We show theoretically and empirically that executives are paid less for their own firm's performance and more for their rivals' performance if an industry's firms are more commonly owned by the same set of investors. Higher common ownership also leads to higher unconditional total pay. We exploit quasi-exogenous variation in common ownership from a mutual fund trading scandal to support a causal interpretation.
The TseTse fly is unique to Africa and transmits a parasite harmful to humans and lethal to livestock. This paper tests the hypothesis that the TseTse reduced the ability of Africans to generate an agricultural surplus historically. Ethnic groups inhabiting TseTse-suitable areas were less likely to use domesticated animals and the plow, less likely to be politically centralized, and had a lower population density. These correlations are not found in the tropics outside of Africa, where the fly does not exist. The evidence suggests current economic performance is affected by the TseTse through the channel of precolonial political centralization.
Bryan Caplan's new post is titled "Intelligence Makes People Think Like Economists: Further Evidence." The claim from the Duarte, Haidt et al. article he quotes is that "economic conservatism" and IQ are positively correlated. The comments on my FB make me think I should have stressed this more, as some seem to have run away with the idea that high IQ folks tend to frame questions in the same sort of way as academic economists. Now that's a pretty debatable interpretation of "economic conservatism". Maybe I'll get around to checking how the article operationalises this concept some time, or maybe someone else will let me know.
Bryan's post provides the 7 relevant references given in the article's mini literature review.
I think leftism is often seen as the province of intelligent people, and dispelling that notion with sheer IQ data might do a lot of good. True, people will get to say "ad hominem". And, of course, that people are more likely to think X the smarter they are does not guarantee that X is true. Still, I think it's evidence for X. How strong this evidence is depends on a number of other contentious issues, though.
This paper tests for downward nominal wage rigidity in markets for casual daily agricultural labor in a developing country context. I examine transitory shifts in labor demand, generated by rainfall shocks, in 600 Indian districts from 1956-2009. First, there is asymmetric adjustment: nominal wages rise in response to positive shocks but do not fall during droughts. Second, transitory positive shocks generate ratcheting: after they have dissipated, nominal wages do not adjust back down. Third, inflation moderates these effects, enabling downward real wage adjustments both during droughts and after positive shocks. Fourth, wage distortions generate employment distortions, creating boom and bust cycles: employment is 9% lower in the year after a transitory positive shock than if the positive shock had not occurred. Fifth, consistent with the misallocation of labor across farms, households with small landholdings increase labor supply to their own farms when they are rationed out of the external labor market. The results are not consistent with other transmission mechanisms, such as migration or capital accumulation. These findings indicate the presence of rigidities in a setting with few institutional constraints. Survey evidence suggests that workers and employers believe that nominal wage cuts are unfair and lead to effort reductions.
If, on the 1st of January 2016, the national currency of Greece is still the Euro, I will pay Alexander Biersack €3. Otherwise, Alexander will pay me €2.
The odds I've offered are as generous as they could have been given my low level of confidence :) I say this now and will not repeat it if and when I lose this bet, nor prior to it, especially if things are looking like I am going to lose.
This IMF published paper by Ostry, Berg, and Tsangarides presents empirical evidence on the relationships between inequality, redistributon, and growth. From the executive summary:
Second, lower net inequality is robustly correlated with faster and more durable growth, for a given level of redistribution. These results are highly supportive of our earlier work.
And third, redistribution appears generally benign in terms of its impact on growth; only in extreme cases is there some evidence that it may have direct negative effects on growth. Thus the combined direct and indirect effects of redistribution—including the growth effects of the resulting lower inequality—are on average pro-growth.