Friday, September 10, 2010

gas prices and obesity

Charles Courtemanche (UNC Greensboro) presents evidence of a relationship between gasoline prices and obesity. When gas prices are higher, people tend to be less fat. From his abstract:
My estimates imply that 8% of the rise in obesity between 1979 and 2004 can be attributed to the concurrent drop in real gas prices, and that a permanent $1 increase in gasoline prices would reduce overweight and obesity in the United States by 7% and 10%.
The paper attributes this relationship between gas prices and weight to the effect that changes in gas prices have on the frequency of walking and restaurant eating.

The paper was recently published in Economic Inquiry. Read the paper here.

returns to an MBA

In a recent issue of Economic Inquiry, Wayne Grove (Le Moyne) and Andrew Hussey (U Memphis) estimate the expected return from earning an MBA. They compare the effects of field of study and school quality. From their abstract:
We find approximately 7% returns for most MBAs but roughly double that for finance and management information systems (MIS). Thus, MBA area of study can matter as much or more than program quality: only attending a top 10, but not 11-25, MBA program trumped studying finance and MIS at a nontop 25 program.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

blondes make more money

In a new paper in Economics Letters, David Johnston (Queensland Tech) shows that controlling for other characteristics, blonde women receive significantly higher wages than non-blondes. What's more, blonde women seem to have an advantage in the marriage market, snagging husbands who themselves have higher wages.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

are female referees nicer?

In a new NBER working paper, Jason Abrevaya and Daniel Hamermesh (Texas) find that the gender of one's journal referee doesn't affect the probability of getting a positive referee report. Their abstract:
Using a very large sample of matched author-referee pairs, we examine how the gender of referees and authors affects the former’s recommendations. Relying on changing matches of authors and referees, we find no evidence of gender differences among referees in charitableness toward authors; nor do we find any effect of the interaction between the referees’ and authors’ gender. With substantial research showing gender differences in fairness, the results suggest that an ethos of objectivity can overcome tendencies toward same-group favoritism/opposite-group discrimination.
Link to the paper here.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

school choice is good

In a new paper in the Review of Economic Studies, Victor Lavy (Hebrew U) considers what happens when students can attend any public school they want. That is, he looks at the impact that free public school choice has on graduation rates, student performance, and other outcomes. From the abstract:
Across identification methods and comparison groups, the results consistently suggest that choice significantly reduces the drop-out rate and increases the cognitive achievements of high-school students. It also improves behavioural outcomes such as teacher–student relationships and students' social acclimation and satisfaction at school, and reduces the level of violence and classroom disruption.
Across the board, school choice looks like a winning policy. Download the paper here.

Friday, May 7, 2010

short criminals

A recent NBER working paper looks at the relationship between a person's hight and criminal activity in the late 19th century. Using prison records, they show that (1) inmates tend to be shorter than the average person in the population, and (2) the likelihood of being a criminal is decreasing in height. That is, the taller someone is, the less likely they end up behind bars. They argue that these results are consistent with taller people having a labor market advantage.
The paper was written by Howard Bodenhorn (Clemson), Carolyn Moehling (Yale), and Gregory N. Price (Morehouse). Download it here.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

paying students to perform better

In a new NBER working paper, Roland Fryer (Harvard) looks at data from randomized trials that paid students based on school performance. From the abstract:
Our results suggest that student incentives increase achievement when the rewards are given for inputs to the educational production function, but incentives tied to output are not effective. Relative to popular education reforms of the past few decades, student incentives based on inputs produce similar gains in achievement at lower costs.
So, paying students to put more time in, to complete assignments, etc. works; but paying them based on final grade doesn't. Furthermore, they find no evidence that the incentives (once discontinued) will decrease student's intrinsic motivation to perform well.

Read the paper here.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

voting patterns drive PAC contributions

Do PACs give political contributions in an effort to "bribe" or otherwise convince politicians into voting in their favor? Or, do PACs give political contributions to the politicians that have underlying preferences consistent with the PACs positions (i.e., those politicians who would vote in favor of the PAC regardless of their contributions)?

In a recent NBER working paper, Dalton Conley and Brian McCabe (NYU) present some evidence that the later story might be correct, at least in some situations. First, they show that politicians are more likely to vote liberally on women's issues when they daughters. (This has been shown before.) Second, they show that this exogenous change in voting behavior has a significant impact on PAC contributions, suggesting that contributions follow from voting choices, not the other way around.

Read the paper here or here.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

daughters make you more conservative

In 2008, I wrote about a paper by Ebonya Washington which showed that legislators with daughters were more liberal as reflected in their voting records. A new NBER working paper by Dalton Conley and Emily Rauscher (NYU) suggest that maybe "elite politicians" are affected differently than the "general citizenry."

They show that "female offspring induce more conservative political identification."
Controlling for gender, religion, age, education, and marital status, the proportion of girls [children] significantly increases Republican Party identification in the United States.
Why would this be? The authors suggest that "daughters may elicit grandparental preferences for a world in which male sexuality is constrained and parental investment in offspring is greater."

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

sports and gambling

The most recent issue of Economic Inquiry offers a number of interesting papers. I mention three of them here.

First, there is evidence that the favored team in a college basketball (and other sports) game likely to win but by less than the gambling point spread. This is consistent with point shaving. However, Dan Bernhardt (Illinois) and Steven Heston (Maryland) find similar patterns in favored team performance in games in which there is no incentive to point shave. They argue that "the data are better explained by strategic efforts to maximize the probability of winning." Read the paper.

Second, Michael Davis (Missouri Sci & Tech) and Christian End (Xavier) present evidence that NFL team success has "a significant positive effect on real per capita personal income" in the city in which the team is based. Read the paper.

Finally, David Forest, O. David Gulley, and Robert Simmons use data from one of Britain's largest bookmakers and data on public lotteries to show that lottery play is a substitute for "horse race, soccer and numbers betting." Read the paper.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

beauty and success in elections

In the February issue of the Journal of Public Economics, Niclas Berggren, Henrik Jordahl, and Panu Poutvaara present evidence that a political candidate's physical beauty affects voting in elections. Using data on 1929 Finnish political candidates, the researchers show that (from their abstract):
An increase in our measure of beauty by one standard deviation is associated with an increase of 20% in the number of votes fro the average non-incumbent parliamentary candidate. The relationship is unaffected by including education and occupation as control variables and withstands several other robustness checks.