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?
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
Industry veterans slam Pharmacy Council’s forced cultural competency rules as Health Minister demands explanation
28 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, health economics, labour economics, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, occupational regulation, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: affirmative action, free speech, political correctness, racial discrimination, regressive left
Chris Lynch Media reports – Health Minister Simeon Brown says he will demand an explanation from the Pharmacy Council over its competence standards for pharmacists, which have been described as “deeply disturbing.” It follows inquiries to his office by chrislynchmedia.com over the standards, published on 15 June 2023 and enforced from 1 April 2024, which require […]
Industry veterans slam Pharmacy Council’s forced cultural competency rules as Health Minister demands explanation
Bands away
28 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in entrepreneurship, labour economics, labour supply, Music Tags: creative destruction
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
If You Date Me, You Date My Debt
27 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of education, economics of love and marriage, gender, law and economics Tags: College premium, dating markets, marriage and divorce
Romance can pose challenges to those with large credit balances, student loans or other financial obligationsBy Julia Munslow of The WSJ. Excerpts:”For daters, debt can be a turnoff. In a 2024 survey from the Achieve Center for Consumer Insights, 64% of respondents said they wouldn’t want to date someone with a lot of debt.””The economics…
If You Date Me, You Date My Debt
Bill Maher vs. Jon Lovett on trans rights
26 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, health economics, labour economics, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: free speech, gender gap, political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
Jon Lovett is identified by Wikipedia as . . . . an American podcaster, comedian, journalist, and former speechwriter. Lovett is a co-founder of Crooked Media, along with Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. All three formerly worked together as White House staffers during the Obama administration. Lovett is a regular host of the Crooked Media podcasts Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. […]
Bill Maher vs. Jon Lovett on trans rights
More tacit recognition of two sexes in humans
26 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, economics of media and culture, gender, health economics, human capital, labour economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: free speech, gender gap, life expectancies, political correctness, regressive left
This article was mentioned in a comment by reader Ted Gold, but I thought I would highlight it just to show that when the rubber meets the road, people recognize that, yes, there are just two sexes. This is from the NYT on Feb. 25th. Click headline to read, or find the article archived here. […]
More tacit recognition of two sexes in humans
Gender gap
25 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, gender, health and safety, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: gender wage gap
The fundamental fallacy of the “sex spectrum”
24 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: Age of Enlightenment, conjecture and refutation, free speech, gender gap, philosophy of science, political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
While thinking about about objections to the sex binary—usually discussed in humans but sometimes in other species—they all seem to come down to a single assertion: “Sex is complicated in both development and expression, involving chromosomes, behavior, hormones, genitals and even psychology. Therefore there are more than two sexes.” One example of this is from […]
The fundamental fallacy of the “sex spectrum”
Richard Dawkins on the “tri-societies” fracas on sex (and a call for signatures)
22 Feb 2025 1 Comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: Age of Enlightenment, free speech, gender gap, political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
And so we come to the last sex post of the day—about a new piece by Richard Dawkins on his Substack site, The Poetry of Reality. Richard points to what he sees as arrant hypocrisy in the statement on biological sex by the Presidents of the SSN, ASN, and SSB. As I mentioned in my […]
Richard Dawkins on the “tri-societies” fracas on sex (and a call for signatures)
The U.S. government’s new definition of sex
21 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of crime, economics of education, gender, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: free speech, political correctness, regressive left, sex discrimination
There will be a few posts on the definition of sex today, as everything “dropped”—as the kids say—at the same time. First, on January 20, the Trump administration issued an executive order, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”—an attempt to efface gender ideology from the government and […]
The U.S. government’s new definition of sex
The solution is to deport quicker
21 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: economics of immigration
The Herald reports: Daman Kumar – the 18-year-old threatened with deportation to India despite living in New Zealand all his life – has been offered residency. Green Party immigration spokesman Ricardo Menéndez March told the Herald he was informed of the development by Associate Immigration Minister Chris Penk’s office this afternoon. Menéndez March wrote to the minister last week, […]
The solution is to deport quicker
The Accumulation of Regulation
21 Feb 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, regulation Tags: employment law
Like many who do business in California, I often complain about the regulatory burden (free at last!) People will ask, “So what one regulation would you get rid of?” The problem is that this is a really hard question to answer because in most cases it is not any one regulation in particular, but the…
The Accumulation of Regulation
The Spectacular Economic Ignorance of Peter Navarro
20 Feb 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, survivor principle, unemployment Tags: 2024 presidential election, free trade, tarrifs
TweetHere’s a letter to the New York Times. Editor: Encountering, in David Leonhardt’s report, a summary of Peter Navarro’s attempted justifications of Trump’s tariffs makes the head spin (“A Disagreement on Tariffs,” February 18). Navarro’s arguments are so illogical, self-contradictory, and economically ignorant that they’d be merely laughable were he not an advisor to the…
The Spectacular Economic Ignorance of Peter Navarro
Selfishly Speaking, Who Should Skip College?
20 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of education, economics of information, human capital, James Buchanan, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice Tags: adverse selection, asymmetric information, College premium, signaling
The central thesis of my The Case Against Education is that actually-existing education is a terrible waste of taxpayer money. Since signaling, not building human capital, is the main function of education, the main effect of government subsidies is credential inflation. In economic jargon, my claim is that education has a low (indeed, negative) social…
Selfishly Speaking, Who Should Skip College?
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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