The class gap in academic career progression
There is a new and excellent paper by Anna Stansbury and Kyra Rodriguez on this topic:
Unlike gender or race, class is rarely a focus of research or DEI efforts in elite US occupations. Should it be? In this paper, we document a large class gap in career progression in one labor market: US tenure-track academia. Using parental education to proxy for socioeconomic background, we compare career outcomes of people who got their PhDs in the same institution and field (excluding those with PhD parents). First-generation college graduates are 13% less likely to end up tenured at an R1, and are on average tenured at institutions ranked 9% lower, than their PhD classmates with a parent with a (non-PhD) graduate degree. We explore three sets of mechanisms: (1) research productivity, (2) networks, and (3) preferences. Research productivity can explain less than a third of the class gap, and preferences explain almost none. Our analyses of coauthor characteristics suggest networks likely play a role. Finally, examining PhDs who work in industry we find a class gap in pay and in managerial responsibilities which widens over the career. This means a class gap in career progression exists in other US occupations beyond academia.
Here is a first-rate tweet storm by Stansbury on the paper. Via Aidan Finley.
Friday assorted links
1. MIE: “Shake Shack’s Crinkle Cut Fries Have Been Reimagined as a Body Pillow That’s Oddly Chic.”
2. Grocery store MIE: bullets in vending machines.
3. There is talk of a possible Three Mile Island restart.
4. New architectural citations.
6. MIE: Oregon puffin license plates.
7. For the third time in recent memory, a 15-uear-old is Norwegian chess champion, model that.
Update on the Supervillains (maybe that’s you)
The law’s price controls will also deter companies from developing new medicines. A study I co-authored estimated that 135 fewer drugs will come to market through 2039 because of the Inflation Reduction Act. Research firm Vital Transformation’s forecast is even bleaker, predicting that the U.S. could lose 139 drugs within the next decade.
Dozens of life-sciences companies have announced cuts to their research and development pipelines because of the 2022 law. These announcements have come in earnings calls and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission—where deliberate misstatements would expose executives to civil and criminal penalties—so they can’t be chalked up to political posturing.
That is from Tomas Philipson at the WSJ. It is worth noting this kind of academic research has not been effectively rebutted, rather what you usually hear in response is a bunch of snarky comments about Big Pharma and the like.
And to repeat myself yet again: if you are ever tempted to cancel somebody, ask yourself “do I cancel those who favor tougher price controls on pharma? After all, they may be inducing millions of premature deaths.” If you don’t cancel those people — and you shouldn’t — that should broaden your circle of tolerance more generally.
Matt Yglesias on neoliberalism and economic growth
And it’s worth asking: Is it true that since 1974, policy debate in the United States has been dominated by a “growth-at-all-costs” brand of “free-market fundamentalism”?
I don’t think that actually is true. Technically, the biggest pieces of environmental legislation passed just outside that window — the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, and the Endangered Species Act in 1973. But it’s pretty clear that environmental regulation is a lot stricter in 2024 than it was in 1974. The Americans With Disabilities Act was passed in 1990. Land use regulation — which was explicitly called “growth control” when it was new — has grown dramatically stricter since the seventies.
The idea that for the last 50 years we’ve been on a manic quest for growth is confused. In reality, we’ve seen during that time period increasing levels of political influence wielded by people (mainly environmentalists and NIMBYs) who are skeptical of economic growth. It’s true, as skeptics of growth sometimes note, that internal policy disputes in the 1950s and 60s rarely featured pushback on the grounds of the necessity of focusing on economic growth. But that’s not because anti-growth sentiment was stronger in the past — it’s because back then there was almost no one in a position of power who was arguing for explicitly anti-growth policies. Degrowthers have obviously not dominated American politics since the 1970s — we have had economic growth — but growth has been slower because anti-growth ideas have gotten some real purchase over the last 50 years. The Hewlett thesis statement about this is backwards.
Here is the full post, gated but worth paying for.
Narco-pentcostalism in Brazil?
Reports that a powerful Rio drug lord known for his extremist religious beliefs ordered Catholic churches near his stronghold to close have spooked worshipers and security experts and exposed the advent of a “narco-pentecostal” movement made up of heavily armed evangelical drug traffickers.
Claims emerged in the Brazilian press over the weekend that Álvaro Malaquias Santa Rosa – a notorious gang boss known as Peixão (Big Fish) – had determined that three places of worship should shut down in and around the agglomeration of favelas that he controls in northern Rio.
Since Peixão – whose nickname comes from the ichthys “Jesus” fish – took power in 2016 of five favelas that have become known as the Complexo de Israel, an allusion to the evangelical belief that the return of Jews to the Holy Land is a step towards the second coming of Christ and Armageddon.
A neon Star of David has been erected at the top of the complex and at night can be seen for miles around – an unmissable symbol of Peixão’s force and his faith. The roofs of the favelas’ redbrick houses are dotted with blue and white Israel flags demarcating the territory the gangster controls [emphasis added]. When police raided one of his hideouts in 2021 they found a swimming pool framed by a mural of the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem and the words: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”
In the past, Peixão’s troops have been accused of ransacking Afro-Brazilian temples and banning Afro-Brazilian celebrations in the Complex of Israel, where more than 100,000 people live. But this week’s reports were the first relating to Catholic places of worship.
Here is the full story.
Bryan Caplan on YIMBY in the NYT
Here is one excerpt:
What few appreciate is that the overregulation of housing has blocked a classic American path: moving to a higher-wage part of the country to secure a better life. A paper by the economists Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag shows that housing costs now routinely outweigh wage gains: While janitors and waiters do indeed earn higher salaries in the Bay Area, they have to spend much more than their extra pay on rent. Programmers and lawyers who move to gold-rush regions still come out ahead, but the rest of the workforce is gradually getting out of Dodge. In a functional society, self-interest inspires workers to relocate to wherever they are most productive. In our society, strict housing regulation has decoupled movement and value, leading to the mass migration of lower-income residents away from geographic centers of technological progress and economic growth.
Here is the entire article, and don’t forget about Bryan’s new book on housing deregulation Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation.
Thursday assorted links
1. Singapore fact of the day uh-oh.
2. Benjamin Schneider on robotaxis.
3. Jon Hartley interview with Edmund Phelps.
4. The $150,000 dog.
5. Greg Mankiw on inflation and the Phillips curve.
6. Doctors using AI for rent-seeking (NYT).
7. America’s younger Catholic priests are more conservative? (NYT)
8. RIP, Sigrun Øen, mother of Magnus Carlsen.
The polity that is Hawaii
From an MR reader:
The most Democratic legislature in the country passed two market-friendly bills this session.
1) HB2404 CD 1 represents the largest income tax cut in the State’s history (description and analysis here).
2) SB 3202 forces the counties to allow more construction of Accessory Dwelling Units on residential properties (news article here).
As somebody who works on HI state policy, looking at the supply-side constraints is a new way of thinking here. People are starting to recognize that the same old demand-side approaches are not working. I expect more laws like this in the coming years.
Hawaii has always been a small-c conservative state, in part due to the large Asian population. The Leg once again struck down a Cannabis legalization bill this year despite a big push from Progressives.
It will be interesting to see what happens next.
My excellent Conversation with Brian Winter
Here is the video, audio, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
It’s not just the churrasco that made him fall in love with Brazil. Brian Winter has been studying and writing about Latin America for over 20 years. He’s been tracking the struggles and triumphs of the region as it’s dealt with decades of coups, violence, and shifting economics. His work offers a nuanced perspective on Latin America’s persistent challenges and remarkable resilience.
Together Brian and Tyler discuss the politics and economics of nearly every country from the equator down. They cover the future of migration into Brazil, what it’s doing right in agriculture, the cultural shift in race politics, crime in Rio and São Paulo, the effectiveness and future consequences of Bukele’s police state in El Salvador, the economic growth of Colombia despite continued violence, the prevalence of startups and psychoanalysis in Argentina, Uruguay’s reduction in poverty levels, the beautiful ugliness of Sao Paulo, where Brian will explore next, and more.
And here is one excerpt;
COWEN: What’s the economic geography of Brazil going to look like? All the wealth near Mato Grosso and the north just very, very poor? Or the north empties out? How’s that going to work? There used to be some modest degree of balance.
WINTER: That’s true. Most of the population in Brazil and the economic center, for sure, was in the southeast. That means, really, São Paulo state, which is about a quarter of Brazil’s population but roughly a third of its GDP. Rio as well, and the state of Minas Gerais, which has a name that tells its history. That means “general mines” in Portuguese. That’s the area where a lot of the gold came out of in the 18th and 19th centuries. That’s gone now, so it’s not as much of an economic pull.
You’re right, Tyler, though, that a lot of the real boom right now, the action, is in places like Mato Grosso, which is in the region of Brazil called the Central West. That’s soy country. I’m from Texas, and Mato Grosso is virtually indistinguishable from Texas these days. It’s hot. It’s flat. The crop, like I said, is soy. There’s cattle ranching as well.
Even the music — Brazil, as others have noted, has gone from being the country of bossa nova and the samba in the 1970s to being the country of sertanejo today. Sertanejo is a Brazilian cousin of country music with accordions, but it’s sung by people — men mostly — in jeans, big belt buckles, and cowboy hats. They’re importing that — not only that economic model but that lifestyle as well.
COWEN: What is the great Brazilian music of today? MPB is dead, right? So, what should someone listen to?
Recommended, interesting throughout.
Wednesday assorted links
Rent Control
Kholodilin offers a comprehensive review of the literature on rent control, some 206 papers, published and unpublished from 1967-2013. The results are summarized in the figure below where (-) indicates papers finding a negative effect, (0) no effect and (+) a positive effect. The top left figure, for example, shows, not surprisingly, that almost all papers find that rent controls does lower rents in the rent-controlled units.
Most papers that study the issue, however, find that rents increase in the uncontrolled units (middle row, right column.) In other words, “the imposition of rent control amplifies the shortage of housing. Therefore, the waiting queues become longer and would-be tenants must spend more time looking for a dwelling.”
Similarly, “nearly all studies indicate a negative effect of rent control on mobility” (top column, middle row).
Importantly, “the published studies are almost unanimous with respect to the impact of rent control on the quality of housing….[namely] that rent control leads to a deterioration in the quality of those dwellings subject to regulations.” (middle row, middle column).
The tourist culture that is Copenhagen
A new fee for Venice day trippers. A looming ban on vacation rentals in Barcelona. Restrictions on the sale of alcohol in Majorca. At a time when overwhelmed European destinations are slapping tourists with restrictions and fees, Copenhagen is trying a different approach: rewarding visitors who act responsibly.
Beginning July 15, tourists who demonstrate climate-friendly travel behavior by participating in the city’s green initiatives — including cycling, train travel and clean-up efforts — will be granted access to museum tours, kayak rentals, free meals and more.
Here is more from at the NYT.
30th anniversary of the Brazilian real
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt, starting with the reality of Brazilian hyperinflation in the early 1990s:
Fortunately, economists and other reformers came to the rescue and designed an effective plan for currency stabilization. Brazil first created a virtual currency, called the URV, and switched contracts and prices to the new accounting unit. Next, a new currency, the real, was introduced as equal in value to the URV and roughly equal to the US dollar. That created the prospect of a new and more stable currency.
The crucial part of the reforms was a credible plan for fiscal stability. Brazil wasn’t experiencing hyperinflation for no reason — rather, the freshly printed money was needed to make good on promised government expenditures. So to make the numbers add up without hyperinflation, the Brazilian government carried out some budget cuts, privatized some assets, transferred some functions to state and local governments, and made some constitutional and legislative pledges in the direction of a balanced budget…
Yet the ending to this story is by no means entirely happy. For several years Brazil’s economy has been growing below 1%, though it has recently climbed above 2%. The country has bountiful natural resources, plenty of human talent, some excellent companies and universities, and no natural geopolitical enemies. Still, its economic growth has been mediocre. Brazil ought to be able to achieve annual growth of 4% to 6%.
The causes of this disappointing growth are varied and subject to dispute. Possible culprits include corruption, excess protectionism, an economy too dependent on natural resources, an unreliable education system and, perhaps, a loss of economic dynamism. In the golden years of the late 1960s and early ‘70s, Brazil had very high growth rates, hitting 14% in 1973, so extremely good performance is possible.
Worth a ponder.
Alice Evans on female labor force participation and appreciation of female talent
Abhay Aneja and colleagues reveal that daughters of civil servants who were more exposed to female co-workers during WWI were significantly more likely to work. For each standard deviation increase in exposure to female co-workers, the gender gap in labor force participation for children narrowed by over 4 percentage points. This represents a 9% decline in the average labor force participation gap. Importantly, these effects were
- Driven by increased labor force participation of daughters (sons are unaffected)
- Strongest for children who, at the time of exposure, were teenagers
- Present even for children who moved away from their parents’ original city
Here is the full post.
Tuesday assorted links
1. Religious membership aided post-hurricane recovery growth.
2. Anna Gát Hope Axis podcast with Noah Smith.
3. Peter Gray on social media and depression.
4. Intellectual courage as the scarcest resource.
5. Richard Ngo on counterproductive activism.