[{"id":43,"title":"The Effect of Economists and Other Professions on Economic Growth","sha":"6958fdc42e264306c0fca7003bd370d6","user_id":157,"state":"published","body":"There is a literature on the effects of lawyers on economic growth that suggests that much legal activity is either unproductive or rent-seeking. While the empirical results in this literature are mixed, there is a larger question of why does the literature stop at lawyers?  Other professions that straddle the academy and the real world like economics or accountancy have jobs that seem to be purely rent-seeking or unproductive. The large number of economists employed in and around Washington D.C. would seem to be _prima facie_ evidence of at least some rent-seeking activity by economists. Similarly, Cameron and Thorpe (_Kyklos_, 2004) suggest that the recent increase in talent into accountancy might be negative for growth. Given the large number of papers using lawyers or law students per capita in a growth model, it seems odd that no one has looked at accountancy, economics, or any other number of professions such as finance. While comparable data might be hard to come by internationally, state data for economists and accountants exists from the Bureau of Labor Statistics State Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates and could be used in a state-level growth model. ","created_at":"2015-02-16T14:48:32.858Z","updated_at":"2019-02-09T14:13:50.518Z","zenodo_id":22908,"doi":"http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15438","subject":null,"tags":["rent-seeking","growth","occupation"],"vote_count":7,"view_count":1,"score":7.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":false,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":491,"title":"Alchian-Allen Effect in Higher Education","sha":"3ecb606f5291db55fce5705c8c547b3c","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"The Alchian-Allen Theorem states that when there are two substitute goods of differing quality and a fixed per unit amount is added to the cost of the product, consumption will shift towards the higher quality good as it is relatively cheaper. The Alchian-Allen Theorem is sometimes colloquially know as “shipping the good apples out” since the original example used by Armen Alchian and William Allen involved a question related to why all the good apples in Washington State ended up in New York. Once a fixed transportation cost is added, good apples become relatively cheaper in New York and thus are in higher demand. Although the good is flowing in the wrong direction, it seems like higher education is a case of “shipping the good apples out” since parents seem to substitute for quality higher education institutions if they are sending their kids far away. This explains, for example, why students from Alaska who attend school in Wisconsin seem to be well above the median. ","created_at":"2018-10-07T00:31:39.163Z","updated_at":"2018-10-16T18:49:54.240Z","zenodo_id":1451929,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1451929","subject":null,"tags":["demand","alchian-allen","higher education"],"vote_count":1,"view_count":1,"score":1.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":492,"title":"The Effect of Smoking Bans on Exercising by Non-smokers","sha":"4a5d3a866753b1cb38c2487ea742a362","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"Smoking bans have shown to have many effects, some intended, some unintended, like Adams and Cotti's (2008, Journal of Public Economics) finding that smoking bans led to more fatal accidents from drunk driving. The mechanism is that smokers were driving farther to find bars located in areas where smoking was allowed. While considerable attention has been played to the positive effects of smoking bans on non-smokers health from not being exposed to second-hand smoke, not much attention has been paid to other ways smoking bans might influence non-smoker health. For example, to the extent non-smokers were frequenting bars less because of smoke, smoking bans should lead to higher bar attendance by non-smokers. Higher bar attendance can be associated with higher levels of alcohol use and decreases in other activities positively related to health, such as exercise. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) might have the data that would let researchers look at the effect of smoking bans on exercise levels by non-smokers to see if going out is a substitute for working out. ","created_at":"2018-10-07T01:20:40.861Z","updated_at":"2018-10-09T06:00:43.559Z","zenodo_id":1451933,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1451933","subject":null,"tags":["smoking","bans","exercise"],"vote_count":0,"view_count":1,"score":0.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":493,"title":"The Economics of Meal Plan Requirements in Higher Education","sha":"d01b03572e59f1c62d75f8d5720cd093","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"Many colleges and universities require full-time undergraduate students to purchase a full meal plan as long as they live on-campus. To students this can often feel like they are being exploited, especially given the high average meal cost of university dining plans and the lack of flexibility to scale back from a full buffet experience. Concerns about exploitation in this regard are similar to concerns about about company stores in coal mine towns, where coal miners often were forced to receive a portion of their pay in the form of script that could only be used at the company store. Price Fishback explored the economics of this in his classic article \"Did Coal-Miners 'Owe Their Souls to the Company Store'?\" (Journal of Economic HIstory, 1986). In that paper he suggests that competition among mines limited monopoly power. He also highlights that many companies owned stores due to the rural nature of the mines and the difficulty of attracting workers to an area where independent stores were unwilling to operate. The same economics seems to apply to meal plan (and dormitory residency requirements) at colleges and universities. The ones that seem to be most stringent in terms of requirements are those that are isolated geographically. ","created_at":"2018-10-09T15:39:32.593Z","updated_at":"2018-12-09T03:44:10.166Z","zenodo_id":1464390,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1464390","subject":null,"tags":["college","higher education;","universities","meal plans","exploitation","fixed costs","variable costs"],"vote_count":2,"view_count":1,"score":2.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":527,"title":"Textbook Coverage of Inframarginal Externalities","sha":"3cb4e33d058e4cf01d7f204f425b20b4","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"Externalities are an important concept in economics as they are one of the many potential issues with markets. Negative externalities, for example, occur when costs are imposed on others outside the market system. Air pollution is but one example. The presence of externalities is often used as an argument for government intervention to correct these uncompensated effects on third parties. In 1962, James Buchanan and William Stubblebine published an article in the journal Economica that highlighted that some externalities are inframarginal. Externalities that are inframarginal do not distort allocation decisions at the current market equilibrium and thus there is not any distortion for government to correct. Despite the Buchanan and Stubblebine article having over one thousand citations in Google Scholar, most public economics textbooks do not mention the topic. The one exception seems to be Randall Holcombe’s Public Sector Economics text.  Why this important point about the divergence between what is good for individuals and what is good for society has not been incorporated into textbooks would be an interesting exercise given the papers widespread use by scholars. The format could be similar to Johansson “Economics without Entrepreneurship or Institutions” (Econ Journal Watch, 2004).  ","created_at":"2018-10-22T20:31:29.016Z","updated_at":"2018-10-22T22:45:41.450Z","zenodo_id":1469111,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1469111","subject":null,"tags":["inframarginal externality","externality","textbook","citations"],"vote_count":1,"view_count":1,"score":1.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":529,"title":"The Political Economy of the National Historic Register","sha":"eaf857f4e6f0728a2765aee1876ae105","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"In 1966, the U.S. Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act. The Act created the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) to catalog all of the nation’s important historical objects, buildings, and areas. The National Register is administered by the National Park Service and overseen by the Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation, and Public Lands of the U.S. Congress. A body of literature in public choice shows that bureaus respond to the wishes of Congress (Weingast, 1984). This model of bureaucratic behavior is called the congressional dominance model and it predicts that bureaucrats act in a manner consistent with the preferences of legislators overseeing their bureau.\tTo what extent do politics determine listings on the NRHP? Having state representation on the Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation, and Public Lands would seem to be the first place to start for those interested in exploring this topic. Every single listing since 1968, the date it was listed, and its location in available from the NRHP. Many of the state-level correlates can be easily obtained from IPPSR’s Correlates of State Policy at Michigan State. ","created_at":"2018-10-26T15:49:38.946Z","updated_at":"2019-02-09T14:08:52.284Z","zenodo_id":1476304,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1476304","subject":null,"tags":["historic preservation","congressional dominance","national parks","housing"],"vote_count":1,"view_count":1,"score":1.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":530,"title":"A Comparative Historical Political Economy Approach to Tariffs and Economic Development","sha":"cc92ce29066204881dac574bf159da10","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"In his influential book, Kicking Away the Ladder (2002), Ha-Joon Chang explains that developed nations like the US used protectionist policies like high tariffs to develop. This argument is in direct contrast to the view that laissez-faire policies were key. Chang argues that developed countries are now ‘kicking away the ladder’ by encouraging developing nations to not use high tariffs to protect domestic industry. While Chang is correct that the US did have high tariff rates in the 19th century, it is also true that they had an extremely small government. In the US, government at all levels was less than 5% of GNP for most of the nineteenth century. An alternative hypothesis for the high tariffs in the US is that tariffs were the most efficient way to raise revenue given poor property records and the lack of market income for many citizens. The reason why the US grew was not because of protective tariffs, but because government was small and using the most efficient tax available to raise revenue. These competing hypotheses could be evaluated by analyzing the growth trajectories of a number of currently developed countries in a case study format like Hall and Leeson (2007). ","created_at":"2018-10-27T15:12:54.862Z","updated_at":"2019-02-09T14:08:44.301Z","zenodo_id":1476308,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1476308","subject":null,"tags":["tariffs","economic development","growth","infant industries","protectionism"],"vote_count":1,"view_count":1,"score":1.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":533,"title":"Geographic Isolation and Pork Barrel Projects","sha":"5a5eff3ef81b3e12af81c1950fdc239a","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"In The Political Economy of Benefits and Costs: A Neoclassical Approach to Distributive Politics (Journal of Political Economy, 1981), Weingast, Shepsle and Johnsen lay out the costs and benefits of geographically earmarked pork barrel spending. In their analysis, government spending that goes to out-of-district factor owners does not provide a political benefit to the legislator who brought spending to her home district since out-of-district factor owners cannot vote in the member's district who got the funding. Other things being equal, legislators should want as much of government spending to go to in-district factor owners. This suggests that more rural areas that are geographically isolated should have more pork barrel spending because the returns to their legislator are larger per dollar spent, ceteris paribus.  ","created_at":"2018-11-16T17:41:35.649Z","updated_at":"2018-11-24T06:00:55.873Z","zenodo_id":1495248,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1495248","subject":null,"tags":["rural","isolation","pork","government spending"],"vote_count":0,"view_count":1,"score":0.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":535,"title":"Property Tax Limitations, Hoarding Disorder, and Observed Hoarding Behavior","sha":"6fc65f0e980c4988f2d07c6e97baefe2","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"Individuals with a hoarding disorder (HD) have difficulty discarding or giving away possessions. HD often leads to an accumulation of materials over time that can greatly affect the quality of life for hoarders and their families. To my knowledge there is not a comprehensive measure of HD by geographic area to see if there is geographic variation in observed HD behavior. My hypothesis here is related to observed HD behavior, not the cause of HD. Many US states have enacted property tax limitations. In some cases, like California's Proposition 13, these limitations put a cap on the annual increases in property taxation as long as the home is not sold. On the margin, this encourages people not to move when their housing needs change, such as when there are no longer any children in the house. To the extent that moving forces the elimination of some possessions, property tax limitations such as those in California under Proposition 13 should lead to an increase in observed HD behavior.  ","created_at":"2018-11-23T16:19:23.712Z","updated_at":"2019-02-09T14:07:44.688Z","zenodo_id":1495250,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1495250","subject":null,"tags":["hoarding disorder","property tax","hd"],"vote_count":2,"view_count":1,"score":2.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":625,"title":"Marginal Cost of a Public School Student Depends on the State Funding Formula","sha":"f840ef11c7c5b181581b8bd45ef31cfe","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"The marginal cost of a public education is important, as public schools must take all students in their area. The higher fixed costs are as a proportion of total costs, the more difficult it is for public schools to adjust spending in response to changes in enrollment, such as from school choice. To calculate West Virginia MC, we followed the example of Grecu and Lindsay (2006), who find that the MC of a public school student in SC was between 4,000 and 5,000, half of the total cost.  Using WV data from the 2011-2012 through 2013-2014, we regressed enrollment, enrollment squared, and enrollment cubed on total costs to estimate marginal cost (controlling for other cost drivers). Using our estimated coefficients from enrollment (11,276), enrollment squared (-0.0672), and enrollment cubed (1.53e-06), we calculated the MC of a student at approximately 11,000. This is very close to average spending per pupil, which was 11,132. The high estimates of MC in our study is due to the highly centralized student funding system in WV. Our research highlights the importance of estimating cost functions for each institutional setting, since different state funding formulas are likely to yield very different measures of marginal cost. ","created_at":"2019-10-22T14:47:23.315Z","updated_at":"2019-11-21T06:01:01.163Z","zenodo_id":3549042,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3549042","subject":null,"tags":["marginal cost","school choice","centralization","school finance"],"vote_count":0,"view_count":1,"score":0.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":"Cost_of_schooling_data.zip","attachment_content_type":"application/x-zip-compressed","attachment_file_size":28010,"attachment_updated_at":"2019-10-22T14:47:22.902Z"}]