http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog Just another WordPress weblog Tue, 01 May 2007 04:27:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en the 5 best models of drug  (incl. alcohol) consumption? http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog/2007/04/30/can-anyone-name/ Steve Levitt writes a reply to Noam Scheiber's hit piece on Levitt and other eminent Economists. It is a great read, here is an excerpt: It seems to me that Scheiber is tied up in knots to the point that he no longer knows what he believes. He seems to instinctively ... http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog/2007/04/26/more-responses-to-scheibers-freakonomics-article/ ...was written by Chiaki Moriguchi and Emmanuel Saez. It's referring to Japan: Second, using income composition data, we show that the dramatic fall in income concentration at the top was primarily due to the collapse of capital income during WWII. Evidence from estate tax statistics confirms the drastic ... http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog/2007/04/26/the-best-sentence-i-read-all-week/ Earlier this year Andrew Gelman and co. came up with a new argument solving the voting paradox, based on social preferences (the paradox of voting: if you are rational, you will realize that the probability of affecting the outcome of a vote is negligible, while the costs are often considerable. ... http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog/2007/04/25/voters-finally-rational/ For all the crap [[Steve Levitt]] gets about his abortion paper due to coding errors and what not, I feel bad for him on this count.  Kiki Pop-Eleches did similar work in Romania, utilizing a "natural experiment" in which the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu banned abortion in 1966.  In any ... http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog/2007/04/25/abortion-and-crime/ Tyler Cowen once more clarifying our goals in life, if you want tenure, just cite yourself. http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog/2007/04/20/47/ [[David Laibson]] mentioned how if you give people randomly assigned health care, and then give them the options to change two weeks later, they tend not to.  [[Sendhil Mullainathan]] mentioned how health care providers systematically recommend the same plan no matter what medical history the caller (a senior citizen) had ... http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog/2007/04/19/health-care-mumbo-jumbo/ Yes, says Alex Tabarrok: Here's one idea which has got me thinking. In the debate over the economics of global warming the correct discount rate to apply to future generations is a key variable with those arguing that we should do something now, implicitly (and explicitly) arguing for a low ... http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog/2007/04/18/is-it-inconsistent-to-prioritize-global-warming-reforms-over-social-security-reforms/ I do not know a lot about labor economics, but I have been playing around with this idea for quite sometime now. Can we raise the minimum wage (or institute a minimum wage) and still see an uptake (or a non-decrease) in labor? Well, the standard response seems ... http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog/2007/04/17/minimum-wages/ Any thoughts on these? http://www.rightintheshortrun.com/blog/2007/04/16/structural-models/