See Choices and consequences in the real “game of life”: From falling in with “bad apples” to choosing a major, economists decipher how early decisions shape long-term outcomes by Jeff Horwich, Senior Economics Writer for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Excerpt:”The research on Minnesota students from Nath, Borovičková, and Leibert (discussed above) finds that while…
When it comes to lifetime earnings, the most important decision appears to be the choice of college major
When it comes to lifetime earnings, the most important decision appears to be the choice of college major
25 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in econometerics, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: College premium
Bari Weiss interviews Roland Fryer
22 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economic history, economics of crime, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, occupational choice, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: academic bias, crime and punishment, free speech, law and order, political correctness, racial discrimination, regressive left
A lot of readers and heterodox colleagues have sent me this link to Bari Weiss’s interview with Harvard economics professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr., often accompanied by big encomiums. Despite my unwillingness to watch long videos, I did watch all 77 minutes of it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t mesmerized, or even much interested. There are interesting […]
Bari Weiss interviews Roland Fryer
John Tamihere – Why did he change?
18 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economic history, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality Tags: New Zealand, racial discrimination
Darwin award
16 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in health and safety, labour economics, occupational choice Tags: Darwin awards, gender wage gap
Self-selection explained
15 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, unemployment Tags: adverse selection, asymmetric information, moral hazard, screening, self-selection, signaling
Pay Transparency: What’s Good to Know?
15 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, econometerics, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: gender wage gap
In some countries, like Norway, your income tax forms are public information, so any one can look up what anyone else earns. In a US context, income is mostly considered to be private information, unless you are a public employee or an executive at a public company. Would it be a good thing to have…
Pay Transparency: What’s Good to Know?
Alice Evans on the ideological gender divide
13 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, health and safety, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, gender wage gap, sex discrimination
I suggest, Men and women tend to think alike in societies where there is Close-knit interdependence, religosity and authoritarianism, or Shared cultural production and mixed gendered offline socialising. Gendered ideological polarisation appears encouraged by: Feminised public culture Economic resentment Social media filter bubbles Cultural entrepreneurs. Here is the full piece, currently the best piece on […]
Alice Evans on the ideological gender divide
Another gender gap gone
11 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economic history, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice
LINDSAY MITCHELL: Labour hid developing welfare crisis
08 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: child poverty, family poverty
Lindsay Mitchell writes- When National became government in 2008, Finance Minister Bill English’s determination to understand the extent of benefit-dependency led them to commission Taylor Fry to produce annual actuarial reports. These were duly published at the MSD website every year but ceased when the government changed in 2017. Now however, an Official Information request […]
LINDSAY MITCHELL: Labour hid developing welfare crisis
*The Case Against Education* Makes the WSJ
01 Feb 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economics of education, economics of information, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: screening, signaling
Douglas Belkin, who has an admirably adversarial publication record on higher ed, spotlights my The Case Against Education in his latest piece in The Wall Street Journal:One result of this transactional attitude has been a sharp increase in cheating. College is one of the few products whose consumers try to get as little out of…
*The Case Against Education* Makes the WSJ
Unfettered: Fishback 25 Years Later
17 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, economic history, economics of information, economics of regulation, health and safety, history of economic thought, human capital, industrial organisation, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, liberalism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, minimum wage, occupational choice, occupational regulation, poverty and inequality, unemployment, unions
A quarter century ago, economist Price Fishback published “Operations of ‘Unfettered’ Labor Markets: Exit and Voice in American Labor Markets at the Turn of the Century” in the prestigious Journal of Economic Literature. Fishback’s article is packed with insight… and understatement. But let’s back up. Virtually every standard history textbook describes U.S. labor markets before…
Unfettered: Fishback 25 Years Later
The Right and Wrong Way to Reduce Poverty, Part II
16 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, human capital, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, public economics, welfare reform Tags: child poverty, family poverty
In Part I of this series, I explained that the War on Poverty, launched by Lyndon Johnson and expanded by other profligate presidents, has been bad news for both taxpayers and poor people. More specifically, I shared some academic research showing how it led to a big increase in dependency on government. Let’s expand on […]
The Right and Wrong Way to Reduce Poverty, Part II
Family leave and the gender wage gap
16 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economic history, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: economics of fertility, family leave, gender wage gap, marriage and divorce, sex discrimination
The gender wage gap has been decreasing slowly and steadily over time. At least, that’s what I thought until I read this 2023 NBER Working Paper by Peter Blair (Harvard University) and Benjamin Posmanick (St. Bonaventure University). They present the following graph of the gender wage gap in the US (for White women, compared with White men,…
Family leave and the gender wage gap
Quotation of the Day…
01 Jan 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, behavioural economics, economic history, history of economic thought, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: capitalism and freedom, evolutionary psychology, The Great Enrichment
Tweet… is from my emeritus Nobel-laureate colleague Vernon Smith‘s splendid speech “Human Betterment Through Globalization,” delivered in September 2005 at the Irvington-on-Hudson then-headquarters of the Foundation for Economic Education: The challenge is that we all function simultaneously in two overlapping worlds of exchange. First, we live in a world of personal, social exchange based on…
Quotation of the Day…
Claudia Goldin: “What’s ‘Greedy Work’ and Why Is It a Problem?” | People…
18 Dec 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, economic history, gender, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, minimum wage, occupational choice Tags: gender wage gap, sex discrimination
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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