Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 21

How a genre of music affects life expectancy of famous musicians in that genre

That is from Dianne Theodora Kenny, via Ted Gioia.  Kenny notes:

For male musicians across all genres, accidental death (including all vehicular incidents and accidental overdose) accounted for almost 20% of all deaths. But accidental death for rock musicians was higher than this (24.4%) and for metal musicians higher still (36.2%).

Suicide accounted for almost 7% of all deaths in the total sample. However, for punk musicians, suicide accounted for 11% of deaths; for metal musicians, a staggering 19.3%. At just 0.9%, gospel musicians had the lowest suicide rate of all the genres studied.

Murder accounted for 6.0% of deaths across the sample, but was the cause of 51% of deaths in rap musicians and 51.5% of deaths for hip hop musicians, to date.

Beware selection, because of course most rap musicians aren’t dead yet.  This problem will be more extreme, the younger is the genre.  Another selection effect may be that getting killed, or dying in an unusual way, contributes to your fame.

Facts about MIT economics

1. It is believed that MIT graduating Ph.d. students are more likely to stay in academia than those from any other school or field.

2. Across 1977-2011, MIT economists made up 34 percent of the members of the CEA, and Robert Solow supervised one-third of that group.

3. Even in the early days of MIT, Paul Samuelson was not a major thesis advisor, and his students were not so likely to return to MIT as faculty.

4. Out of 35 J.B. Clark medalists until 2012, 47% of them have some affiliation with MIT, either a degree from there or teaching there.

5. As of a few years ago (I am not sure of the exact date), there were 1316 holders of an MIT Ph.d. in economics.

6. In the 2000s, Daron Acemoglu was the most active thesis advisor at MIT.

That is all from “MIT’s Rise to Prominence: Outline of a Collective Biography,” by Andrej Svorenčík.  There are various versions of that article here, the jstor version here, and it is reprinted in MIT and the Transformation of American Economics, edited by E. Roy Weintraub.

Assorted links

1. Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers (music video).

2. How much does time spent with your kids matter, ages 3-11 edition?

3. The myth of Europe’s little ice age.

4. The intangible corporation.  And competition and working conditions, a rebuttal to me from Stumbling and Mumbling.

5. There is no great stagnation.

6. Yuval Levin on what conservatives and libertarians share.

The reckoning hour is near…

The problem is that Mr. Tsipras has not convinced his creditors that he is serious about reform or that his team is remotely on top of the detail. He needs a game-changer. This should, indeed, be a rupture — but with his left faction, not his creditors.

That is from Hugo Dixon, file it under “Scream it From the Rooftops.”  You will note, by the way, that the far-left faction accounts for 30 to 40 of the 149 coalition seats in the Greek parliament, so such an action would not be easy.  It is still not too late, however, if only…

How much has the introduction of air conditioning driven interstate mobility?

Paul Krugman has had a few posts on this question, most recently this one, the first one here.  Krugman is right in asserting a major role for air conditioning, but there is a subtle framing point which is sometimes neglected.  The most on-point study is this piece from Jordan Rappaport (pdf):

U.S. residents have been moving en masse to places with nice weather. Well known is the migration towards places with warm winters, which is often attributed to the introduction of air conditioning. But people have also been moving to places with cooler, less-humid summers, which is the opposite of what is expected from the introduction of air conditioning. Nor can the movement to nice weather be primarily explained by shifting industrial composition or by elderly migration. Instead, a large portion of weather-related moves appear to be the result of an increased valuation of nice weather as a consumption amenity, probably due to broad-based rising per capita income.

 Overall Rappaport concludes that “nice [warm] weather is a normal good” is the more important driving force behind the movement to the Sun Belt than is air conditioning per se, though of course air conditioning makes nice warm weather all the nicer.  Evidence from compensating differentials also indicates that “…the decreased discomfort from heat and humidity afforded by air-conditioning has not been the primary driver of the move to nice weather.” (p.26)

From 1880 to 1910, Americans overall are moving to places with bad (cold) weather.  In the 1920s they start moving, on net, to places with nicer weather and that trend has not let up.  The arrival of affordable air conditioning in the postwar era bumps this up a bit, but the main trend already was in place.  Furthermore air conditioning has been in the south for quite a while now, but migration in that direction continues.  In his second post on the topic, Krugman refers to this as a “gradual adjustment” to AC, but it seems to better fit the nice weather as a normal good story.  We’ll know more if we see this migration continuing, but I expect it will.  At some point it won’t be plausible to call the ongoing movement a “lagged response” to the introduction of air conditioning, but again it will fit the normal good story pretty smoothly.

Note also that life expectancy is notably higher in warm weather than cold weather.  Deschenes and Moretti conclude (pdf): “…The longevity gains associated with mobility from the Northeast to the Southwest account for 4% to 7% of the total gains in life expectancy experienced by the U.S. population over the past thirty years.”

That again points toward a “normal good” explanation, with air conditioning playing a supporting role.

That all said, if you look at the larger political debate going on here, Krugman is correct in arguing that lower taxes are the not main reason for this migration, even though the median voter in these states probably approves of such relatively low tax rates.  In any case, there is a clearer and better version of the weather hypothesis which can be put forward.

Assorted links

1. Michael Spence on whether equities are overvalued.

2. Does a year of NYU now cost $71,000?

3. 422 free art books from the Met.

4. Richard E. Wagner on Gordon Tullock, and more here.  And are most occupational licensing boards now illegal?

5. What is the Chinese view of TPP?

6. Switzerland and the history of liberty.

7. Leavened bread repurchase agreements.

Every TV News Report on the Economy Ever

Hat tip: Daniel Altman.

Education in Mao’s China

Advancement in China’s school system was highly competitive, and the odds of reaching the top of the educational ladder were very steep.  Of the 32.9 million children who entered primary school in 1965, only 9 percent could expect to enter junior high school.  Only 15 percent of junior high school entrants, in turn, could expect to graduate and enter high school.  Among the highly selected groups that graduated from academic high schools, only 36 percent could expect to enroll in a university.  Of those who entered primary school in 1965, only 1.3 percent could expect to attend an academic high school, and only one-half of 1 percent could expect to attend university.

Of course the Caplanian point is that China managed a lot of post-1979 economic growth with what was fundamentally a not very educated generation.

That excerpt is from Andrew G. Walder’s China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed, my previous post on this excellent book is here.

The working age population in Finland is now shrinking

Edward Hugh writes:

So, what do you do about the problem of secular stagnation? Again here there is divergence of opinion. Some still seek to treat the phenomenon as if it were a variant of the liquidity trap issue. Most notable here is Paul Krugman, who continues to hope that massive quantitative easing backed by strong fiscal stimulus will push the economy back onto a healthy path. But if the issue is secular stagnation, and the root is population ageing and shrinking, it is hard to see how this can be. The fact that Japan is just about to fall back into deflation 2 years after applying a monumental Quantitative Easing problem seems to endorse the idea that the problem may have no “solution” in the classical sense of the term.

There is this:

Finland has transited from being a country with a significant goods trade surplus, to being one with a structural deficit.

Even the current account balance has now turned negative.

And the country’s Net International Investment Position is also turning negative.

With pictures at the link.

Hugh’s conclusion is this:

At the end of the day, only two things can be said with a fair degree of certainty: short term fiscal austerity won’t make any significant improvement and could help make things worse (this whole discourse is based on a misunderstanding about the problem) while short term stimulus won’t stimulate.

More sensible than most of what you will read on this topic.

Sentences to ponder

From Will Wilkinson:

Reminder: The much greater mystery is why people don’t go on shooting sprees or crash planes on purpose ALL THE TIME.