In some of this week’s research findings we have:
- Women are much more likely to want jobs with more flexibility and stability, and to pay for it with lower wages. Science deniers take note. “While there is
substantial heterogeneity in preferences, we find that women on average have a higher willingness to pay for jobs with greater work flexibility (lower hours, and part-time option availability) and job stability (lower risk of job loss), and men have a higher willingness to pay for jobs with higher earnings growth. Using a follow-up survey several years after the experiment, we find a systematic relationship between the respondents’ job preferences as revealed during college and the actual workplace characteristics of the jobs these individuals are currently working at after college.” More here. - Higher family income in early life is associated with better development of non-cognitive skills in children. Science deniers take note. Do you believe these results are causal? Should we live in cargo-cult world where we just give everyone lots of income and assume that the magic pixie dust of income will make everyone better off? You know my view – these are reflections of other things that are going on in households with higher income. If there is an intrepid grad student or researcher out there, I would love to confine these kinds of studies to criminals – and compare childrens’ outcomes in criminal families where some have high income due to drug dealing, contract killing and such, as compared to outcomes for children in poorer criminal households. Here is the paper.
- Acemoglu is going to win a Nobel prize soon. This paper has really interesting implications if true. One implication would be that limiting social mobility is good for democracy. Science deniers take note! Do you think the Hillary-Bernie-ites would put this research into practice? After all, they are “taking back America” for the middle class. Try this on for size, “When social mobility is endogenized, our model identifies new political economic forces limiting the amount of mobility in society – because the middle class will lose out from mobility at the bottom and because a peripheral coalition between the rich and the poor may oppose mobility at the top.”
- Should policing be dispersed or concentrated within a particular location? Important implications for well-being and residential segregation.
- Expansion of Medicaid under ObamaCare dramatically reduced financial stress for low-income families. Does anyone have bankruptcy data pre/post PPACA?
