Ross Gittins gave a fascinating talk on Monday to the Australian Business Economists Annual Forecasting Conference, and he’s kindly agreed to let me post it here. Full text over the fold.
AUSTRALIA’S OUTLOOK FOR POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT IN 2010
Talk to Australian Business Economists Annual Forecasting Conference
Sydney, December 8, 2009
Ross [...]
Earlier this year, the Henry tax review (aka AFTS) commissioned me to write a paper on the tax treatment of education. They’ve now posted it on their website. Here’s the executive summary (click on the title for the full paper).
The Impact of the Tax-Transfer System on Education and [...]
At my intergenerational mobility conference last week, I asked all attendees:
What percentile in the income distribution does your household now occupy? (1=lowest,50=middle, 100=highest) What percentile in the income distribution did your household occupy when you were aged 14?In a nice coincidence, the intergenerational earnings correlation is 0.29, which [...]
On Wednesday 16 December, I’m hosting NYU sociologist (and NBER fellow) Dalton Conley, who is giving a public lecture at ANU on his new work at the intersection of the social and life sciences. The talk is free and open to the public, and I reckon it’ll be a [...]
In October, Noel Pearson wrote a Quarterly Essay on Indigenous education titled “Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia”. In the December issue, I have a letter published in response. Full text over the fold.
Letter in response to Noel Pearson’s Quarterly Essay (“Radical Hope: Education and Equality in [...]
I spoke yesterday in a plenary session at The Australian Sociological Association’s annual conference at ANU. The session was on ‘Economics and Sociology’, and I shared the stage with RSSS Director David Marsh and TASA President Michael Gilding (who I know because of the fascinating work he has done [...]
Has anyone been tracking betting odds for the Federal Coalition and NSW ALP before and after their recent leadership changes? I’m curious to know whether the markets think that the two caucuses made the right decision.
Update: Skeptic points me to Simon Jackman, who observed that on the day the [...]
Chikako Yamauchi and I have a new paper out this week on the impacts of child care. Abstract below (click on the title for the full paper).
Which Children Benefit From Non-Parental Care?
Andrew Leigh & Chikako Yamauchi
Although the impact of non-parental care on children has been [...]
My AFR oped today (competing with the ascendancy of a certain ex-monk), is on the impact of US school reforms on student achievement. Full text over the fold.
Mixed Results for School Tests, Australian Financial Review, 1 December 2009
Some of George Bush’s best verbal slips came when speaking [...]
For any economists interested in laboratory or field experiments, Nikos Nikiforakis and colleagues are running a conference in February next year. Paper submissions close on 30 November. Details over the fold.
The University of Melbourne will be hosting the 2010 Asia-Pacific of the Economic Science Association (ESA) in [...]
The Henry tax review has posted an interesting paper on its website.
Behavioural economics and complex decision making: implications for the Australian tax and transfer system by Andrew Reeson and Simon Dunstall, CSIRO
This paper summarises the relevant literature (from behavioural economics and psychology) on how individuals make simple [...]
I wrote an op-ed a few months ago about David Galenson’s work on creative life cycles in art, poetry, novel-writing, movie-making and architecture. Now he’s turned his hand to pop music. Abstract below.
Innovators: Songwriters (gated link, sorry)
David Galenson
Irving Berlin and Cole Porter were two [...]
Malcolm Gladwell beautifully demonstrates how one can respond to criticism.
[...]My Wryside Economics segment on Life Matters this morning was about the effects of gender and money on happiness, essentially riffing off two important papers that Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers presented at my happiness conference last week (the research is on their websites). The audio from my [...]
My AFR oped today is on prison reform. You can’t put acknowledgements in an opinion piece, but the piece owes a substantial debt to Justin Wolfers, who first suggested the idea of smarter prison contracts about 7 years ago, when we were strolling the streets of San Francisco together. I’m [...]
I have a new paper out, looking at the impact of stamp duty on the housing market. Methodologically, the question turns out to be slightly tricky – because stamp duty is a mechanical function of house prices, a regression of turnover or prices on average stamp duty in a neighbourhood [...]
I still have a few spare spaces for my intergenerational mobility conference at ANU on Monday 30 November. The conference will now be opened by Terry Moran, the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. So if it’s good enough for Australia’s most senior public servant…
Also, each paper [...]
My happiness workshop yesterday certainly raised my life satisfaction – and hopefully that of the attendees as well. If you missed it, the papers of Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers are available on their websites. Paul Frijters’ paper should soon be on his site. ABC Fora [...]
I’m presently advertising for a full-time research assistant, on a 12 month (renewable) contract. The skill-set I’m seeking is a convex combination of energy, economics nous, Stata knowledge, and high-level English proficiency (can you find more than 3 errors in this post?). I’m also hoping to find someone who is [...]
My Wryside Economics chat on Life Matters tomorrow will be on Nudging. I’ll be on Radio National about 9.15am. If you miss it, the link will be up later that day. Until then, check out the Nudge blog.
Update: Here’s the audio if you missed it.
[...]On very short notice, I’m running a half-day workshop at ANU on ‘The Economics of Happiness’ next Wednesday, 11 November. The program features three stars of the international happiness literature – Paul Frijters, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. The flyer is available here, and the program is as follows:
8.15-8.45am [...]
My AFR oped today is on behavioural economics and ‘nudging’. Full text below.
Give reform a bit of a nudge, Australian Financial Review, 3 November 2009
It turns out that lemmings don’t actually follow one another off the edge of a cliff. Thanks to some investigative journalists, we now [...]
With some notable exceptions, the Australian public debate over refugees has so far been conducted largely in an evidence-free zone. So I’ve asked my colleague Tim Hatton to send me through his recent writings on the topic. Tim has written two papers for high-ranking economics journals on the [...]
Today is All Saints day, the day for to celebrate saints who don’t have their own special day. So last night was the celebration to scare away the evil spirits in anticipation of their arrival.
Which brings me to the question: how many children came knocked at your door [...]
It’s fashionable to disparage the US for having a legal drinking age of 21. But there’s pretty solid evidence to suggest that Australia could save lives by following suit. From a new research paper:
Long Term Effects of Minimum Legal Drinking Age Laws on Adult Alcohol Use and Driving Fatalities [...]
Some new education-related links:
David Brooks on the willingness of the Obama-Duncan team to push radical school reform Elena Silva on re-organising teachers’ work to make schools more effective (use of teams, integrating on-the-job training, removing needless admin tasks). Andrew Barr on reforming the teaching profession (”Seniority – out. Merit [...]A few years ago, I put together a list of tips for budding opinion piece writers. My friend Dalton Conley (an NYU sociologist who thinks like an economist) has just emailed me his own set of suggestions, which are much better than mine. Since they weren’t already [...]
When your city spreads out, so does your paunch – at least according to new work from the NBER stable. Their IV strategy seems credible, suggesting that the relationship is probably causal.
Effects of Urban Sprawl on Obesity (unstable ungated, stable gated)
Zhenxiang Zhao and Robert Kaestner
[...]
Steve Thomas was one of the four who won a free ticket to attend Per Capita’s annual Policy Exchange conference. Here’s his views on the event:
I enjoyed Policy Exchange because of how it provided an opportunity to present and discuss some of the narratives that are currently driving [...]
My Wryside Economics segment on ABC Radio National this morning is about fiscal policy. I’ll be on about 9.15am, and will post the mp3 link when it’s up.
Update: The audio can be downloaded here. My statement about the political knowledge of Labor and Coalition voters was based on a [...]
My AFR op-ed today is on education and the economic “downturn” (formerly known as the Australian recession). Full text over the fold, along with all the usual hyperlinks.
Much thanks (but no responsibility) to Andrew Norton, who helped me understand the university financing issues, although he doesn’t agree with all my [...]
I’m a few weeks late in blogging about Paul Romer’s novel proposal for ‘Charter Cities’. As he describes them:
Charter cities offer a truly global win-win solution. These cities address global poverty by giving people the chance to escape from precarious and harmful subsistence agriculture or dangerous urban slums. Charter cities [...]
Last week, I offered up two free tickets to the PolicyExchange conference for the people who could come up with the most interesting new policy ideas. Joshua Gans kindly added his two free tickets, so we had four to give away. From the dozen or so entries, congratulations to [...]
While work by Amy Finkelstein shows that electronic tolling leads to higher prices (because drivers are less price-responsive), a more recent paper shows that there’s an upside for those who live near the highway.
Traffic Congestion and Infant Health: Evidence from E-ZPass (gated link, sorry)
Janet Currie and [...]
Is there a more ecumenical Nobel than the economics prize? First, it goes to a psychologist – now to a political scientist.
Shiller may be going to far to call this “part of the merging of the social sciences”. But it’s good to see economics sharing the [...]
On Monday 30 November, I’m running a conference at ANU on ‘The Economics of Intergenerational Mobility’. This is an area I’ve been interested in since 2007, when I wrote what I’m pretty sure was the first paper estimating the intergenerational earnings elasticity for Australia.
The six [...]
I’m speaking at this year’s ‘Policy Exchange’ conference, organised by the thinktank Per Capita. They’ve offered me two free invitations to the conference (valued at $1089 apiece), so I thought it might be nice to allocate them to blog readers.
If you think that you might like an invitation:
See whether the [...]It’s terrific to see journalists doing investigative work to dig out interesting numbers. Two recent examples.
On the weekend, Michael Duffy (not, not that one) estimated for the SMH that Australian drug prohibition costs A$4.7 billion annually. Although it’s in line with Jeffrey Miron’s estimates for the US, my [...]My op-ed today proposes a systematic fix to the lobbyist-laden bunfight that seems to accompany every proposal to change a statutory age limit. I argue that we should index legislated ages to longevity improvements. Full text below.
You’re Only as Old as they Feel, Australian Financial Review, 6 October [...]
My Wryside Economics talk on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters program tomorrow is on “The Size of Nations”, a terrific book by Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore, which posits that country size is a tradeoff between the economic benefits of being big (economies of scale in public spending, [...]
QUT’s Professor Paul Frijters has received the 2009 Young Economist Award from the Economic Society of Australia. It’s a biennial award, with the first receipient (in 2007) being Joshua Gans.
Paul’s award is richly deserved. He works on a vast array of topics, running the gamut from labour [...]
On the Inside Story website, Peter Browne has a terrific piece on social mobility in Australia, the US, and the rest of the developed world (a shorter version appeared in the Canberra Times last week).
On the same topic, I’m running a one-day conference on ‘The Economics of Intergenerational Mobility’ [...]
Two interesting new economics papers from the latest NBER batch.
Party Affiliation, Partisanship, and Political Beliefs: A Field Experiment (ungated unstable link)
Alan S. Gerber, Gregory A. Huber & Ebonya Washington
Political partisanship is strongly correlated with attitudes and behavior, but it is unclear from this pattern [...]
I sent the following letter to Gerard Henderson today.
Mr Gerard Henderson
The Sydney Institute
24 September 2009
Dear Mr Henderson,
I am writing to you regarding Issue 28 of your Media Watch Dog newsletter, and your discussion of Joshua Gans’ research. In that newsletter, you discuss what you describe as Professor Gans’ [...]
A splendid new paper sums up some of the interesting developments in the field known as behavioral public finance (I wrote about this in my AFR column recently). The abstract is below, and some choice snippets are over the fold.
Behavioral Economics and Tax Policy (gated stable link, [...]
My friend Michael Fullilove argues in The Australian that the PM is doing the right thing in seeking a UN Security Council seat. He point out that the cost of a campaign is likely to be around $35 million. This figure caught my eye, since it suggests that campaign [...]
Tim Harford is answering readers’ questions at the Freakonomics blog. If you like economics, I expect this will be the funniest thing you’ll read this week.
[...]My op-ed today is on the touchy topic of stimulus spending. Full text over the fold (with the usual hyperlinks for anyone interested in reading the original research).
‘Yours to (Hopefully) Spend’, Australian Financial Review, 22 September 2009
How effective are household handouts in kickstarting a flagging economy? Are they [...]
I attended a fascinating roundtable last week on ‘open-source intelligence’ at the Office of National Assessments (ONA), a body whose mandate to ‘provide all-source assessments on international political, strategic and economic developments to the Prime Minister’. As a recent US report describes the topic:
Open source information (OSINT) is [...]
I’m giving evidence at 10.45am tomorrow to the Senate inquiry into the government’s economic stimulus initiatives.* If you’ve read my paper on the topic, you’ll know everything I intend to say.
* Oddly, mine is presently the only submission on the inquiry website.
(xposted @ Core)
[...]My colleague Alison Booth has an article in VoxEU on gender, risk and competition (I blogged on part of this research agenda recently). Some snippets.
Gender differences in risk aversion and competition, it is sometimes argued, may help explain some of the observed gender disparities in labour force achievement. [...]
The first round of 200 Future Fellowships has been announced (full list here), for funding starting in 2009. One thing that struck me was the paucity of economists, with just two making the cut (congratulations to health economist Anthony Scott and Bayesian econometrician Gael Martin).* Here are [...]
(xposted @ Core)
One of the most rigorous studies of teacher merit pay has just reported its two-year results. The findings look pretty convincing, and the researchers don’t seem to have found much support for the kinds of perverse impacts that many of us have worried about.
My wife, a landscape architect, has been writing regular critiques of Australian projects for Landscape Architecture Magazine, the journal of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Her latest focus is on the SIEV-X memorial in Canberra. Since people are typically very cautious about critiquing memorials, this struck me as a [...]
Ed Lazear, who does personnel economics (and happens to be one of the best communicators in the profession) is speaking at ANU on 1 October. Details below, flyer here.
Leadership
Thursday 1 October, 4.30–6pm
Lecture Theatre, Innovations Building 124, Eggleston Road, ANU
This lecture is free and open to [...]
My oped today is on the economics of sex work. For the most part, researching the piece involved reading other people’s work. But there did come a point when I realised that while the Australian Bureau of Statistics has an official occupational category of ‘Sex Worker or Escort’ (ANZSCO [...]
Household stimulus payments can be too stimulating, it seems.
The Short-Term Mortality Consequences of Income Receipt (gated stable link, ungated unstable link)
William Evans & Timothy Moore
Many studies find that households increase their consumption after the receipt of expected income payments, a result inconsistent with the [...]
Peter Siminski (who is coming to ANU for part of his sabbatical next year) has coauthored an interesting paper in the latest issue of the Australian Economic Review.
Changes in Poverty Rates during the Howard Era (gated, alas)
Joan R. Rodgers, Peter Siminski and James Bishop
This [...]
My Wryside Economics talk on Life Matters this morning is about randomised trials. Here’s a recent paper on the topic that caught my eye (to get the full thing, click on the title).
Cairo Evaluation Clinic: Thoughts on Randomized Trials for Evaluation of Development
Dean Karlan, Yale
We were asked [...]
One of the reasons that I wrote a paper using survey evidence to estimate the fiscal impact of the household stimulus package is that I don’t much like using aggregate time series data. But nonetheless, it shouldn’t be ignored, and today’s GDP release provides a tad more evidence [...]
Joshua Gans and I have a new paper out today on media slant. Here’s the abstract (click the title to see the full paper).
How Partisan is the Press? Multiple Measures of Media Slant
Joshua S. Gans & Andrew Leigh
We employ several different approaches to estimate the political position [...]
Reading this while eating lunch? You’re not alone…
Grazing, Goods and Girth: Determinants and Effects (gated, sorry)
Daniel S. Hamermesh
Using the 2006-07 American Time Use Survey and its Eating and Health Module, I show that over half of adult Americans report grazing (secondary eating/drinking) on a typical [...]
Two new NBER working papers look at the increasingly tough market to get into the best US colleges, and suggest that it may be having implications for high-schoolers, parents, and maybe even lil munchkins. (Both gated, sorry.)
Playing the Admissions Game: Student Reactions to Increasing College Competition
by John Bound, [...]
I have a new paper out today, looking at the impact of the Australian 2009 household payments on expenditure. It uses a poll question contained in the June ‘ANU Poll’. Here’s the abstract (click on the title for the full paper):
I am a big fan of Philip Tetlock. From a recent article in The National Interest:
What experts think—where they fall along the Left-Right spectrum—is a weak predictor of accuracy. But how experts think is a surprisingly consistent predictor. Relative to foxes who are less encumbered by loyalties to an [...]
My AFR oped today asks: does it matter for economic policy which individual leads a particular political party? The conclusion: not in most cases.
Of course, a 750-word piece can only do justice to one strand of a vast literature. For example, my piece didn’t even begin to touch upon the [...]
The Grattan Institute is looking for Melbourne-based policy wonks with either analytical or communication skills. Job ad here. Closing date is Friday 28 August 2009, salary is $50-140k.
The Institute’s head is former E*Trade CEO John Daley. Its 5 current programs are Water, Energy Choices, Cities, School Education, and Productivity [...]
On the topic of randomised social policy trials, UCD Dublin’s Professor Colm Harmon draws my attention to a symposium on evidence-based policy in Ireland (proceedings here), and a new randomised trial of early childhood intervention that’s now afoot. Details over the fold.
The PFL programme is [...]
My Wryside Economics talk today was on prediction markets. If you’re interested, you can download it from the ABC website.
[...]I’m attending a Productivity Commission roundtable in Canberra today on the topic ‘Strengthening Evidence-Based Policy in the Australian Federation’. In an attempt to provoke, my paper is titled Evidence-Based Policy: Summon the Randomistas?. Full text here. I’ll have a month to revise it, so all comments are welcome.
[...]My AFR oped today is on the economics of corruption. Full text over the fold.
Cultures of Corruption, Australian Financial Review, 11 August 2009
Leisha Harvey was jailed for a year for using her official credit card for personal expenses, including taking her husband to enjoy the Grand Prix. Brian [...]
My Wryside Economics talk on politicians pay can be downloaded here. I’d also recommend Tanveer Ahmed’s discussion of why electro-convulsive therapy should be more common.
[...]The UK Conservatives appear to have run a successful primary election. From the Times:
Yesterday, the closed door of modern politics was forced ajar in Totnes. The new Conservative candidate for the seat soon to be vacated by Sir Anthony Steen, MP, was chosen not, in the usual fashion, by [...]
My Life Matters Wryside Economics chat tomorrow will be on ABC Radio National, probably starting around 9.20/9.30am. I’ll be speaking about politicians’ pay.
[...]Voters may say that baby-faced pollies look less competent, but they still seem to vote for them. From a new Finnish study:
Faces of Politicians: Babyfacedness Predicts Inferred Competence but Not Electoral Success
Panu Poutvaara, Henrik Jordahl and Niclas Berggren
forthcoming, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
[...]
A psychology study hit the headlines last Friday under the banner ‘Teacher quality makes little difference, study shows’.
AN AUSTRALIAN study has cast doubt over the “teacher effect”, by suggesting differences between teachers play only a minor role in how well a child will learn.
The global study, led by the [...]
My oped today was on the economics of dieting. Full text over the fold.
The Economics of Obesity, Australian Financial Review, 28 July 2009
Ask an economist why obesity rates are rising across the rich world, and you’ll likely get two answers. First, the shift away from occupations requiring serious [...]
One of our ANU RSSS visitors, Jacob Vigdor, has an opinion piece in today’s Australian about the (negative) impact of home computer use on test scores. He writes:
Why should we believe, though, that the true effects are negative? The basic problem is that the modern computer is much more [...]
A recent randomised evaluation from Wisconsin has potential application to the debate over Australian proposals to link school attendance to income support.
Conditional Cash Penalties in Education: Evidence from the Learnfare Experiment (stable link, ungated link)
by Thomas Dee
Wisconsin’s influential Learnfare initiative is a conditional cash [...]
We’ve just finished watching Torchwood’s new “Children of Earth” series… (Spoiler over the fold)
…in episode four, the British Cabinet have to decide how to choose which 10 percent of children they will feed to the alien named “The 456” (in return for the entire earth not being destroyed). [...]
Jacob Vigdor, a Duke University economist who does terrific work on education, segregation and immigration, is presently visiting ANU. He’s giving a talk on Friday – details below.
Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement (with Charles Clotfelter & Helen Ladd)
Does differential access to computer [...]
My AFR oped today is on class size and teacher quality. Full text over the fold (with hyperlinks for anyone who wants more detail on the research).
In a Class of Their Own, Australian Financial Review, 14 July 2009
Few education policies are more popular than class size reductions. Alongside [...]
The New York Times editors ask 5 experts on marriage how Ruth Madoff, Bernie Madoff’s wife, could not have known about his fraud. Perhaps I need to get out more, but the only one that makes any sense to me is the response of the economist, Betsey Stevenson.
more traditional [...]
…at least, according to new research on mortality by Dalton Conley and Jennifer Heerwig. Their empirical strategy relies on the random nature of the draft lottery, so it’s pretty convincing. Abstract below.
The Long-Term Effects of Military Conscription on Mortality: Estimates from the Vietnam-era Draft Lottery (gated, sorry)
Dalton [...]
I have a new paper out with Dan Andrews and Christopher Jencks, on the relationship between inequality and growth. We reach a finding that is pretty standard in this literature – when we restrict the sample to 1960-2000, more inequality seems to be good for growth. However, if the inequality [...]
A commenter recently reminded me that I haven’t explicitly stated a comments policy for this blog. Since I haven’t gotten around to revamping the sidebar, let me simply post my guidelines:
Please aim to keep comments civil, concise and relevant. I have a low tolerance for personal attacks on other commenters [...]For not-so-surprising reasons, I’ve been thinking lately about lifecycles. My AFR op-ed today (partially written with a newborn babe in the crook of my arm) is on age and creativity. Full text over the fold.
Age No Bar to Brilliance, Australian Financial Review, 30 June 2009
Einstein’s major contributions to [...]
My second son (Theodore) entered the world on Friday: 3.6kg and a beautiful button nose. I may be a little less regular in posting this week.
[...]A wonderfully ambitious paper just published in the new Journal of Human Capital combines school enrollment data and demographic tables to estimate educational attainment rates for 74 countries over the period 1870-2010. Here’s the abstract.
The Century of Education (published version, working paper version)
Christian Morrisson & Fabrice [...]
Christian Dustmann, Johannes Ludsteck, and Uta Schoenberg have a new paper out in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, dismissing the notion that Germany has stayed pretty equal over recent decades. Here’s their abstract and the key picture:
Revisiting the German Wage Structure (gated published version, ungated working paper)
[...]
For anyone wanting a brief rundown on why the Global Financial Crisis happened, I can highly recommend this speech to the Sydney Institute by David Gruen, head of the macro division of the Australian Treasury. David has 13 causes of the GFC, which is hardly a nutshell, but about [...]
Thinking about optimal public transport subsidies is a tricky business, since there are so many factors to be taken into account. Trains and buses are less polluting and cause less congestion, but they’re also slower and less direct.
But according to a paper just published in the American Economic Review, [...]
Alison Booth, Elena Varganova and I have just released a study comprising three experiments to gauge racial and ethnic discrimination in Australia.
Does Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Vary Across Minority Groups? Evidence From Three Experiments
Alison Booth, Andrew Leigh & Elena Varganova
We conducted several large-scale field [...]
The OECD’s new TALIS teacher survey looks to have some interesting findings. Press release over the fold. (HT: Nicholas Gruen)
Teacher effectiveness hampered by lack of incentives and bad behaviour in classrooms
Three out of four teachers feel they lack incentives to improve the quality of their teaching, while bad [...]
I’m slow in posting about this, but my colleague Alison Booth is doing some very interesting research on single-sex schooling. From a recent writeup in the Age:
Going to a single-sex school makes teenage girls more competitive than if they attend a co-educational school, a study of adolescent behaviour has [...]
My oped today is on politicians’ pay, reviewing the evidence on whether higher pay (a) gets better-quality people to run for office, and (b) improves the performance of legislators once they’re in office. Although the empirical findings aren’t crystal-clear, the answer to both questions seems to be a weak yes. [...]
