In this latest paper from Valerie Ramey and Neville Francis, they provide a different paradigm in terms of how we think about work and leisure. It’s nothing mind blowing, but what it does say in the end is that when re-measured, the U.S. – since 1900 – hasn’t gained a substantial amount of leisure time compared to the amount of time that we work.In defending the new conclusion they write,Finally, while we think our series give good estimates of long-run trends in time use, we are much less confident about the cyclicality of time use.
...
The estimates we have produced are probably correct on the directions of movements over the business cycle, but are very imprecise estimates of the quantitative movements.
Something to think about, but I can’t think about it for too long because I have to get my work done.
From Stephen Dubner at the Freakonomics blog; even farmers have their own dating market.
Because I’m still thinking about China, here’s another link to a summation that the Nightly Business Report wrote on this formal complaint the U.S. is making to the World Trade Organization. From the USTR release:
“We recognize that China has taken significant steps to open its market and reform its trade practices since becoming a Member of the WTO, and both countries are benefiting from a deeper and stronger trade relationship,” Ambassador Schwab added. “However, where China has failed to meet its commitments, we will use the full array of tools available to secure compliance. Our decision to bring this case to the WTO comes after our efforts at dialogue failed.”
Before I go on, the wording and feel of Schwab’s statement is reminiscent of a collection agency sending a letter requesting for an account to be paid in full. However, while a funny observation, it’s irrelevant, so I’ll move on.
What this press release shows is that China really does have a problem, which is that they use subsidies that effectively lower what the price would otherwise be on the market. Something that I before said was “no-no.”
China’s usage of subsidies is the deal breaker in my opinion, but the problem is that the US also has subsidies of its own that many economists don’t approve of either. And if I were China, I would surely use that excuse when the World Trade Organization comes knocking on my door.
My last post left me with this comment from the eHarmony blog that linked me to this post on the eHarmony blog.First, let me just address how the comment was written:
1 in 500? Check your figures again. :)
Firstly, it’s not my figure. In addition, the tone of that comment makes me believe that they’ve set up a Google search for anyone who links to the Scientific American article and then automatically post that comment. I’m simply speculating on how and why eHarmony would post a comment on my blog because my blog is simply not trafficked.
Fine, I’ll let the eHarmony blog take away the statistic, but before I do, let me just say a few more things. Another reason why I think they have a Google alert or a bot set up in searching for the comment is because it doesn’t even seem that they read my entire post because the statistic, while I thought important, was not really the point in my writing the post. My post was about how online dating is not the complete savior it’s cracked up to be. It still has its own drawbacks, which the eHarmony comment obviously did not address.
Also, while were on statistical analysis, don’t get me started on how different entities can use statistics differently to come up with findings for different points of view. Let us all just take a look at climate science. Robert Samuelsson touches on it here, Arnold Kling here, and Robert C. Balling Jr. here. So, let those links show that trying to argue on statistics won’t get us very far anyway in terms of climate, and I would venture the same goes for dating thanks to the Scientific American article.
Once again, it’s clear that the gist of my post was also simply inarguable because it was pretty much a wholly personal opinion on the Scientific American article, except for the statistic that eHarmony blog contests. They don’t contest any of the other research that I’ve posted on my blog here, here, and here.
Moreover, is there a retraction from Scientific American?
Why doesn’t the eHarmony blog address some of the drawbacks that Robert Epstein mentions? To generalize it: the lying, of which my favorite example that Epstein cites is where one woman uses pictures of women who are obviously not her.
You’ve got my attention eHarmony blog, and because you say the statistic is invalid, leave me another comment and show me the retraction from Scientific American.
My good friend, Matt Huggins, emailed me this article by Robert Epstein from Scientific American.com that discusses online dating.
Epstein touches on some ideas that I’ve mentioned before. Once again proving that money matters in dating showing that income can make up for a lack of other attractive characteristics.
What Epstein writes really articulates though are the pros and cons of online dating, and while he tries to surmise that online dating could have a wonderful future ahead of it, I personally cannot get over the glaring drawbacks that are attached to the venture of online dating.
According to Epstein, the good news is that online dating is continuing to grow and in some ways getting better. Unfortunately, participants still have to deal with the lying of age, weight, and sometimes, flat-out lying about your own picture. Those are tough things to stomach for me, let alone the staggering odds that I might find a mate online.
In 2005, using eHarmony's own published statistics, a team of credible authorities--among them Philip Zimbardo, a former president of the American Psychological Association--concluded in an online white paper: "When eHarmony recommends someone as a compatible match, there is a 1 in 500 chance that you'll marry this person.... Given that eHarmony delivers about 1.5 matches a month, if you went on a date with all of them, it would take 346 dates and 19 years to reach [a] 50% chance of getting married." The team also made the sweeping observation that "there is no evidence that ... scientific psychology is able to pair individuals who will enjoy happy, lasting marriages."
Also, Epstein goes on to mention that we still face a “false negative problem” where the matching from a dating service takes away people you might never meet, but “who would adore each other.”
I think for myself to make a current judgment on the reading material for online dating, I would have to say that it’s simply just another market, a dating market. And just like the real life dating market, online dating deals with its own pitfalls. Deception, people (or computers) setting you up with whom they think is a good match, and the sheer effort and will it takes to put yourself out there and figure it out are all items that can make it difficult. In the end, the common sense logic is right, online dating is still dating; we’ve just changed the initial communication medium.
****Update: I respond to the comment left by the eHarmony blog.
I had recently made a new friend who reminded me of my college days when I enjoyed a few of the art exhibits at the University of Delaware (Paul R. Jones is a major contributor there).
Today’s picture of the day at Wikipedia is a famous photograph taken by Gordon Parks of a government cleaning woman. I’m still always amazed at how a picture can speak a thousand words.
(picture via Wikipedia from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b14845)
When President Bush in his State of the Union speech declared that, “We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol,” I wondered how much he was thinking about investing because earlier in the month President Bush declared on reducing the budget deficit in the next five years.Well, ironically enough, according to Reuters (via The Washington Post) the U.S. will be cutting back on farm subsidies – except for ones that could produce ethanol. Personally I've always disliked any and all farm subsidies. With this news though of the President’s subsidy cuts not really cutting, but probably shifting funds more towards the production of ethanol, I think it’s time I started investing in my friend’s corn fields…now.
This article from The Washington Post states what many lawmakers in Washington, as well as Henry Paulson (U.S. Treasury Secretary), have been saying for quite some time: that the U.S. trade deficit with China is too large.I think it is important to provide some context by showing you what one of my favorite economists thinks of this.Firstly here, Greg states the possibility that some people could be overreacting.Although this textbook problem is useful as a theoretical exercise, one should not overstate its practical relevance (as I believe Paul mistakenly did in his paper). In the example, the United States is made worse off by growth in China because our trade with China dries up, so we lose the gains from trade. This theoretical result has minimal application to the world as we see it today. World trade is booming, not shrinking.
And via Greg Mankiw, Michael Spence writes in this Wall Street Journal article:…if China does allow its currency to revalue over time, then we will simply run a deficit with another collection of countries, and from a domestic point of view, nothing much will have changed.
I’m tempted to let China “hold our debt” as the lawmakers say. Why, because the trade deficit signifies continued U.S. economic expansion. This expansion is what continues to let people buy goods that may not come from the US. The real counter to the argument is on if China is purposefully manipulating its currency (keeping it cheap) to sell more goods, which lawmakers argue is an economic no-no.
Just in case you were thinking that the dating market didn't have enough characteristics with other more formal markets, here is (from The Washington Post) something for you in case you didn't already know.The quote that got me was:
Other dating sites, he says, are just not for him: They're geared to "people who are more normal."
Specialized markets...they exist everywhere.
By the way, to readers who are keeping tabs with me: No, I have yet to succumb to joining an online dating service. Although, don't let me make you think that it's easy out in the "dating market." It can still be very rewarding (new people to meet) and disappointing (sometimes things have to end or never end up going anywhere).
With all the dating talk that I’ve done in the past on my blog, I think this Onion article brings some wonderful levity to it all.My favorite part:Although Klein said he was "never a big believer in love at first sight" before, he claimed to be "instantly drawn" to the way Ridenour sat within 10 feet of him and looked in his general direction. A short conversation revealed the two were single, lived in the same town, and had both considered short-term kidnapping schemes in order to avoid spending another Christmas alone.
For her part, Ridenour says it didn't take long to realize Klein was the most caring, funny, and sensitive man who had ever spoken to her for more than 30 minutes without trying to get her to switch long-distance carriers.
And someday, I know I’ll be just as lucky.
John Irons over at the Budget Blog at the Center for American Progress lays out some views on President Bush’s latest proposal to provide tax deductions on those who purchase healthcare outside of work.
Greg Mankiw weighs in here and provides an upbeat look on the proposal:
Economists have long suggested that tax subsidies lead to excessive use of employer-provided health insurance. This proposal would help fix that problem, while giving a helping hand to the uninsured.
John Irons dislikes the proposal because…
What ails the nation’s health care system cannot be cured by a simple tax change. For a variety of proposals on how to reduce costs and cover the uninsured, see CAP’s health care work.
Obviously John and Greg are two very intelligent economists, and I agree with the both of them, and it’s these kinds of informed men who should be engaging in the political debate. As for myself, while I may not agree with Arnold Kling on everything, I agree with this statement from him:
The number two policy problem is that American's extravagant use of medical procedures with high costs and low benefits is paid for in part by government subsidies. Remove the subsidies, and I don't care how Americans handle their health care, just as I don't care how they buy cars.
My stance: I also don’t like the subsidies because those too provide inefficiency in the healthcare system. Unfortunately, I also agree that a real problem in health insurance is for people who can’t afford health insurance at all. Yet, maybe there’s a way we could provide a “floor” for coverage that does not exclude larger ailments, but rather, helping protect against those large ailments (e.g. cancer) is the main reason why the insurance would exist. The “floor” would act almost like liability insurance for vehicles, which may not be the best coverage, but still provides insurance in accidents and large catastrophes. Arnold Kling is a proponent of this idea, and while I’m still not sold completely on it, I believe it is part of the best way forward.
If I could, I would vote for the proposal if President Bush changed it in the way this Washington Post Op-ed suggests:
Rather than embracing tax deductions, which are most valuable to people in high tax brackets, Mr. Bush could have made his proposal even more progressive by recommending a refundable tax credit that would be worth the same to everyone.
Maybe President Bush will change it. I certainly hope he does.
Arnold Kling discusses his case against tax breaks. It’s this kind of thought that shows how an economist(s) usually thinks beyond any partisan line. Robert Samuelsson did so earlier in the week.
Now, Kling:
We really should get rid of tax deductions. Any social policy that you want to do can be done with subsidies. Even the charitable deduction could be re-cast as a matching grant from the government.
It’s important to remember that economists don’t think equality is a bad thing. What’s most concerning for an economist is the priority for everyone to participate in a market and that most importantly, the government doesn’t favor anyone. In fact, it’s pretty obvious that’s why Republicans usually have (or had) an economist's vote. But, as we’ve seen in recent years, Republicans can be just as bad at government spending (and prone to spend) as Democrats.
According to this latest tidbit of news, the opposite sex will find you more attractive if the people around you are smiling. If only I were a comedian.
Robert Samuelsson opines on the minimum wage and the futile effort that it is to provide true socio-economic change.
I agree completely, and his further suggestion of a gas tax qualifies him for the Pigou Club.
Quoting Samuelsson:
Among social scientists, it's no secret that the minimum wage is a weak weapon against poverty. Modest numbers of workers are affected; many are teenagers, often from middle-class homes; and many of the poor don't work. And a higher minimum wage may destroy some jobs. No matter. Democrats plunged ahead because raising the minimum wage is symbolically powerful. It says that you care about "economic justice."
Well, it seems as if my previous post wasn’t enough in order to discuss how media bias operates and how it manufactures consent. This is a perfect linguistics exercise that Noam Chomsky has gone over and over again.Concerning a small local body of water, The Cape Gazette is undoubtedly the only media outlet with the narrative on what is occurring. Also, their paper seems to be developing an omniscient tone. When I’ve asked my friends in a nearby town, they exclaim, “Tell me a time when that river wasn’t polluted.”
In this latest paper from Lucian Bebchuk, Yaniv Grinstein, and Urs Peyer, “Lucky CEOs” who do well with their stock grants apparently don’t have luck to thank for much of their monetary.Rather, Bebchuk, Grinstein, and Peyer find that…about 1150 lucky grants (roughly half of all lucky grants in our sample) owe their status to opportunistic timing rather than mere luck. This opportunistic timing was spread over a significant number of CEOs and firms. We estimate that about 850 CEOs (about 10% of all CEOs) and about 720 firms (about 12% of all firms) received or provided manipulated lucky grants. In addition, about 550 additional grants at the second lowest or third-lowest price of the month owe their status to manipulation.
At its core, this is a corporate governance issue. For example, tenure of the CEO matters as a characteristic correlated with lucky grants. As well, the level of independence on the board mattered as well.Also, while Sarbanes-Oxley did not eliminate the occurrences of stock manipulation, the act did curtail its frequency.
In case you thought it was just Glenn Greenwald. Here's Andrew Sullivan on Bill Kristol.
A close conservative friend of mine felt bad for Bill Kristol when he recently appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I, on the other hand, did not feel bad at all.
Anonymous Liberal states why.
For those who don’t feel like reading the entire post over on Glenn Greenwald’s blog, essentially Anonymous Liberal cites time after time when Bill Kristol has come up with bad prediction after bad prediction in Iraq.
This article is for my friend Will. Will and I were discussing the Laffer curve, and what it means to have such a high tax rate imposed upon you that it becomes very tempting and worthwhile to do what you can to evade taxes.The article concerns Bjorn Ulvaeus from the Swedish pop group ABBA:It's the second incident of alleged unpaid taxes for Ulvaeus, who last year was pursued for $13 million dollars to the STA to pay tax on contracts signed in Sweden prior to his move to the UK in 1984.
This article (brought to my attention by Kevin) has to be one of, if not, the most unsurprising items I have read in some time. The headline, “Report: Oil firm funded discrediting of science” is really almost just too sensational. We’re inching our way closer to the Wal-Mart is the death of society plot to almost nauseating level.But I’m only making the Wal-Mart comparison to show you how sensationalist the headline is. As I said, it should be no surprise that oil companies fund researchers or research groups who favor their views. Remember that tobacco companies actually ended up creating their own research group at one point.Remember also that there’s money on both sides of the aisle. I can only imagine that corn production has been having a good time with the production of more ethanol in the past few years. Even movies like The Distinguished Gentleman have pointed out that lobbyists contribute from both sides of any issue.So, for there to be research monetarily supported by oil companies that supports their side of the argument, I am not surprised, and neither should you be.
I had recently made a new friend who reminded me of my college days when I enjoyed a few of the art exhibits at the University of Delaware (Paul R. Jones is a major contributor there).
