Saturday, July 28, 2012
Readers
A chart from the google statistics on where the people who look at this blog come from. Feel free to get in touch with suggestions or even to just hello if you are a regular reader and interested in the topics here.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Public health and economics: a marriage of necessity
Public health and economics: a marriage of necessity
Alan Maynard
The Journal of Public Health Research, Vol 1, No 1 (2012)
Abstract
With resources always scarce limited resources have to be targeted at those interventions, prevention and cure, that give the greatest population health gain at least cost. Mere identification of what works in prevention is inadequate unless this evidence is supplemented with economic analysis that identifies what is cost effective. Public health without the use of economics is incomplete.
http://www.jphres.org/index.php/jphres/article/download/jphr.2012.e4/pdf
Alan Maynard
The Journal of Public Health Research, Vol 1, No 1 (2012)
Abstract
With resources always scarce limited resources have to be targeted at those interventions, prevention and cure, that give the greatest population health gain at least cost. Mere identification of what works in prevention is inadequate unless this evidence is supplemented with economic analysis that identifies what is cost effective. Public health without the use of economics is incomplete.
http://www.jphres.org/index.php/jphres/article/download/jphr.2012.e4/pdf
CSO document on Irish labour market 1981-2011
The newly released CSO document on the lrish labour market contains a wealth of information on the Irish labour market from 1981 to the last census in April 2011. It confirms a picture of a labour market that grew massively over the period to 2008 and has seen a dramatic increase in unemployment due to the bursting of a property bubble. This has hit young people disproportionately and has had larger effects on males as well as displaying a marked regional concentration.
Some of the key findings are below. These are for April 2011 and should be read in conjunction with the latest QNHS figures if you are using them for a real-time analysis.
"The number of people working in the ‘learned professions’ has changed markedly in the 4 censuses since 1996. In 1996 there were over 6,500 people working as members of the clergy (including priests and nuns). By 2011 this had almost halved to 3,589. In contrast, the number of people working as medical practitioners increased by over 5,000 from 7,033 in 1996 to 12,103 in the most recent census. The strongest growth however came among barristers and solicitors. The number at work almost doubled between 1996 and 2011 from 6,096 to 12,103."
"As previously reported, the numbers at work in the construction sector declined by 125,000 or 58 per cent between 2006 and 2011. The graph on the left presents the numbers at work by occupation within the sector for 2006 and 2011. The decline in the number of people at work was particularly pronounced in manual skilled and unskilled occupations. The number of carpenters and joiners at work fell by over 18,000 or 64 per cent, while there were over 9,100 fewer plasterers, a 77 per cent fall in employment. The biggest fall in numbers at work was among labourers, whose number collapsed by 80 per cent, representing over 21,000 workers."
"In contrast, there were 36,000 more people at work in the education sector in 2011 compared with 2006, representing a rise of 28 per cent. As with the construction sector, there were varying rates of growth for different occupation groups within the sector. In absolute terms the strongest growth in the sector was among primary and nursery school teachers where the number at work increased by 9,115 to just under 40,000. The next fastest growing occupation was childminders and nursery nurses in crèches (coded to education in Nace Rev 1) with an increase of 6,529 persons at work, up 232 per cent. There were 5,526 additional educational assistants in 2011 compared with 2006, representing 75 per cent growth over the five years. The number of secretaries and other assistants grew by 2,247 to 3,810. Among the other big occupations in the sector, there were 2,178 more secondary teachers bringing the total to 31,829. The number of third level teaching staff climbed by 1,898 to 12,729. A number of support occupations in the sector declined. The number of caretakers working in Education fell by 260 to 2,379."
"Limerick city and Donegal had the highest levels of youth unemployment with rates of 50 and 49 per cent respectively, in effect half of all young people in the labour force. The rate for Wexford was just behind at 47 per cent. The lowest rate was 27 per cent in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. Fingal, Cork county and Galway city were also at the lower end of the youth unemployment spectrum."
"As with the general population, unemployment among women was lower than for men across almost all socioeconomic groups. This was most pronounced for unskilled workers. While more than four in ten unskilled male workers were unemployed, only 18 per cent of female unskilled workers were jobless. Most unskilled females were cleaners and domestic workers and were less affected by unemployment than males who were more prominent in the construction industry."
Some of the key findings are below. These are for April 2011 and should be read in conjunction with the latest QNHS figures if you are using them for a real-time analysis.
"Among the labour force, the numbers of those at work declined in the 5 years by over 6 per cent to 1,807,369 while the number of people looking for their first job rose by over 16 per cent to 34,166. The number of people who were unemployed increased significantly from 150,084 to 390,677. When combined with people looking for their first job the total number of people who were out of work stood at 424,843 in April 2011."
"As seen earlier in this report, unemployment among young people aged 15-24 was 39 per cent, considerably higher than the overall average of 19 per cent but again this varied considerably by social class. Among the professional social class, 16 per cent were unemployed in April 2011. For those in the managerial and technical class this was slightly higher at 20 per cent. In contrast, 36 per cent of younger skilled manual workers and 40 per cent of young unskilled workers were jobless. In the largest social class category, non-manual, there were 10,729 young people out of work, giving an unemployment rate of 22 per cent."
"The number of people working in the ‘learned professions’ has changed markedly in the 4 censuses since 1996. In 1996 there were over 6,500 people working as members of the clergy (including priests and nuns). By 2011 this had almost halved to 3,589. In contrast, the number of people working as medical practitioners increased by over 5,000 from 7,033 in 1996 to 12,103 in the most recent census. The strongest growth however came among barristers and solicitors. The number at work almost doubled between 1996 and 2011 from 6,096 to 12,103."
"As previously reported, the numbers at work in the construction sector declined by 125,000 or 58 per cent between 2006 and 2011. The graph on the left presents the numbers at work by occupation within the sector for 2006 and 2011. The decline in the number of people at work was particularly pronounced in manual skilled and unskilled occupations. The number of carpenters and joiners at work fell by over 18,000 or 64 per cent, while there were over 9,100 fewer plasterers, a 77 per cent fall in employment. The biggest fall in numbers at work was among labourers, whose number collapsed by 80 per cent, representing over 21,000 workers."
"In contrast, there were 36,000 more people at work in the education sector in 2011 compared with 2006, representing a rise of 28 per cent. As with the construction sector, there were varying rates of growth for different occupation groups within the sector. In absolute terms the strongest growth in the sector was among primary and nursery school teachers where the number at work increased by 9,115 to just under 40,000. The next fastest growing occupation was childminders and nursery nurses in crèches (coded to education in Nace Rev 1) with an increase of 6,529 persons at work, up 232 per cent. There were 5,526 additional educational assistants in 2011 compared with 2006, representing 75 per cent growth over the five years. The number of secretaries and other assistants grew by 2,247 to 3,810. Among the other big occupations in the sector, there were 2,178 more secondary teachers bringing the total to 31,829. The number of third level teaching staff climbed by 1,898 to 12,729. A number of support occupations in the sector declined. The number of caretakers working in Education fell by 260 to 2,379."
"As with the general population, unemployment among women was lower than for men across almost all socioeconomic groups. This was most pronounced for unskilled workers. While more than four in ten unskilled male workers were unemployed, only 18 per cent of female unskilled workers were jobless. Most unskilled females were cleaners and domestic workers and were less affected by unemployment than males who were more prominent in the construction industry."
Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical & Public Health Research
Harvard Edx course "Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical & Public Health Research". Details below or on the link. This starts in October.
Quantitative Methods in Clinical and Public Health Research is the online adaptation of material from the Harvard School of Public Health's classes in epidemiology and biostatistics.
Principled investigations to monitor and thus improve the health of individuals are firmly based on a sound understanding of modern quantitative methods. This involves the ability to discover patterns and extract knowledge from health data on a sample of individuals and then to infer, with measured uncertainty, the unobserved population characteristics. This course will address this need by covering the principles of biostatistics and epidemiology used for public health and clinical research. These include outcomes measurement, measures of associations between outcomes and their determinants, study design options, bias and confounding, probability and diagnostic tests, confidence intervals and hypothesis testing, power and sample size determinations, life tables and survival methods, regression methods (both, linear and logistic), and sample survey techniques. Students will analyze sample data sets to acquire knowledge of appropriate computer software. By the end of the course the successful student should have attained a sound understanding of these methods and a solid foundation for further study."
"ABOUT THIS COURSE
Quantitative Methods in Clinical and Public Health Research is the online adaptation of material from the Harvard School of Public Health's classes in epidemiology and biostatistics.
Principled investigations to monitor and thus improve the health of individuals are firmly based on a sound understanding of modern quantitative methods. This involves the ability to discover patterns and extract knowledge from health data on a sample of individuals and then to infer, with measured uncertainty, the unobserved population characteristics. This course will address this need by covering the principles of biostatistics and epidemiology used for public health and clinical research. These include outcomes measurement, measures of associations between outcomes and their determinants, study design options, bias and confounding, probability and diagnostic tests, confidence intervals and hypothesis testing, power and sample size determinations, life tables and survival methods, regression methods (both, linear and logistic), and sample survey techniques. Students will analyze sample data sets to acquire knowledge of appropriate computer software. By the end of the course the successful student should have attained a sound understanding of these methods and a solid foundation for further study."
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Economics and Psychology Workshops
The programmes for the workshops in Economics and Psychology that we have run through Geary Institute and Stirling are below. Two more are upcoming - one in Stirling on October 26th to launch the new series and one in Dublin on November 30th.
Hard Evidence on Soft Skills
Hard Evidence on Soft Skills
Heckman, James J.(jjh@uchicago.edu) (University of Chicago)
Kautz, Tim
(tkautz@uchicago.edu) (University of Chicago)Hard Evidence on Soft Skills
This paper summarizes recent evidence on what achievement tests measure; how achievement tests relate to other measures of "cognitive ability" like IQ and grades; the important skills that achievement tests miss or mismeasure, and how much these skills matter in life. Achievement tests miss, or perhaps more accurately, do not adequately capture, soft skills – personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains. The larger message of this paper is that soft skills predict success in life, that they causally produce that success, and that programs that enhance soft skills have an important place in an effective portfolio of public policies.
(tkautz@uchicago.edu) (University of Chicago)Hard Evidence on Soft Skills
This paper summarizes recent evidence on what achievement tests measure; how achievement tests relate to other measures of "cognitive ability" like IQ and grades; the important skills that achievement tests miss or mismeasure, and how much these skills matter in life. Achievement tests miss, or perhaps more accurately, do not adequately capture, soft skills – personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains. The larger message of this paper is that soft skills predict success in life, that they causally produce that success, and that programs that enhance soft skills have an important place in an effective portfolio of public policies.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
James Heckman: Inequality and the Challenge of Employment
James Heckman's talk from the session "Inequality and the Challenge of Employment" from INET Berlin is below. These are extremely important ideas.
ESRC Future Leaders
Details of this excellent scheme for PhD graduates with less than four years post-phd experience below (link here ). Happy to talk to people interested in applying for this to work with us.
"The aim of the Future Research Leaders Scheme is to support outstanding early career researchers to carry out excellent research and to develop all aspects of their research and knowledge exchange skills.
Application process
The closing date for proposals is 16.00 on 4 October 2012.
Awards will be for a maximum of three years with an overall limit of £312,500 (at 100 per cent full Economic Cost). We aim to fund around 70 awards.
Further information
- Call specification (PDF, 134Kb)
- Je-S guidance (PDF, 217Kb)
- Frequently Asked Questions (PDF, 182Kb)
- Interdisciplinary social and biomedical sciences applications
Contact
If you have any questions or would like further information about the scheme contact:
Please note that the application form for the Future Research Leaders scheme will not be available on the Je-S system until 6 August 2012. For any queries before that date, please contact the ESRC Case Officers, as detailed above. Enquiries relating to the Je-S application procedure after 6 August should be addressed to:
- Je-S helpdesk
Email: jeshelp@rcuk.ac.uk
Telephone: 01793 444164"
Monday, July 23, 2012
Irish Society of New Economists Conference
The programme for this year’s event, being organised and hosted in UCC, is available on this link. Details below or on the website.
“University College Cork’s (UCC) School of Economics are pleased to host the Irish Society of New Economists (ISNE) 9th annual conference.
The conference will take place on Thursday 23rd and Friday 24th of August, 2012.
If you wish to contact the local organising committee they can be contacted at isne2012@gmail.com.
The ISNE was formed to encourage research, information and social links among economists at the early stages of their careers in Ireland and Europe. The annual conference is intended for Masters, PhD students, and young professionals in the early stages of research. Eligibility to present has nothing to do with age. We strongly encourage those working on economics-related research in all settings to present.
The 2012 ISNE meeting will feature the work and findings of scholars in economics, econometrics and related fields, and will provide an excellent opportunity to present your own research results and work in progress.
We would encourage those who are participating in the conference or those who can not attend the conference this year to join the ISNE 2012 conference Linkedin group. This will allow a forum for discussion and announcements relating to the conference. To join the Linkedin group please simply click the Linkedin tab below.
We look forward to meeting you in Cork in 2012.
The Local Organising Committee:
Robbie Butler (Lecturer in Economics UCC)
David Butler (Lecturer in Economics UCC)
Justin Doran (Lecturer in Economics UCC)”
Coursera and Irish/UK universities
Looking at the coursera list of courses, a few ideas in the Irish and UK contexts come to mind. Below is a summary of thoughts after having run a thread on this on the irisheconomy website.
1. Should we think about students being able to take these type of courses eventually for credit? How should these options be aligned with the Bologna process in Irish/UK universities?
2. Which Irish/UK university courses should be made available on the platform? Already, universities outside of the US such as Toronto and Edinburgh have made courses available.
3. If more centralisation is going to occur on graduate programmes (e.g. national disciplinary PhD programmes), how could the development of these platforms and active use of them facilitate this, in particular getting over logistical issues in provision of national graduate programmes at PhD level?
4. A key question is whether we will reach a stage where certain, in particular generic modules, might be better delivered fully online rather than actually developed by each institution. For example, could we reach a stage where undergraduate calculus courses might simply be outsourced from the web? This is frequently represented as being a potential crisis for universities but it could be a good opportunity to rellocate staff time to a variety of other activities. A model where practically all lectures are provided online and student/staff interaction is structured around problem solving and mentoring is something that could be great. See e.g. Eric Mazur. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_teaching
5. These courses will shift supply of education but might also have a very big effect on demand for education. Someone who takes an online module may then be more likely to want full programmes. In general, both supply and potential demand shifts open a potential for a lot more activity across the life-span.
6. If we believe that higher education is genuinely a way of building human capital rather than screen or create a status good then this is a very exciting development. It would be good to debate a lot more how this could be exploited by countries outside the US. Effectively, the US is producing a potentially massive externality by providing all of this information.
1. Should we think about students being able to take these type of courses eventually for credit? How should these options be aligned with the Bologna process in Irish/UK universities?
2. Which Irish/UK university courses should be made available on the platform? Already, universities outside of the US such as Toronto and Edinburgh have made courses available.
3. If more centralisation is going to occur on graduate programmes (e.g. national disciplinary PhD programmes), how could the development of these platforms and active use of them facilitate this, in particular getting over logistical issues in provision of national graduate programmes at PhD level?
4. A key question is whether we will reach a stage where certain, in particular generic modules, might be better delivered fully online rather than actually developed by each institution. For example, could we reach a stage where undergraduate calculus courses might simply be outsourced from the web? This is frequently represented as being a potential crisis for universities but it could be a good opportunity to rellocate staff time to a variety of other activities. A model where practically all lectures are provided online and student/staff interaction is structured around problem solving and mentoring is something that could be great. See e.g. Eric Mazur. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_teaching
5. These courses will shift supply of education but might also have a very big effect on demand for education. Someone who takes an online module may then be more likely to want full programmes. In general, both supply and potential demand shifts open a potential for a lot more activity across the life-span.
6. If we believe that higher education is genuinely a way of building human capital rather than screen or create a status good then this is a very exciting development. It would be good to debate a lot more how this could be exploited by countries outside the US. Effectively, the US is producing a potentially massive externality by providing all of this information.
Professor Chris Timmins Master Class on Hedonic Valuation
Below is an outline of a master class that will take place in the University of Stirling on July 25th from 9am to 5pm. Enrolment is free. Travel costs will be covered for Scottish PhD students. People outside Scotland are welcome to attend. Please email me if you wish to attend this. The Professor giving the course is a leading expert in this area and I recommend this highly.
Hedonics and Non-Market Valuation
Mini-Course
Outline
Christopher
Timmins
Duke University
Summer 2012
The
purpose of this mini-course is to provide a graduate-level overview of hedonic
analysis. Hedonics are the primary
revealed-preference tool for non-market valuation and cost-benefit analysis,
and also play an important role in quality adjustment of price indices, and in
modeling demand for differentiated products and their attributes. The course will begin with a brief discussion
of Rosen’s (1974) seminal paper and basic identification issues. It will proceed with a discussion of the
econometric problems associated with the recovery of the “willingness to pay”
function, which is required for the valuation of non-marginal changes in
amenities or product attributes. We will
then proceed to a discussion of omitted variables bias, and the
quasi-experimental techniques that are used to address them. The fourth part of the course will describe
hedonic analysis when individuals sort over multiple (labor and housing)
markets. The fifth component will
describe three areas of current research in hedonics. The mini-course will then conclude with a
short discussion of some of the weaknesses of the hedonic approach, motivating
the use of structural sorting models.
The
following syllabus describes the material covered in the mini-course in more
detail. Due to time constraints, not all
of the listed papers will be covered.
Lecture notes will, however, be made available for (most) of the papers,
whether they are presented or not.
(1) Basic Theory and Identification (approx. ¾ hour)
Rosen
(1974). “Hedonic Prices and Implicit
Markets: Product Differentiation in Perfect Competition.” Journal of Political Economy. 82(1):34-55.
Brown
and Rosen (1982). “On the Estimation of
Structural Hedonic Price Models.” Econometrica. 50(3):765-768.
Mendelsohn
(1985). “Identifying Structural
Equations with Single Market Data.” Review of Economics and Statistics. 67(3):525-529.
(2) Recovering Willingness to Pay (approx.. 2 hours)
Epple
(1987). “Hedonic Prices and Implicit
Markets: Estimating Demand and Supply Functions for Differentiated
Products.” Journal of Political Economy.
95(1):59-80.
Bartik
(1987). “Estimating Hedonic Demand
Parameters with Single Market Data: The Problems Caused by Unobserved
Tastes.” Review of Economics and Statistics.
69(1):178-80.
Bartik
(1987). “The Estimation of Demand
Parameters in Hedonic Price Models.” Journal of Political Economy. 95(1):81-88.
Ekeland,
Heckman, and Nesheim (2004).
“Identification and Estimation of Hedonic Models.” Journal
of Political Economy.
112(1.2):S60-S109.
Heckman,
Matzkin, and Nesheim (2010).
“Nonparametric Identification and Estimation of Nonadditive Hedonic
Models.” Econometrica. 78(5):1569-1591.
Bajari
and Benkard (2005). “Demand Estimation
With Heterogeneous Consumers and Unobserved Product Characteristics: A Hedonic
Approach.” Journal of Political Economy.
113(6):1239-1276.
Bajari
and Kahn (2005). “Estimating Housing
Demand With an Application to Explaining Racial Segregation in Cities.” Journal
of Business & Economic Statistics.
23(1):20-33.
Bishop
and Timmins (2011). “Hedonic Prices and
Implicit Markets: Estimating the
Marginal Willingness to Pay for Large Reductions in Crime Without Instrumental
Variables.” Mimeo.
Griffith
and Nesheim (2010). “Estimating
Households’ Willingness to Pay. CeMMAP
Working Paper CWP24/10. Institute for
Fiscal Studies, UCL.
(3) Quasi-Experimental Techniques (approx. 2.5
hours)
Parmeter
and Pope (2009). “Quasi-Experiments and
Hedonic Property Value Methods.”
Prepared for the Handbook on
Experimental Economics and the Environment.
John List (ed). Edward Elgar
Publishers.
Palmquist
(1984). “Estimating the Demand for the
Characteristics of Housing.” Review of Economics and Statistics. 66(3):394-404.
Parsons
(1992). “The Effect of Coastal Land Use
Restrictions on Housing Prices: A Repeat
Sales Analysis.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 22:25-37.
Chay
and Greenstone (2005). “Does Air Quality
Matter? Evidence from the Housing
Market.” Journal of Political Economy.
113(2):376-424.
Davis
(2005). “The Effect of Health Risk on
Housing Values: Evidence from a Cancer Cluster.” American
Economic Review. 94(5):1693-1704.
Linden
and Rockoff (2008). “Estimates of the
Impact of Crime Risk on Property Values from Megan’s Laws.” American
Economic Review. 98(3):1103-1127.
Pope
(2008). “Fear of Crime and Housing Prices:
Household Reactions to Sex Offender Registries.” Journal of Urban Economics. 64(3):601-614.
Black
(1999). “Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary
Education.” Quarterly Journal of
Economics. 114(2):577-99.
Greenstone
and Gallagher (2006). “Does Hazardous
Waste Matter? Evidence From the Housing
Market and the Superfund Program.”
Gamper-Rabindran
and Timmins (2011). “Does Cleanup of
Hazardous Waste Sites Raise Housing Values?
Evidence of Spatially Localized Benefits.” Mimeo.
Davis
(2010). “The Effects of Power Plants on
Local Housing Values and Rents.”
Forthcoming in Review of Economics
and Statistics.
(4) Sorting Across Housing and Labor
Markets: Wage-Hedonics (approx. 1.5
hours)
Hoch
and Drake (1974). “Wages, Climate, and
the Quality of Life.” Journal of Environmental Economics and
Management. 1(4):268-295.
Rosen
(1979). “Wage-Based Indexes of Urban
Quality of Life.” In Current Issues in Urban Economics, edited by Peter Mieszhowski and
Mahlen Straszheim. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Roback
(1982). “Wages, Rents, and the Quality
of Life.” Journal of Political Economy. 90(6):1257-1278.
Roback
(1988). “Wages, Rents, and Amenities:
Differences Among Workers and Regions.” Economic Inquiry. 26:23-41.
Blomquist,
Berger, and Hoehn (1988). “New Estimates
of Quality of Life in Urban Areas.” American Economic Review. 78:89-107.
Albouy (2008). “Are Big Cities Really Bad Places to
Live? Improving Quality-of-Life Estimates Across Cities.” NBER Working Paper No. 14472.
Bayer,
Khan, and Timmins (2011). “Nonparametric
Identification and Estimation in a Roy Model with Common Non-Pecuniary
Returns.” Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. 29(2):201-215.
(5) Current Topics in Hedonics Research (approx.
2 hours)
Kuminoff
and Pope (2010). “Hedonic Equilibria,
Land Value Capitalization, and the Willingness to Pay for Public Goods.” Arizona State University Department of
Economics Working Paper.
Bajari,
Cooley, Kim and Timmins (2010). “A
Theory-Based Approach to Hedonic Price Regressions with Time-Varying Unobserved
Product Attributes: The Price of Pollution.”
Forthcoming, American Economic
Review.
Bishop and Murphy (2012).
"Incorporating Dynamic Behavior into the Hedonic Model." Working Paper, Olin School of Business,
Washington University in St. Louis.
(6) Weaknesses of the Hedonic Framework / Sorting
Model Motivation (approx. ¼ hour)
Saturday, July 21, 2012
NBER Paper: Adolescent Depression and Adult Labor Market Outcomes
Adolescent Depression and Adult Labor Market Outcomes
Jason M. Fletcher
NBER Working Paper No. 18216
July 2012
JEL No. I1,I12,J22,J24
ABSTRACT
This paper uses recently released data from a national longitudinal sample to present new evidence of the longer term effects of adolescent depression on labor market outcomes. Results suggest reductions in labor force attachment of approximately 5 percentage points and earnings reductions of approximately 20% for individuals with depressive symptoms as an adolescent. These effects are only partially reduced when controlling for channels operating through educational attainment, adult depressive symptoms, or co occurring illnesses. Further, the unique structure of the data allows for high-school fixed effects as well as suggestive evidence using sibling comparisons, which allows controls for potentially important unobserved heterogeneity. Overall, the results suggest that the links between adolescent depression and labor market outcomes are quite robust and important in magnitude, suggesting that there may be substantial labor market returns to further investments in treatment opportunities during adolescence.
Jason M. Fletcher
Yale School of Public Health
Department of Health Policy and Management
60 College Street, #303
New Haven, CT 06520
and NBER
jason.fletcher@yale.edu
David Laibson TEDx Talk
TEDx talk by David Laibson: (description below)
"At the TED@AllianzGI conference at the Time Warner Center, New York Professor David Laibson of the Harvard Business School discusses the foundation of failures of self-control and why good intentions are so often out of sync with our good behavior. He explores why we want to do the right thing, but when it’s time to do the hard work, we push it off to the future. Professor Laibson presents commitment strategies for IRAs, 401 (k) plans to overcome the failure of self-control."
"At the TED@AllianzGI conference at the Time Warner Center, New York Professor David Laibson of the Harvard Business School discusses the foundation of failures of self-control and why good intentions are so often out of sync with our good behavior. He explores why we want to do the right thing, but when it’s time to do the hard work, we push it off to the future. Professor Laibson presents commitment strategies for IRAs, 401 (k) plans to overcome the failure of self-control."
Friday, July 20, 2012
Causal effect of education on mortality in a quasi-experiment on 1.2 million Swedes
Causal effect of education on mortality in a quasi-experiment on 1.2 million Swedes. PNAS 2012 109 (22) 8461-8466; published ahead of print May 14, 2012,doi:10.1073/pnas.1105839109
Causal effect of education on mortality in a quasi-experiment on 1.2 million Swedes
In 1949–1962, Sweden implemented a 1-y increase in compulsory schooling as a quasi-experiment. Each year, children in a number of municipalities were exposed to the reform and others were kept as controls, allowing us to test the hypothesis that education is causally related to mortality. We studied all children born between 1943 and 1955, in 900 Swedish municipalities, with control for birth-cohort and area differences. Primary outcome measures are all-cause and cause-specific mortality until the end of 2007. The analyses include 1,247,867 individuals, of whom 92,351 died. We found lower all-cause mortality risk in the experimental group after age 40 [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.96, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.93–0.99] but not before (HR = 1.03, 95% CI 0.98–1.07) or during the whole follow-up (HR = 0.98, 95% CI 0.95–1.01). After age 40, the experimental group had lower mortality from overall cancer, lung cancer, and accidents. In addition, exposed women had lower mortality from ischemic heart disease, and exposed men lower mortality from overall external causes. In analyses stratified for final educational level, we found lower mortality in the experimental group within the strata that settled for compulsory schooling only (HR = 0.94, 95% CI 0.89–0.99) and compulsory schooling plus vocational training (HR = 0.92, 95% CI 0.88–0.97). Thus, the experimental group had lower mortality from causes known to be related to education. Lower mortality in the experimental group was also found among the least educated, a group that clearly benefited from the reform in terms of educational length. However, all estimates are small and there was no evident impact of the reform on all-cause mortality in all ages.
Causal effect of education on mortality in a quasi-experiment on 1.2 million Swedes
In 1949–1962, Sweden implemented a 1-y increase in compulsory schooling as a quasi-experiment. Each year, children in a number of municipalities were exposed to the reform and others were kept as controls, allowing us to test the hypothesis that education is causally related to mortality. We studied all children born between 1943 and 1955, in 900 Swedish municipalities, with control for birth-cohort and area differences. Primary outcome measures are all-cause and cause-specific mortality until the end of 2007. The analyses include 1,247,867 individuals, of whom 92,351 died. We found lower all-cause mortality risk in the experimental group after age 40 [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.96, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.93–0.99] but not before (HR = 1.03, 95% CI 0.98–1.07) or during the whole follow-up (HR = 0.98, 95% CI 0.95–1.01). After age 40, the experimental group had lower mortality from overall cancer, lung cancer, and accidents. In addition, exposed women had lower mortality from ischemic heart disease, and exposed men lower mortality from overall external causes. In analyses stratified for final educational level, we found lower mortality in the experimental group within the strata that settled for compulsory schooling only (HR = 0.94, 95% CI 0.89–0.99) and compulsory schooling plus vocational training (HR = 0.92, 95% CI 0.88–0.97). Thus, the experimental group had lower mortality from causes known to be related to education. Lower mortality in the experimental group was also found among the least educated, a group that clearly benefited from the reform in terms of educational length. However, all estimates are small and there was no evident impact of the reform on all-cause mortality in all ages.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Coursera Upcoming Courses
There are 111 upcoming course on Coursera, several of which are relevant to people who read this blog. Most of these courses are from top US universities. They are, from what I can see, free in all cases. They involve full online lectures along with tests and quizzes and, in some cases, certificates of completion. Quite an incredible array of courses.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
DUKE UNIVERSITY
Health Policy and the Affordable Care Act
Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIAIntroduction to Finance
Networked Life
Social Network Analysis
Lada Adamic
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGANStatistics One
Andrew Conway
PRINCETON UNIVERSITYIntroduction to Mathematical Thinking
Keith Devlin
STANFORD UNIVERSITYComputing for Data Analysis
Roger D. Peng
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITYPrinciples of Obesity Economics
Kevin Frick
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITYNeuroethics
Jonathan D. Moreno, Ph.D.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIAPrinciples of Economics for Scientists
Antonio Rangel
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYA Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior
Dan Ariely
DUKE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGMonday, July 16, 2012
Friday, July 13, 2012
UCD Summer Seminar Series
From John Regan:
Next Monday (July 16th), Martin Ryan and Alan Fernihough will be presenting their ongoing research as part of the Summer Seminar Series.
Martin's presentation will be on "Econometric Analysis of Scientific Production at U.S. Universities: A Preliminary Examination of Researchers' Publication Output" and Alan will be presenting on "The Fertility Transition did not Influence Infant Mortality: Evidence from Early Modern Germany".
Seminars take place in the Geary Seminar Room from 1pm to 2pm each week until the end of July. Each presentation, with time for questions, will last about 30 minutes.
Next Monday (July 16th), Martin Ryan and Alan Fernihough will be presenting their ongoing research as part of the Summer Seminar Series.
Martin's presentation will be on "Econometric Analysis of Scientific Production at U.S. Universities: A Preliminary Examination of Researchers' Publication Output" and Alan will be presenting on "The Fertility Transition did not Influence Infant Mortality: Evidence from Early Modern Germany".
Seminars take place in the Geary Seminar Room from 1pm to 2pm each week until the end of July. Each presentation, with time for questions, will last about 30 minutes.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Irish Economics and Psychology One-Day Conference
The fifth annual one day conference on Economics and Psychology will be held on November 30th. The purpose of these sessions is to develop the link between Economics, Psychology and cognate disciplines in Ireland. A special theme of these events is the implications of behavioural economics for public policy though we welcome submissions across all areas of intersection of Economics and Psychology. We welcome submissions from PhD students as well as faculty and also welcome suggestions for sessions on policy and industry relevance of behavioural economics. Abstracts (200-500 words) should be submitted before September 30th. Suggestions or question please send to Liam.Delaney@stir.ac.uk and/or Pete.Lunn@esri.ie
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
NBER Paper on Peer Effects
Peer Effects in Program Participation
Gordon B. Dahl, Katrine V. Løken, Magne Mogstad
The influence of peers could play an important role in the take up of social programs. However, estimating peer effects has proven challenging given the problems of reflection, correlated unobservables, and endogenous group membership. We overcome these identification issues in the context of paid paternity leave in Norway using a regression discontinuity design. Our approach differs from existing literature which attempts to measure peer effects by exploiting random assignment to peer groups; in contrast, we study peer effects in naturally occurring peer groups, but exploit random variation in the “price” of a social program for a subset of individuals. Fathers of children born after April 1, 1993 in Norway were eligible for one month of governmental paid paternity leave, while fathers of children born before this cutoff were not. There is a sharp increase in fathers taking paternity leave immediately after the reform, with take up rising from 3% to 35%. While this quasi-random variation changed the cost of paternity leave for some fathers and not others, it did not directly affect the cost for the father’s coworkers or brothers. Therefore, any effect on the brother or the coworker can be attributed to the influence of the peer father in their network. Our key findings on peer effects are four-fold. First, we find strong evidence for substantial peer effects of program participation in both workplace and family networks. Coworkers and brothers are 11 and 15 percentage points, respectively, more likely to take paternity leave if their peer father was induced to take up leave by the reform. Second, the most likely mechanism is information transmission about costs and benefits, including increased knowledge of how an employer will react. Third, there is essential heterogeneity in the size of the peer effect depending on the strength of ties between peers, highlighting the importance of duration, intensity, and frequency of social interactions. Fourth, the estimated peer effect gets amplified over time, with each subsequent birth exhibiting a snowball effect as the original peer father's influence cascades through a firm. Our findings demonstrate that peer effects can lead to long-run equilibrium participation rates which are substantially higher than would otherwise be expected.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Chris Timmins Hedonic Valuation MasterClass Stirling
Dear colleagues and students,
You are kindly invited to attend a SIRE masterclass by Professor Christopher Timmins, Duke University, entitled “Hedonics and Non-Market Valuation”.
Date:
25 July 2012
Venue and times:
Cottrell Building, University of Stirling
9.00am - 18.00pm
The purpose of this mini-course is to provide a graduate-level overview of hedonic analysis. Hedonics are the primary revealed-preference tool for non-market valuation and cost-benefit analysis, and also play an important role in quality adjustment of price indices, and in modelling demand for differentiated products and their attributes. The course will begin with a brief discussion of Rosen’s (1974) seminal paper and basic identification issues. It will proceed with a discussion of the econometric problems associated with the recovery of the “willingness to pay” function, which is required for the valuation of non-marginal changes in amenities or product attributes. We will then proceed to a discussion of omitted variables bias, and the quasi-experimental techniques that are used to address them. The fourth part of the course will describe hedonic analysis when individuals sort over multiple (labour and housing) markets. The fifth component will describe three areas of current research in hedonics. The mini-course will then conclude with a short discussion of some of the weaknesses of the hedonic approach, motivating the use of structural sorting models.
Christopher Timmins is Professor of Economics at Duke University. He specializes in the subjects of environment economics, industrial organization, and regional economics. His research incorporates Tieabout models, sorting models, and hedonic valuation.
Please register with Lennie Jing (lennie.jing@stir.ac.uk) by 15 July 2012.
There is no charge to attend this class but registration is required. SIRE will offer travel expenses (limited to a 2nd class rail fare) to academics and Phd students based in Scotland.
For any further information please contact Stephan Heblich (stephan.heblich@stir.ac.uk).
Thursday, July 05, 2012
The Historical Fertility Transition: A Guide for Economists
Guinnane, Timothy W. 2011. "The Historical Fertility Transition: A Guide for Economists." Journal of Economic Literature, 49(3): 589–614.
The historical fertility transition is the process by which much of Europe and North America went from high to low fertility in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This transformation is central to recent accounts of long-run economic growth. Prior to the transition, women bore as many as eight children each, and the elasticity of fertility with respect to incomes was positive. Today, many women have no children at all, and the elasticity of fertility with respect to incomes is zero or even negative. This paper discusses the large literature on the historical fertility transition, focusing on what we do and do not know about the process. I stress some possible misunderstanding of the demographic literature, and discuss an agenda for future work. (JEL I12, J13, N30)
The historical fertility transition is the process by which much of Europe and North America went from high to low fertility in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This transformation is central to recent accounts of long-run economic growth. Prior to the transition, women bore as many as eight children each, and the elasticity of fertility with respect to incomes was positive. Today, many women have no children at all, and the elasticity of fertility with respect to incomes is zero or even negative. This paper discusses the large literature on the historical fertility transition, focusing on what we do and do not know about the process. I stress some possible misunderstanding of the demographic literature, and discuss an agenda for future work. (JEL I12, J13, N30)
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Marie Curie Funding Initiatives 2012
Those of you interested in coming to work at Stirling from outside the UK should seriously consider the European funding schemes, in particular the second one. In general, anyone at postdoctoral stage looking to move between countries in Europe to conduct serious research in any field should look at these schemes. I led a successful application for an integration award last year and am happy to talk to people thinking of applying. Also, I am happy to talk to people about being a host for the intra-european fellowships. In general, I am quite surprised how many people do not apply for these given how flexible and good the funding is. For people who have finished their PhD, have good records, and want a few years to work on their papers before going fully on the job market, they seem perfect.
1. September 2012: Marie Curie Career Integration Grant
Marie Curie Career Integration Grants are intended to improve considerably the prospects for the permanent integration of researchers who are offered a stable research post in Europe after a mobility period in a country different from the country where the researcher has been active during the past years (i.e. the researcher has to be mobile but can come from anywhere in the world – moving within Europe or coming from outside Europe). The duration of these grants is up to 4 years.
2. Intra-European Fellowships for career development (IEF)
This action provides financial support for advanced training and trans-national mobility, for a period of 12 to 24 months (full-time equivalent), for individual projects presented by experienced researchers active in Member States or associated countries in liaison with a host organisation from another Member State or associated country. Overall, projects are expected to add significantly to the career development of the best and most promising researchers active in Europe, in order to enhance and maximise their contribution to the knowledge-based economy and society. http://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/understanding/marie-curieinbrief/research-development_en.html
Sunday, July 01, 2012
False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant
Important paper below proposing a set of guidelines for authors and reviewers to counteract the problem of false positive results being over-published in scientific psychology journals.
University of Pennsylvania - Operations & Information Management Department
University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business
University of Pennsylvania - Operations & Information Management Department
May 23, 2011
Psychological Science, 2011
Abstract:
In this article, we accomplish two things. First, we show that despite empirical psychologists’ nominal endorsement of a low rate of false-positive findings (≤ .05), flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting dramatically increases actual false-positive rates. In many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not. We present computer simulations and a pair of actual experiments that demonstrate how unacceptably easy it is to accumulate (and report) statistically significant evidence for a false hypothesis. Second, we suggest a simple, low-cost, and straightforwardly effective disclosure-based solution to this problem. The solution involves six concrete requirements for authors and four guidelines for reviewers, all of which impose a minimal burden on the publication process.
Joseph P. Simmons
University of Pennsylvania - Operations & Information Management Department
Leif D. Nelson
University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business
Uri Simonsohn
University of Pennsylvania - Operations & Information Management Department
May 23, 2011
Psychological Science, 2011
Abstract:
In this article, we accomplish two things. First, we show that despite empirical psychologists’ nominal endorsement of a low rate of false-positive findings (≤ .05), flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting dramatically increases actual false-positive rates. In many cases, a researcher is more likely to falsely find evidence that an effect exists than to correctly find evidence that it does not. We present computer simulations and a pair of actual experiments that demonstrate how unacceptably easy it is to accumulate (and report) statistically significant evidence for a false hypothesis. Second, we suggest a simple, low-cost, and straightforwardly effective disclosure-based solution to this problem. The solution involves six concrete requirements for authors and four guidelines for reviewers, all of which impose a minimal burden on the publication process.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 8
Keywords: Methodology, Motivated Reasoning, Publication, Disclosure
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