Official BBO Hijacked Thread Thread

[shyams]

Has the phrase "Eat *****, Bob" has become commonplace in the USA courtesy John Oliver's latest salvo?

[y66]

On the World Bank's new measure of harmonized test scores, the U.S. comes out looking really good. We're well ahead of China, and about equal to Sweden.

 

Hmm, maybe our education system isn't as bad as people say. ;-)

 

http://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/harmonized-learning-outcomes-transforming-learning-assessment-data-national-education

[y66]

From Comment on “Progressive Wealth Taxation” by Saez and Zucman by Wojciech Kopczuk at Columbia University:

 

The paper is accompanying political proposals that have been picked up by two of the front-runners in the Democratic primaries. It makes a heartfelt case for a wealth tax that’s appealing to many politically. In my view, the economic case for it is overstated though. The data that underlies the revenue and progressivity impacts of the proposal has large margins of errors. The tax is unlikely to fare well on administrative grounds and, in my view, the economic case for it over a mix of capital income and estate taxation is weak. A much more productive effort would be to focus on feasible and necessary fixes of the existing U.S. taxation. My short list of such changes includes the removal of step-up in basis at death; modification of tax treatment of charity (including the ability to transfer unrealized capital gains); moving away from realization and toward accrual taxation, in particular by considering mark-to-market of capital gains where feasible; and reversal of preferences for pass-through businesses introduced in 2017.

[y66]

The IRS recently released its most recent estimates on the tax gap — the difference between what was due to the IRS and what it collected.1 Between 2011 and 2013, the IRS estimates that it failed to collect more than $380 billion in taxes per year, across all tax categories.

 

Extrapolating this estimate to the present to allow for inflation and income growth, in 2020 the IRS will fail to collect more than $630 billion, or nearly 15 percent of total tax liabilities, and that the tax gap will total $7.5 trillion over the 2020 to 2029 period.2 The sheer magnitude of the tax gap suggests that there is substantial revenue-raising potential from shrinking it through well-targeted enforcement measures. Even so, recent policy discussions on how best to reform the tax code tend to ignore this most straightforward approach to revenue-raising — ensuring that the IRS collects taxes already owed.

 

It’s impossible to calculate with precision how much of this could be collected. Our estimates suggest that it’s reasonable to anticipate that with feasible changes in policy, the IRS could aspire to shrink the tax gap by around 15 percent. This would require increased investment in compliance efforts in the range of previous IRS budget outlays. Assuming immediate implementation, our estimates suggest it would be possible to generate around $1.1 trillion in additional revenue in a decade.

 

This short article represents an attempt to quantify the benefits of substantial investment in tax compliance. We proceed in three parts. We first provide background on the tax gap, noting that the benefits of noncompliance accrue most to high-income earners, and that the resources the IRS has at its disposal to tackle noncompliance are at historic lows. This suggests that there is substantial low-hanging fruit to be garnered from adequate investment in the IRS, and that investments in reducing noncompliance are likely to be progressive. We then argue that adding resources for examinations (particularly of high-income earners), increasing cross-party reporting requirements, and overhauling outdated IRS technology will enable the IRS to shrink the tax gap by around 15 percent in the next decade. These estimates seem substantially optimistic relative to what the Congressional Budget Office estimates an increase in IRS appropriations would raise; however, we show the two can be reconciled. Further, we point out that agency scorekeeping guidelines discourage compliance investment by limiting the extent to which the gains from additional tax collections can be included in official scores of enforcement initiatives. We conclude by noting that our estimation is naïve and that more formal revenue estimates are desirable. However, we find it probable that scorekeepers will come to the same basic conclusion: Restoring the IRS budget to previous levels is likely to pay for itself many times over.

 

https://www.taxnotes.com/special-reports/compliance/shrinking-tax-gap-approaches-and-revenue-potential/2019/11/15/2b47g

[Winstonm]

I went to a restaurant yesterday that offered a free egg roll if you ordered the calamari: it was a squid pro quo.

[Cyberyeti]

I went to a restaurant yesterday that offered a free egg roll if you ordered the calamari: it was a squid pro quo.

 

Went in to a restaurant and saw a sign saying "Oasis soup", so I asked the waiter what that was, and he said you got a roll with it.

[y66]

From Mike Ives at NYT:

 

How would you spell ‘Київ’?

 

This week, The Times adopted a new spelling for Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, the Romanization of the Ukrainian Київ.

 

The previous version, Kiev, is a transliteration from the Russian: Киев.

 

The Times is rarely an early adopter in altering place names, waiting until there is a sense that most readers would be familiar with the new word. For instance, the paper quit using Bombay only in 2004, almost a decade after the Indian authorities officially recognized the city as Mumbai.

 

Craig Whitney, a former foreign correspondent who went on to become our standards editor, recalled that airline flight information had been listed as Mumbai for years. “Clearly,” he said, “we waited long enough to see if it was sticking.”

 

Most Americans were introduced to Ukraine’s capital during the Soviet era, so they’ve seen “Kiev” for decades. But the U.S. Board on Geographic Names switched to Kyiv in June, and U.S. diplomats have been widely heard in the impeachment hearings in Washington using the Ukrainian pronunciation (or at least coming close with “Keev”).

 

Chicken kiev, however, will probably stay the same.

[y66]

From Taxing wealth by taxing investment income: An introduction to mark-to-market taxation by

Greg Leiserson and Will McGrew at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

 

Why might policymakers adopt mark-to-market taxation?

 

Reforms to the taxation of investment income could raise substantial revenues from the wealthiest families. The highest-income 1 percent of families receives 75 percent of the benefit of the preferential rates for capital gains and dividends under current law. Moreover, adopting a mark-to-market system would be a relatively efficient way to raise revenues, as the current system of taxing investment income allows wealthy taxpayers to avoid paying taxes by taking advantage of deferral, step up in basis, and other tax preferences. A mark-to-market system would scale back or eliminate these preferences and thus sharply reduce tax avoidance. Policymakers looking for a progressive tax instrument that raises substantial revenues would find mark-to-market taxation an appealing option.

 

How much revenue could this type of tax reform raise?

 

The revenue potential of reforms to the taxation of investment income in the United States is large. Under current law, long-term capital gains and dividends are taxed at a 40 percent discount, relative to ordinary income. Moreover, tax planning strategies that take advantage of deferral, step up in basis, and other preferences for investment income mean that much investment income simply does not appear on tax returns at all.

 

Estimates of the revenue raised by reforms to the taxation of investment income are uncertain, as they depend on both the detailed specification of the tax and assumptions about how families would respond to the tax. But previous estimates suggest that mark-to-market reforms that also apply the tax rates on wage income to capital gains and dividends could easily raise $1 trillion over the next decade—and potentially much more, depending on how widely the higher tax rates are applied and what accompanying reforms are included.8

 

The revenue potential from increasing the capital gains tax rate in isolation is likely much smaller. The ease of tax avoidance under current law, such as the ready opportunity to defer tax by not selling assets and potentially avoid tax entirely through step up in basis—all while simply borrowing against these same assets to finance any spending—means that taxpayers may substantially reduce realizations in response to an increase in the capital gains rate.

 

A recent Congressional Research Service analysis, for example, suggests that taxpayers might avoid as much as 50 percent of the tax liability that would otherwise result from a 5 percentage point increase in the capital gains rate through avoidance.9 The report also highlights that some analysts might conclude that an even higher share of revenue would be lost through avoidance. Robust reforms to the tax base such as those discussed in this brief, however, would sharply limit these avoidance strategies and yield much higher revenues.

 

How could a mark-to-market system exempt middle-class taxpayers?

 

Mark-to-market taxation could be adopted as the universal approach to taxing investment income. Current proposals set forth by U.S. policymakers, however, have tended to apply the system only to wealthy taxpayers. Two approaches policymakers have suggested they might use for this purpose are a lifetime exemption on gains and an asset-based threshold for applying the tax.

[Winstonm]

Sasha Cohen:

 

"The ultimate aim of society should be to make sure that people are not targeted, not harassed and not murdered because of who they are, where they come from, who they love or how they pray." he said.

[Cyberyeti]

Sasha Cohen:

 

 

Did you mean Sacha Baron Cohen ? (the Baron is part of the surname, not a rank or anything)

 

Much deeper thinker than he's often depicted, I was a schoolfriend of his 2 older brothers.

[Winstonm]

Did you mean Sacha Baron Cohen ? (the Baron is part of the surname, not a rank or anything)

 

Much deeper thinker than he's often depicted, I was a schoolfriend of his 2 older brothers.

 

Yes

 

https://www.adl.org/news/article/sacha-baron-cohens-keynote-address-at-adls-2019-never-is-now-summit-on-anti-semitism

[Winstonm]

Here's a fascinating idea:

 

....high pay in the dominant sector drains talent from other economic sectors, from government and from civil society. Brilliant people who might have discovered a malaria vaccine or designed effective financial regulations, instead get rich working for an oil company, or trading in risky financial derivatives. Investment is lured away from low-return activities like manufacturing, towards high-return ones, like trading in oil derivatives. When oil, or finance, dominate an economy, government officials turn away from the tough challenges of nation-building and instead jostle to get rich, often via a revolving door of influence between government and the dominant sector. This jostling also promotes corruption, and helps the dominant sector ‘capture’ policy-making too.

[y66]

The article you linked continues:

 

The message is simple: tackle the curse of oversized finance, to boost prosperity, to reduce inequality – and to curb the inner socio-cultural decay that fosters fake news. In this simple, hopeful message lies a winning political formula.

I suspect you also have to tackle the Curse of Bigness and the curse of Citizens United which big corporations and oligarchs rely on to buy seats in Congress.

[kenberg]

The article you linked continues:

 

 

I suspect you also have to tackle the Curse of Bigness and the curse of Citizens United which big corporations and oligarchs rely on to buy seats in Congress.

 

I like to think I will actually read this! Wealth and power are of course very closely related but my first worry is about the concentration of power. I suspect Wu might agree. At any rate, it sounds like an important book.

[y66]

Fun read for foodies: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/11/27/thanksgiving-with-laura-ingalls-wilder/?utm_source=The+Paris+Review+Newsletter&utm_campaign=89989f2355-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_Weekly_12072018_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_35491ea532-89989f2355-56017989&mc_cid=89989f2355&mc_eid=cda01666e9

 

I like the way the author points out gaps between romantic myths and reality without letting reality keep her from enjoying the myths.

 

I fell hard for her writing after reading this simple description of the results of her corn nixtamalization experiment:

 

The cleaned kernels in milk tasted mild and toothsome, with an intriguing finish of corn and cinnamon. If I could produce them in bulk, I would. The taste was special enough to have been worth the two days of effort.

I've never had vinegar pie. My wife says it's good stuff and is in the same family as lemon chess pie and pecan pie.

 

[y66]

From How to reform today’s rigged capitalism by Martin Wolfe at FT:

 

“It is clear then that . . . those states in which the middle element is large, and stronger if possible than the other two [wealthy and poor] together, or at any rate stronger than either of them alone, have every chance of having a well-run constitution.” Thus did Aristotle summarise his analysis of the Greek city states. The stability of what we would now call “constitutional democracy” depended on the size of its middle class. It is no accident that the US and UK, long-stable democracies today succumbing to demagogy, are the most unequal of the western high-income countries. Aristotle, we are learning, was right.

 

My September analysis of “rigged capitalism” concluded that “we need a dynamic capitalist economy that gives everybody a justified belief that they can share in the benefits. What we increasingly seem to have instead is an unstable rentier capitalism, weakened competition, feeble productivity growth, high inequality and, not coincidentally, an increasingly degraded democracy.” So what is to be done?

 

The answer is not to overthrow the market economy, undo globalisation or halt technological change. It is to do what has been done many times in the past: reform capitalism. That is the argument I made in a recent debate with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on whether liberal capitalism should be saved. I argued, in effect, that “if we want everything to stay the same, everything must change”, as the Italian author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote. If we want to preserve our freedom and democracy we need to embrace change. Here are five policy areas that need to be addressed.

 

First, competition. Thomas Philippon’s wonderful book, The Great Reversal, demonstrates how far competition has weakened in the US. This is not the result of inevitable forces, but of policy choices, especially abandonment of an active competition policy. US markets have become less competitive: concentration is high, leaders are entrenched and profit rates are excessive. Moreover, this lack of competition has hurt US consumers and workers: it has led to higher prices, lower investment and lower productivity growth. In a paper on reducing inequalities, in an invaluable collection on “Beyond Brexit: A Programme for UK Economic Reform”, Russell Jones and John Llewellyn argue that concentration and mark-ups have also risen in the UK.

 

In the past decade, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft combined have made over 400 acquisitions globally. Dominant companies should not be given a free hand to buy potential rivals. Such market and political power is unacceptable. A refurbishment of competition policy should start from the assumption that mergers and acquisitions need to be properly justified.

 

Second, finance. One of Prof Philippon’s most striking conclusions is that the unit cost of financial intermediation has not fallen in the US over 140 years, despite technological advances. This stagnation in costs has, alas, not meant financial stability. There is also evidence that there is now simply too much credit and debt. Radical solutions exist here, too: raise the capital requirements of banking intermediaries substantially, while reducing prescriptive interventions; and, crucially, eliminate the tax-deductibility of interest, so putting debt finance on a par with equity.

 

Third, the corporation. The limited liability joint stock corporation was a great invention, but it is also a highly privileged entity. The narrow focus on maximising shareholder value has exacerbated the bad side-effects. As the British Academy’s “Principles for Purposeful Business” report argues, “the purpose of business is to solve the problems of people and planet profitably, and not profit from causing problems”. That is self-evident. It is also hopeless to rely on regulation alone to save us from the consequences of myopic business behaviour, particularly when business uses its vast resources to lobby on the other side. The US Business Roundtable has recognised this. We need new laws, to effect required changes.

 

Fourth, inequality. As Aristotle warned, beyond a certain point, in­equality is corrosive. It makes politics far more fractious, undermines social mobility; weakens aggregate demand and slows economic growth. Heather Boushey’s Unbound spells all this out in convincing detail. To tackle it will require a combination of policies: proactive competition policy; attacks on tax avoidance and evasion; a fairer sharing of the tax burden than in many democracies today; more spending on education, especially for the very young; and active labour market policies, combined with decent minimum wages and tax credits. The US has poor labour force participation of prime-aged adults, despite unregulated labour markets and a minimal welfare state. It is possible to have far better outcomes.

 

Finally, our democracies need refurbishing. Probably, the most important concerns are over the role of money in politics and the way the media works. Money buys politicians. This is plutocracy, not democracy. The malign impact of fake news (which is the opposite of what the US president means by the term) is also clear. We need public funding of parties, complete transparency of private funding and also far greater use of consultative forums.

 

Without political reform, little of what we need elsewhere will happen. If things then stay as they are, economic and political performance is likely to get worse, until our system of democratic capitalism collapses, in whole or in part. The cause then is great. So is the urgency. We must not accept the status quo. It does not work and has to change.

[Winstonm]

Max Planck’s thoughts about the advancement of science. He said that science advances one funeral at a time. “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

[y66]

From Columbia will give full scholarships to refugees and other displaced students by Susan Svriuga at WaPo:

 

When Warda Sahtout was helping children in Syria during that country’s civil war, she asked them to draw their dreams, what they hoped to be when they grew up. Almost every child sketched weapons, she said, and military uniforms and blood: They could only imagine being fighters.

 

She wasn’t sure what her own future would hold; she had a degree in economics but turned to field work to help because of the devastation around her. With daily worries about water, food, electricity and gas, it was hard to think far ahead. And the need was so intense and so overwhelming she couldn’t see how to have an impact.

 

A full scholarship to Columbia University changed that. She is studying for a master’s degree in economic political development, with a concentration in conflict resolution. She wants to work for the United Nations, to help children scarred by war.

 

“I needed this time to be outside — to see the conflict from outside,” she said.

 

On Wednesday, Columbia announced a global effort to help people like Sahtout — refugees and students displaced by wars and natural disasters. The Columbia University Scholarship for Displaced Students, underwritten with a commitment of up to $6 million a year, is the first of its kind in the world, university officials said. As many as 30 students a year who are admitted to any of the university’s undergraduate or graduate programs will have all of their education and living expenses covered.

 

There are more than 70 million people displaced, living as refugees or seeking asylum, according to the U.N., a historic figure that compelled the university to take action.

 

“The program sends a powerful message about the role that colleges and universities should be playing to help young people whose educations have been disrupted because they have been forced to flee violence and persecution in their home countries,” Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, said in a written statement. Bollinger led the creation of the initiative with Safwan M. Masri, executive vice president of Columbia Global Centers.

 

The university had been working with refugees around the world, Masri said, and decided to provide opportunities for outstanding students whose lives had been upended.

 

Participants in a pilot program that preceded the global initiative include Sahtout and six other Syrian students, including one who said he was detained and tortured. Masri said he hopes their desire to give back might have a ripple effect in their communities. “Every drop in the ocean matters,” he said.

 

A Harvard freshman says he was denied entry to the U.S. over social media posts made by his friends

 

Sahtout lived in Douma, a city near Damascus where people have endured violence, chaos and a reported chemical attack. She watched a bomb fall next to her house just after she stepped outside. She has been displaced 11 times.

 

Her mother left school when she was about 12 years old, and her father had not many more years of education, but Sahtout persisted with college classes despite the danger, and sought scholarships for graduate work.

 

When she arrived in New York in 2018 — her first time out of Syria, her first time traveling alone — she was frightened by loud noises from planes, construction, trucks.

 

After a few months, she came to realize, “I am in a safe place — I should not worry about this.”

 

She marveled at the city. “That’s really amazing for me, how people are from different backgrounds, different countries, and we are just living together peacefully.”

 

At Columbia, she has honed her studies and her internships to determine how to have an impact at home. In Syria, she could have eventually continued her study of economics, she said, but not with the humanitarian focus driving her now.

 

She can look back and see how traumatized she was in her first few months in the city. “Now, I have more of a clear mind to think about my education, to think about what I want to do,” she said. She misses working in the field, getting hugged by children happy to see her again. But she feels certain that when she goes back, she will have more ways to help them.

 

There are so many things she has learned at Columbia, she said, not least this: “Now, I know myself much better.”

[y66]

For Mr. Rogers fans: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/12/03/the-radical-mr-rogers/?utm_source=The+Paris+Review+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c25ca6a75f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_Weekly_12072018_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_35491ea532-c25ca6a75f-56017989&mc_cid=c25ca6a75f&mc_eid=cda01666e9

 

We saw the movie last week. Tom Hanks' was reliably superb as Fred Rogers. Chris Cooper was unforgettable as the prodigal father.

[y66]

From Cindy Boren at WaPo:

 

The red shirts probably should have been a tipoff that what was to come was, as Phil Mickelson tweeted, “a display of great golf and heart.”

 

The United States’ Presidents Cup team, sporting the color made famous on Sundays by team captain and player Tiger Woods, came roaring back from a two-point deficit to beat the International team 16-14 Sunday, and win the Cup for the eighth straight time. Woods sparked the win with his leadership and, more importantly, with his play, going 3-0 at the Royal Melbourne course.

 

The victory was the 11th in 13 Presidents Cups for the U.S., but this one was more emotional than usual, with Woods personally closing out a 2019 season that began with his 15th major victory at the Masters and the U.S. team having to rally to win. He was in tears afterward, fiercely clutching and hugging players as they finished.

 

“We relied on one another as a team, and we did it — together,” Woods said after wiping away his tears. “This Cup wasn’t going to be given to us. We had to go earn it. And we did.”

 

The experience, he said, was sweet as both a captain and a player and he played like a man savoring a second chance personally and professionally. As a player, though, he was a flash of the Tiger Woods who has won 82 PGA events. When Abraham Ancer was quoted last month as saying he wanted to go head-to-head with Woods at Presidents Cup, Woods cracked after his 3 and 2 win Sunday, “Abe wanted it. He got it."

 

And asked if he was aware of Ancer’s earlier comment, he replied with a crisp, “Yes,” and a killer grin. Shades of the old Tiger Woods.

 

Woods was the first player-captain in 25 years and he was first off the tee Sunday, setting the tone and then watching as his players won again and again. His squad was so fired up that none of the six singles victories went the full 18 holes and the last two matches were halved. The 8-4 margin was the largest since the 8-4 win by the U.S. in the first Presidents Cup in 1994.

 

The clincher came from Matt Kuchar, a 5-foot birdie putt that gave him a halve against Louis Oosthuizen, delivering the 15½ points the U.S. needed to retain the Cup it had easily won two years ago at Liberty National.

 

Mickelson, watching from home, called the finale “one of the most exciting days in Presidents Cup history. What a display of great golf and heart.”

[y66]

From Tyler Cowen's conversation with Esther Duflo:

 

TYLER COWEN: Today I am very honored to be here with Esther Duflo, who recently has won a Nobel Prize in economics, the youngest economics winner ever. And today, our date of recording, is also, I believe, the publication date for her new book with Abhijit Banerjee, and that is called Good Economics for Hard Times. Esther, welcome.

 

ESTHER DUFLO: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

 

COWEN: My first question has to do with what, I think, is maybe your most important paper. And that’s the 2015 paper in Science with Abhijit, Dean Karlan, and some other coauthors. There you show that a cash transfer to the very poor, combined with training and coaching, has super-high rates of return. Why don’t people study that more? It seems to be the most potent intervention we have to fight poverty, other than migration.

 

DUFLO: I think it has been studied a lot. It has also been adopted as policy after this original study and other studies. The original project comes from Bangladesh, and there actually has been a study and a long-run study in Bangladesh by Robin Burgess and others who are now looking at households 10 years hence. And you continue to see large differences between the households who got the transfer.

 

And they have a recent paper that they just released to say that they continue to study it, where they are really putting a lot of theory into it to look at the data through the lens of asking, actually, is there a poverty trap in which some of these households have fallen?

 

They show that, in fact, there is such a thing with a threshold of wealth above which — if households can go above — they can grow to a point where they are significantly better off. And if they are below it, they go back to wherever they came from. I think that’s a very important paper that is making a big splash and show people continue.

 

In our case, the part of the study that I was most involved with was in West Bengal. We also continued to study them after 10 years. We are studying their children as well. We are studying the impact on migration to go through not just, “Oh, wait, there is an effect,” but how all of these effects are building on each other.

 

COWEN: As I understand the paper, there’s a cost-benefit ratio of 133 percent to 433 percent across six countries. That’s enormous. What exactly about the mentor makes the difference as opposed to just giving people cash? What is the mentor or the coach actually teaching?

 

DUFLO: Just from this particular experiment, it would be hard to tell because one could say, “Well, you should try to do cash only, and then we can see.” But subsequently Abhijit and Dean Karlan were involved in an experiment in Ghana where they just gave goats. They call it a goat drop paper. Just goats were given, without the coaching. And there, they find very clearly that the coaching makes a big difference, that people who you give just assets to have more assets, but it doesn’t serve as a springboard for more activities.

 

So descriptively, what the coach does is two things. Number one is avoid the temptation of liquidating the assets quite early. If you give people cows and they don’t feel confident using them, then the easiest thing to do is to sell them. And then they have cash, but they don’t have the productive asset anymore.

 

The second thing is to provide the complementary human capital for taking care of your assets. For example, when people are given cash — some people are given cash to start a petit business — but have no idea even how to go to the market because the poorest person in a village is also excluded from productive activities. They have not really been working. Or if they have been working, it’s in very local circumstances. They really have no idea.

 

So the coaches are physically taking them to the market. This is how you take the bus, this is where you buy the trinkets that you’re going to sell in the village, and this is how you bargain for your trinkets and then come back with the trinkets and sell them. So there is an amount of technical skills, if you will.

 

The third component, which is harder to quantify but probably very important as well, is confidence training. They are meeting in groups. Those are people who have not been involved in productive activities, often are living off alms or very petit works. They are making them confident that they can do it.

 

COWEN: How scalable is the coaching in your opinion?

 

DUFLO: That’s a good question, to which we should have an answer soonish because there is now scale-up of these programs in various countries, and in particular in India. Some state governments in India are scaling this up as part of their program.

So they are mainstreaming it as part of their program, still with the support of the original microfinance institutions that have been running this program, but hiring many, many, many people. So you will be able to see whether you could do this with the best NGO worker of the country, and you only have a hundred of those, and then that’s done. Or whether this is something that can be spread.

 

What is encouraging in this respect is that in Bangladesh, the program is huge as it is. It’s enormous. It reaches hundreds of thousands of families as it is. So to some extent, we already have the answer to how scalable it is because it’s already scaled.

And even the evaluation by Robin Burgess and others was done on a quite large scale.

 

COWEN: Have you ever thought you should just spend the rest of your career working on this intervention, and 5 percent of the economics profession should just work on this, with possible rates of return so high for the world’s biggest problem, which is poverty, right? Why don’t we do much, much more of working on this problem, on this study?

 

DUFLO: One should certainly continue to do more working on this study and working on the questions you were asking about the scale-up and working on how various modalities of it want. Already, the study you mention in Science was already a sign that there is at least some interest in the economics profession to focus on this question because it was the second paper on this. The first paper was the evaluation of the mothership program in Bangladesh.

 

People didn’t say, “Oh, that’s a nice program. Let’s go and study something new.” Instead, Dean Karlan led a group of people to replicate this same evaluation in seven different countries, which was a very major undertaking involving lots and lots of researchers and NGOs. So the fact that people were willing to do that, to write a 12-page paper in Science at the end of it, suggests that there is already recognition that it’s a very important topic.

 

Now, should everybody do that? I guess there are probably diminishing returns to effort on the particular problems, and there are other interesting problems to look at. So I’m glad that people continue working on this. And I think the work is only going to deepen, both in understanding the mechanism better, understanding variations around it, and understanding how to make it adopted as policy — because I completely agree with you that of everything that I’ve done, studied in my life, that this is one with the most important, spectacular results.

[y66]

From A Simple App to Teach Regression by Luke M. Froeb

 

This paper introduces an online app for teaching regression that “inverts” the usual pedagogy. Rather than teaching students how to run regressions on data, it asks them to create data to achieve a given outcome, like a statistically significant line. Exercises are designed to give students an intuitive feel for the relationship between data and regression, and to show them how regression is used. It teaches both simple and multiple regression using built-in exercises that “test” student answers. It is accessible by anyone who can point and click. The pedagogy is experimental, and we welcome suggestions to improve it.

This sounds like it might also be a useful approach for teaching bridge.

[Winstonm]

Free-market capitalism is going to kill all of us: NYT

 

At a time when germs are growing more resistant to common antibiotics, many companies that are developing new versions of the drugs are hemorrhaging money and going out of business, gravely undermining efforts to contain the spread of deadly, drug-resistant bacteria.

 

Antibiotic start-ups like Achaogen and Aradigm have gone belly up in recent months, pharmaceutical behemoths like Novartis and Allergan have abandoned the sector and many of the remaining American antibiotic companies are teetering toward insolvency. One of the biggest developers of antibiotics, Melinta Therapeutics, recently warned regulators it was running out of cash.

 

Experts say the grim financial outlook for the few companies still committed to antibiotic research is driving away investors and threatening to strangle the development of new lifesaving drugs at a time when they are urgently needed.

 

“This is a crisis that should alarm everyone,” said Dr. Helen Boucher, an infectious disease specialist at Tufts Medical Center and a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria.

[y66]

From Mark Perry at AEI:

 

[kenberg]

From Mark Perry at AEI:

 

 

I will try to comment coherently on this. My first reaction before looking at the details was "Oh, another stupid statistical study showing the problems girls are facing". But then I realized that it is a stupid statistical study showing the problems boys face.

 

I will take the first item. For every 100 girls taking an AP course in Art/Music there are 54 boys who take such a course. Back in ancient times, the 1950s, there were no AP courses but there were art and music courses. I did not take them . Otoh, in the summer between my junior and senior year, I was 16, I drove over to the university and sat in on a course in physics. Of course this would not make the list, because I was not registered. I asked the prof if it would be ok and he said yes. I bought the text, I read it, I worked the problems.

 

 

So: I was not interested in an art course or a music course, I was interested in physics so I attended and studied a physics course. I did not feel then, and I do not feel now, that someone should have been watching out for me and made sure I took an art course. At the end of my sophomore year my academic adviser did suggest that I, next year, take a course in metal shop. I took his suggestion and enjoyed the course. So maybe I would have enjoyed an art course, but I doubt it.. There is nothing on the list about boys and girls who take metal shop..

 

 

Statistics such as this are useless unless they are combined with a study where they interview 30 year-olds and see how many say "Oh my, I really made a mistake back when I was 16 and did not take the AP Art course that was offered."

 

A young person should have opportunity. It was very important to me that I also had choice. Physics and metal shop yes, art no, those who felt otherwise could take the courses that they believed to be right for them. People who like statistical charts can worry if they like.