effective at raising student test scores than other novice teachers in English language arts and less effective in math. The effectiveness of BTR graduates in math improves rapidly over time, however, such that by their fourth and fifth years they out-perform veteran teachers. Simulations of the program's overall impact through retention and effectiveness suggest that it is likely to improve student achievement in the district only modestly over the long run.
Am I missing something? The effects of absence from class on student performance
Wiji Arulampalam, Robin Naylor & Jeremy Smith Economics of Education Review
We analyse a rich dataset of Economics students at a UK university to identify causal effects of class absence on student performance, exploiting the random assignment of students and information on students' class timetables to avoid selection problems. We use panel properties of the data to control for unobserved student factors such as ability and effort. Quantile regression results suggest that absence has adverse effects on performance-but these effects are causal only for the upper part of the conditional performance distribution.
Grade Level and Science Achievement: US Performance in Cross-National Perspective
Benjamin DaltonComparative Education Review, February 2012, Pages 125-154
This article examines how international differences in age-grade distributions and grade effects contribute to science scores among 27 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. As shown in the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment, countries vary substantially in the grade distribution of 15-year-olds. The costs of being in a grade lower than one's 15-year-old peers are higher in some countries (e.g., Greece and Spain); conversely, the benefits of being in a higher grade are greater in others (e.g., Australia and Luxembourg). Although the United States has relatively greater percentages of 15-year-olds in higher grades, US 15-year-olds receive relatively fewer benefits from higher-grade membership.
Frank Snyder et al.Journal of School Health, January 2012, Pages 11-20
Background: School safety and quality affect student learning and success.This study examined the effects of a comprehensive elementary school-wide social-emotional and character education program, Positive Action, on teacher, parent, and student perceptions of school safety and quality utilizing a matched-pair, cluster-randomized, controlled design. The Positive Action Hawai'i trial included 20 racially/ethnically diverse schools and was conducted from 2002-2003 through 2005-2006.
Methods: School-level archival data, collected by the Hawai'i Department of Education, were used to examine program effects at 1-year post-trial. Teacher, parent, and student data were analyzed to examine indicators of school quality such as student safety and well-being, involvement, and satisfaction, as well as overall school quality. Matched-paired t-tests were used for the primary analysis, and sensitivity analyses included permutation tests and random-intercept growth curve models.
Results: Analyses comparing change from baseline to 1-year post-trial revealed that intervention schools demonstrated significantly improved school quality compared to control schools, with 21%, 13%, and 16% better overall school quality scores as reported by teachers, parents, and students, respectively. Teacher, parent, and student reports on individual school-quality indicators showed improvement in student safety and well-being, involvement, satisfaction, quality student support, focused and sustained action, standards-based learning, professionalism and system capacity, and coordinated team work. Teacher reports also showed an improvement in the responsiveness of the system.
Conclusions: School quality was substantially improved, providing evidence that a school-wide social-emotional and character education program can enhance school quality and facilitate whole-school change.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Gains and Losses
Christine Logel & Geoffrey CohenPsychological Science, January 2012, Pages 53-55
"In the study reported here, women who completed a values affirmation weighed less, had lower BMIs, and had smaller waistlines than women who had not completed a values affirmation when the two groups were examined after a 2.5-month interval. The magnitude of the effects averaged 0.90 standard deviations, and this weight-loss effect held among overweight participants. These results provide the first evidence that affirming the value a person finds most important can reduce health risks as measured by molar physical markers. Moreover, working memory, which is important for self-regulation (Hofmann et al., 2010), was higher among participants in the affirmation condition than among participants in