Public relations people earn 54% more than journalists & outnumber them nearly 5 to 1
12 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
Bad career advice and well paid blue-collar jobs
11 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of education, occupational choice Tags: Charles Murray
One of the many excellent points Charles Murray makes is too many teenagers of average or modest academic ability are encouraged to go on to higher education. Their career advisers and schools do not alert them to the many well-paid blue-collar jobs that do not require higher education or at least no university education.
The Evolution Of The Employee
09 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in health and safety, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, managerial economics, market efficiency, occupational choice, organisational economics, personnel economics Tags: modern human resource management
The three laws of behavioural genetics
08 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of education, human capital, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: behavioural genetics, economics of personality traits, nature versus nurture
Political ideologies mapped by profession
08 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, human capital, occupational choice Tags: academic bias, media bias
The odds that a child will…
07 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in health and safety, health economics, occupational choice Tags: anti-vaccination movement
Competing visions of success – left and right
06 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, entrepreneurship, human capital, labour economics, occupational choice, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: activists, distributive justice, do gooders, expressive voting, Leftover Left, poverty and inequality, rational ignorance, rational irrationality, top 1%
The Upside of Income Inequality » Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy
01 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of education, human capital, labour economics, liberalism, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: education premium, educational attainment, graduate premium, The Great Enrichment
Spot the jihadist translated from French
31 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, economics of religion, occupational choice, war and peace Tags: France, Jihadists, war on terror
Spurious correlations alert: executions and murder rates – updated
30 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of crime, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: crime and punishment, death penalty, deterrence, occupational hazards, prison conditions, punishment
– Updated
Many a data shyster will make hay with the above chart on the simple correlation between executions and the drop in the US murder rate.
The reality is there are so few executions and they are so infrequent with the exception of Texas that any purported correlation between the death penalty and murder rates requires careful study.
Indeed, for some condemned prisoners, gang bangers are an example, their life expectancy may be increased by the long time they spend on death row versus been murdered by a business associated or a business rival on the streets. As Levitt noted:
no rational criminal should be deterred by the death penalty, since the punishment is too distant and too unlikely to merit much attention.
As such, economists who argue that the death penalty works are put in the uncomfortable position of having to argue that criminals are irrationally overreacting when they are deterred by it.
The occupational hazard of been murdered by business rival for gang bangers is higher than the chance of them been arrested, tried , convicted, and condemned to death and then executed after a long appeals process. Not surprisingly, Levitt argued that:
…the quality of life in prison is likely to have a greater impact on criminal behaviour than the death penalty.
Using state-level panel data covering the period 1950–90, we demonstrate that the death rate among prisoners (the best available proxy for prison conditions) is negatively correlated with crime rates, consistent with deterrence. This finding is shown to be quite robust.
In contrast, there is little systematic evidence that the execution rate influences crime rates in this time period.
Are Uber drivers twice as likely to be murdered as a cop?
30 Jan 2015 2 Comments
in economics of crime, economics of regulation, health and safety, labour economics, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: compensating differentials, occupational hazards, police, taxi regulation, Uber
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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