Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 431

Retractions

That is a new paper by Pierre Azoulay, Jeffrey Furman, Joshua Krieger, and Fiona Murray, and here is the abstract:

To what extent does “false science” impact the rate and direction of scientific change? We examine the impact of more than 1,100 scientific retractions on the citation trajectories of articles that are close neighbors of retracted articles in intellectual space but were published prior to the retraction event. Our results indicate that following retraction and relative to carefully selected controls, related articles experience a lasting five to ten percent decline in the rate at which they are cited. We probe the mechanisms that might underlie these negative spillovers over intellectual space. One view holds that adjacent fields atrophy post-retraction because the shoulders they offer to follow-on researchers have been proven to be shaky or absent. An alternative view holds that scientists avoid the “infected” fields lest their own status suffers through mere association. Two pieces of evidence are consistent with the latter view. First, for-profit citers are much less responsive to the retraction event than are academic citers. Second, the penalty suffered by related articles is much more severe when the associated retracted article includes fraud or misconduct, relative to cases where the retraction occurred because of honest mistakes.

This of course may suggest one reason why some scientists are not so keen to force retractions from other researchers in their field.

Very good points on FEMA

From Jordan Weissmann:

We’ve nationalized so many of the events over the last few decades that the federal government is involved in virtually every disaster that happens. And that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It stresses FEMA unnecessarily. And it allows states to shift costs from themselves to other states, while defunding their own emergency management because Uncle Sam is going to pay. That’s not good for anyone.

When FEMA’s operational tempo is 100-plus disasters a year, it’s always having to do stuff. There’s not enough time to truly prepare for a catastrophic event. Time is a finite quantity. And when you’re spending time and money on 100-plus declarations, or over 200 last year, that taxes the system. It takes away time you could be spending getting ready for the big stuff.

Nobody is taking the position, that I know of, saying get rid of FEMA, the federal government should have no role responding to disasters. The position is, no no, we need to save FEMA and the Federal Government for the big stuff: Sandy, Katrina, Northridge. But states should be charged to take care of the other, more routine stuff that happens every year. There are always going to be Tornadoes in Oklahoma and Arkansas. There are always going to be floods in northwest Ohio and Iowa. There are always to be snowstorms in the Northeast. There are always going to be rain storms, fires in Colorado. They happen every year. There’s no surprise here. And they don’t have national or regional implications, economically or otherwise. If they do, that’s a different question.

Read the whole thing.

Measuring Baumol and Bowen Effects in Public Research Universities

That is a new paper by Robert E. Martin and R. Carter Hill:

We estimate three models of cost per student using data from Carnegie I and II public research universities. There are 841 usable observations covering the period from 1987 to 2008. We find that staffing ratios are individually and collectively significant in each model. Further, we find evidence that shared governance lowers cost and that the optimal staffing ratio is approximately three tenure track faculty members for every one full time administrator. Costs are higher if the ratio is higher or lower than three to one. As of 2008 the number of full time administrators is almost double the number of tenure track faculty. Using the differential method and the coefficients estimated in the three models, we deconstruct the real cost changes per student between 1987 and 2008 into Baumol and Bowen effects. This analysis reveals that for every $1 in Baumol cost effects there are over $2 in Bowen cost effects. Taken together, these results suggest two thirds of the real cost changes between 1987 and 2008 are due to weak shared governance and serious agency problems among administrators and boards.

For the pointer I thank Michael Tamada (who does not necessarily endorse the argument).

Texting while Driving

Take this story with a grain of salt but it’s useful to keep complexities in mind when regulating:

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that 3 of every 4 states that have enacted a ban on texting while driving have seen crashes actually go up rather than down.

It’s hard to pin down exactly why this is the case, but experts believe it is a result of people trying to avoid getting caught in states with stiff penalties. Folks trying to keep their phones out of view will often hold the phone much lower, below the wheel perhaps, in order to keep it out of view. That means the driver’s eyes are looking down and away from the road.

Very appropriate hat tip: Offsetting Behavior.

Does (constant #days) year-round schooling matter?

Some new research says no.  Steven C. McMullen and Kathryn E. Rouse, from their piece ”The Impact of Year-Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions,” in The American Economic Journal, report:

In 2007, 22 Wake County, North Carolina traditional calendar schools were switched to year-round calendars, spreading the 180 instructional days evenly across the year. This paper presents a human capital model to illustrate the conditions under which these calendars might affect achievement. We then exploit the natural experiment to evaluate the impact of year-round schooling on student achievement using a multi-level fixed effects model. Results suggest that year-round schooling has essentially no impact on academic achievement of the average student. Moreover, when the data are broken out by race, we find no evidence that any racial subgroup benefits from year-round schooling.

There is an ungated version here.

The french fry culture that is Japan

The supposed employee added that other customers had complained. The issue seems to have been that the French fry eating went on for three hours, with the group eating sixty orders of French fries. It looks like one table was used for the feeding frenzy, while the adjacent walkway was packed with their friends who watched. Basically, the supposed employee seemed most upset about the lack of courtesy on their part.

What’s more the supposed employee pointed out that sixty orders of French fries the roughly the equivalent of one home crate of frozen fries.

“Plus, during our restaurant’s busiest period, 11am to 2pm, there was no prior notice about such a large order [from you], and this impacted what food and what tables we could offer to other customers.” The supposed employee asked them to be aware of the time. Though, this McDonald’s really should have been more aware of what would happen when a group of kids order sixty large fries.

That’s not even the main point of the story, good photos too.

For the pointer I thank Michael Rosenwald.

It seems the Star Wars 3×3 series will be completed (and then some?)

For decades I had thought this will require the death of George Lucas and a greedy heir, but apparently not.  Disney has bought Lucasfilm and so we can expect more episodes.  Episode 7 might come as soon as 2015.

The EconLog team winning strategy

Pretend Arnold Kling has departed, get under the salary cap, take on Garett Jones and Luigi Zingales (sixth man), keep Bryan and David in the starting line-up, and then get Arnold back again.  Here is Arnold’s very important post on NYC recovery.  I don’t myself have any particular prediction, but I will say this is a real test of how well this country can these days do infrastructure.

Request for requests

It can never hurt to ask…please leave your requests for future topic coverage in the comments.  Thanks!

Assorted links

1. Science is the key to growth.

2. Roberto Unger criticizes Keynesianism.

3. Are psychopaths physically attractive?

4. Are economists ignoring neuroeconomics?

5. How permanent is the rise in risk premia?  And a combinatorial prediction market for the election and related matters.

6. Thwarted India and China markets in everything, Siri edition.