The effect of terrorism (the 9/11 attacks) on well being in the UK.

The 9/11 attacks in the US are memorable for all the wrong reasons. Just as an older generation remember where they were when JFK was assassinated, most of us will remember the events in the US as it unfolded. This paper quantifies the effects on well-being in the UK.
Destruction and distress: using a quasi-experiment to show the effects of the September 11 attacks on subjective well-being in the UK
Robert Metcalfe,Nattavudh Powdthavee,Paul Dolan
Using a longitudinal household panel dataset in the United Kingdom, where most interviews are conducted in September each year, we are able to show that the attacks of September 11 resulted in lower levels of subjective well-being for those interviewed after that date in 2001 compared to those interviewed before it. This quasi-experiment provides one of the first examples of the impact of a terrorist attack in one country on well-being in another country. We value this effect through a cost of illness approach, which is estimated to be between £170 and £380 million.

An Article on Job Re-Training in Yesterday's NYT

"In Michigan, where the unemployment rate in May was 14.1 percent, the nation’s highest, 78,000 people are enrolled in the state’s No Worker Left Behind program and 7,800 are on the waiting list...

...a little-noticed study the Labor Department released several months ago found that the benefits of the biggest federal job training program (the Workforce Investment Act) were “small or nonexistent” for laid-off workers...

...economists cited several reasons (for why) retraining might not be effective. Many workers who have lost their jobs are older and had spent their lives working in one industry. In need of a job right away, many pick relatively short training programs, which often have marginal benefits. Job retraining is also ineffective without job creation..."

The full article from the NYT is available here. Deatils of Michigan's "No Worker Left Behind" program are available here. Information about the Workforce Investment Act is available here. The study mentioned in the NYT article ("Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Non-Experimental Net Impact Evaluation") was conducted by Impaq International and is available here since December 2008.

Propensity score matching is used in the study to identify individuals in comparison groups who are similar to the individuals who participated in the WIA program. The study uses administrative data from 12 states, dividing the data for each state into three classes: base data, comprising WIA program participants; comparison data, providing information on individuals in other programs who are matched to treated cases; and outcome data, merged by individual identifier. The states in the study are Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin.

Mostly Harmless!

DON'T PANIC! The core methods in today's econometric toolkit are linear regression for statistical control, instrumental variables methods for the analysis of natural experiments, and differences-in-differences methods that exploit policy changes.

This is the refrain of Joshua Angrist and Steve Pischke in the preface to their new book: "Mostly Harmless Econometrics". We mentioned it on the blog before here. In advance of Professor Angrist's visit to Geary on Friday, people might be interested in a preview of the Mostly Harmless book that is available here. For anyone who doesn't have a copy of the book (or even if you do), it's worth looking at the paper by Angrist and Krueger on "Empirical Strategies in Labour Economics". This is more a primer than a paper; it featured here (takes less time to to load up) in the 1999 Handbook of Labour Economics.

Abstract below:

This chapter provides an overview of the methodological and practical issues that arise when estimating causal relationships that are of interest to labor economists. The subject matter includes identification, data collection, and measurement problems. Four identification strategies are discussed, and five empirical examples -- the effects of schooling, unions, immigration, military service, and class size -- illustrate the methodological points. In discussing each example, we adopt an experimentalist perspective that emphasizes the distinction between variables that have causal effects, control variables, and outcome variables. The chapter also discusses secondary datasets, primary data collection strategies, and administrative data. The section on measurement issues focuses on recent empirical examples, presents a summary of empirical findings on the reliability of key labor market data, and briefly reviews the role of survey sampling weights and the allocation of missing values in empirical research.

Finally, there is also a range of "Mostly Harmless" t-shirts for sale; see below for a sample!

Mostly Harmless Econometrics

DON'T PANIC! The core methods in today's econometric toolkit are linear regression for statistical control, instrumental variables methods for the analysis of natural experiments, and differences-in-differences methods that exploit policy changes.

This is the refrain of Joshua Angrist and Steve Pischke in the preface to their new book: "Mostly Harmless Econometrics". A preview is available here. My econometrics professor, Paul Devereux, tells me that there are many references throughout to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. There is also a range of "Mostly Harmless" t-shirts for sale; see below for a sample!