It’s time to pick up my recent thread of posts on the minimum wage (most recently in this post). I want to return for a moment to more conventional research on the minimum wage, specifically looking at the effects of higher minimum wages on employment. The majority of minimum wage research has focused on estimating…
15 years of US research on the minimum wage elasticity of employment
15 years of US research on the minimum wage elasticity of employment
04 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic history, economics of regulation, labour economics, labour supply, minimum wage, poverty and inequality
Can Enhanced Street Lighting Improve Public Safety at Scale?
28 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economics of crime, labour economics, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: crime and punishment, criminal deterrence, law and order
Street lighting is often believed to influence street crime, but most prior studies have examined small-scale interventions in limited areas. The effect of large-scale lighting enhancements on public safety remains uncertain. This study evaluates the impact of Philadelphia’s citywide rollout of enhanced street lighting, which began in August 2023. Over 10 months, 34,374 streetlights were […]
Can Enhanced Street Lighting Improve Public Safety at Scale?
Mandated Board Diversity Reduces Firm Value
27 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economics of regulation, financial economics, gender, industrial organisation, labour economics, occupational choice, politics - USA Tags: efficient markets hypothesis, sex discrimination
Jon Klick finds that when courts in CA surprisingly invalidated a set of DEI laws, the market value of firms subject to those laws increased: California mandated that firms headquartered in the state include women (SB 826) and underrepresented minorities (AB 979) on their corporate boards. These laws, passed in 2018 and 2020 respectively, were […]
Mandated Board Diversity Reduces Firm Value
Does the Feldstein-Horioka Puzzle mean National’s Foreign Investment Ambitions Won’t Raise NZ Productivity?
26 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic history, financial economics, history of economic thought, international economics, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand Tags: foreign investment
The NZ Herald’s Editor has declared its journalists will be promoted or fired on the basis of factors like how many clicks they get on their articles. Yes, the Herald is now officially “click bait”. We’re trying to avoid the mistake of writing shallow nonsense at this Blog. So on that note, here’s a somewhat…
Does the Feldstein-Horioka Puzzle mean National’s Foreign Investment Ambitions Won’t Raise NZ Productivity?
Effects of the minimum wage on the nonprofit sector
19 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic history, labour economics, labour supply, minimum wage
After a few days of ‘rest’ (by which I really mean some intensely long work days), I’m going to pick up again on my recent series of posts about the minimum wage (see here for the most recent post), but returning to more familiar ground – the disemployment effects of the minimum wage. The story…
Effects of the minimum wage on the nonprofit sector
Must watch – Gigi Foster on lockdowns at PAEC
17 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, econometerics, economics of natural disasters, health economics, politics - Australia Tags: economics of pandemics
Minimum Wages, Efficiency, and Welfare
17 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, econometerics, labour economics, labour supply, minimum wage
Recently Alex raised some doubts, to say the least, about the Card-Krueger view of minimum wage hikes. Well, it turns out there is more, and a new consensus is on the verge of forming. Here are David Berger, Kyle Herkenhoff, and Simon Mongey, from a new Econometrica piece: Many argue that minimum wages can prevent efficiency […]
Minimum Wages, Efficiency, and Welfare
New Study: Today’s Climate Models ‘Do Not Agree With Reality’ And Thus Their Usefulness Is ‘Doubtful’
15 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in econometerics, economic history, economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming
Because the current state-of-the-art general circulation models (GCMs) cannot simulate the trends and variances in global precipitation over the last 84 years (1940-2023), their usefulness should be reconsidered. Hydrological processes – ocean circulation, water vapor, clouds – are key components of climate, easily overshadowing the impact of anthropogenic CO2 emissions by a factor of 2,100…
New Study: Today’s Climate Models ‘Do Not Agree With Reality’ And Thus Their Usefulness Is ‘Doubtful’
Does the Gender Wage Gap Actually Reflect Taste Discrimination Against Women?
11 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economics of education, economics of information, economics of media and culture, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply Tags: gender wage gap
One explanation of the gender wage gap is taste discrimination, as in Becker (1957). We test for taste discrimination by constructing a novel measure of misogyny using Google Trends data on searches that include derogatory terms for women. We find—surprisingly, in our view—that misogyny is an economically meaningful and statistically significant predictor of the wage […]
Does the Gender Wage Gap Actually Reflect Taste Discrimination Against Women?
Gender gaps in education and declining marriage rates
06 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economics of love and marriage, economics of marriage, human capital, labour economics, law and economics, poverty and inequality Tags: assortative mating, economics of fertility
Over the past half-century, the share of men enrolled in college has steadily declined relative to women. Today, 1.6 million more women than men attend four-year colleges in the U.S. This trend has not lowered marriage rates for college women, a substantial share of whom have historically married economically stable men without college degrees. Both […]
Gender gaps in education and declining marriage rates
*Progressive Myths*: The Caplan-Huemer Interview
05 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in econometerics, economic history, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: Age of Enlightenment, conjecture and refutation, free speech, philosophy of science, political correctness, regressive left
I recently interviewed Mike Huemer on his new Progressive Myths. To repeat, I consider it “the best book on wokeness.” You know you’re reading a special book by page 3, when Huemer states:I will not give a neutral presentation in the following chapters, but I do aim to give an objective presentation. I am a…
*Progressive Myths*: The Caplan-Huemer Interview
The Child Penalty: An International View
03 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: economics of fertility, gender wage gap, marriage and divorce
It’s well-known that when a couple has a child, the average woman experiences a “child penalty” in labor market outcomes, while outcomes for the man are largely unchanged. For a discussion of this pattern using US data, here’s an article by Jane Waldfogel from back in 1998 in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. As that…
The Child Penalty: An International View
Technological Disruption in the Labor Market
02 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in econometerics, economic history, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality, unemployment Tags: creative destruction
By David J. Deming, Christopher Ong, and Lawrence H. Summers. From NPR’s Planet Money. Summers was Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001, director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010 and president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.”Obviously, there is a big fear right now that artificial intelligence will kill…
Technological Disruption in the Labor Market
When did sustained economic growth begin?
31 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic growth, economic history, history of economic thought, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, poverty and inequality Tags: The Great Enrichment
The subtitle is New Estimates of Productivity Growth in England from 1250 to 1870, and the authors are Paul Bouscasse, Emi Nakamura, and Jón Steinsson. Abstract: We estimate productivity growth in England from 1250 to 1870. Real wages over this period were heavily influenced by plague-induced swings in the population. Our estimates account for these […]
When did sustained economic growth begin?
The 1920s immigration restrictions
29 Jan 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economic history, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, politics - USA Tags: economics of immigration, racial discrimination
The 1920s immigration restrictions in the US did not affect manufacturing wages. The US immigration restrictions of the 1920s lowered the occupational standings of whites and incumbent immigrants. US counties with more immigrants excluded by the quotas of the 1920s saw increased in-migration. During the Great Black Migration of the US, black southerners moved to […]
The 1920s immigration restrictions
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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