If there was any doubt as to how valuable the NFL is, all you had to do was flip to ESPN on Thursday night. The cable network ran an hours-long, special lockout edition of SportsCenter following news that the owners approved a proposed collective-bargaining agreement. From a ratings standpoint, it probably wasn’t that hard a call: the prime-time program the network broke into was a softball game between the U.S. and Czech Republic, which got bumped to ESPN2.
The NFL players still have to ratify the deal, and have until next Tuesday to do so. If they sign, free agency and training camp would begin on July 27, not soon enough to salvage the Hall of Fame game. One clear loser in this whole lockout situation is the city of Canton, Ohio, which according to Fox Sports Midwest, will lose out on millions of dollars of economic impact. As I thought about the broader implications that the four-month lockout has had on the country’s most lucrative professional sports league (the NFL brings in $9 billion of annual revenue), I fired off some questions to sports economist Dave Berri, who was kind enough to offer some quick responses.
One of the many debates over the new health care law is whether increased access to health insurance really improves the public’s overall health and financial security. Even though there are hundreds of studies comparing insured and uninsured groups of people, there’s nothing definitive so far that answers the question one way or the other. The problem is getting clean data which clearly demonstrates behavior before and after people have had access to health care, rather than comparing two separate groups of people.
But a new study by a group of economists and health care researchers may provide the first empirical evidence that shows expanding health care coverage to low-income individuals does result in better reported health, more preventative care, and improved financial well-being.
Back in 2006, I wrote a Newsweek article about the problems that warm-weather cities like Orlando and Las Vegas were having with their homeless populations, and the rather creative methods they were using to control them — namely banning public feedings and consigning all panhandling to 3-by-15-foot “panhandling zones” painted on sidewalks.
Turns out the solutions have only gotten more creative in the last few years. The newest innovation are “homeless meters,” repurposed parking meters — painted a different color and set back from the street — that people can deposit coins into rather than give spare change to panhandlers. Cities then donate the collected money to nonprofit groups, which in turn use the funds to buy things like bus tickets. Advocates say this cuts down on the abuse of funds, and ensures that donations are put to the best use.
The average age of Congress is 57.4 years-old. With all the talk (from both sides of the aisle) about how our ballooning debt is stealing from today’s young people, shouldn’t they have a voice in deciding how to solve our long-term fiscal problems, considering they’ll be the ones paying for them? And yet, now that Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) has turned 30, not a single member of Congress is in his/her twenties.
What would a budget designed by the Millennial Generation look like? We now know thanks to a group of 18- to-26-year-olds who have released a budget proposal reflecting their priorities. It’s even been scored by the CBO. Organized by the Roosevelt Institute’s Campus Network, the group, along with a handful of think tanks, was given a $200,000 grant by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to craft a budget proposal.
A lot of people are saying that Christian Lopez, the guy who caught Derek Jeter‘s 3,000-hit homerun ball, got hosed by the Yankees when he gave it back in return for some signed memorabilia and Yankees tickets worth an estimated $70,000. According to a Bloomberg article, the ball’s estimated value could be as high as $250,000. So the knee-jerk reaction of a lot of headlines was to assume that Lopez left $180,000 on the table, even though last month, Bloomberg reported a much more conservative estimate of between $75,000 and $100,000 for Jeter’s 3,000-hit ball. I’m not saying it couldn’t go for $250,000, but assuming it’s a given seems presumptive.
A new study from a group of Duke economists finds that large-scale job losses have a negative impact on student test scores, particularly in math. Previous studies have shown how kids whose parents lose their jobs perform worse on tests. This study shows that job losses have a much broader effect, and impact kids whose parents remain employed. Here’s the abstract:
Last year, Notre Dame economist William Evans, along with Timothy Moore from the University of Maryland, documented that mortality rates spike by almost one percent on the first day of every month, remain high for the next few days, and then steadily decline over the course of the month. Now they think they’ve figured out one reason why: our paychecks are killing us.
In a study to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Public Economics, Evans and Moore examined the death records of four demographic groups in the U.S.: seniors on Social Security; military personnel; families receiving tax rebate checks in 2001; and recipients of Alaska’s Permanent Fund dividends. Their results show that mortality increased the week after checks arrived for each of these groups.
Bruce Sacerdote and James Feyrer, both of Dartmouth, have produced a paper that looks at how the stimulus package (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) affected employment, and which type of spending had the most (and least) amount of impact. It’s among the first detailed analyses of employment and earnings effects from the stimulus that uses actual employment outcomes. Here’s the abstract (full version here):
It’s been more than 30 years since the airline industry was deregulated in 1978. Since then it’s lost nearly $60 billion on U.S. operations, though most of the losses have come since 9/11. The airlines were already in trouble before the attacks happened. The plunge in demand and resulting liquidity crisis led to billions in government cash and loan guarantees– the first true bailout of the 21st century, and certainly a sign of things to come in the next decade.
In a paper published last month, (Abstract here; full version here) Berkeley economist and overall airline guru Severin Borenstein examines some of the most common explanations for the airline industry’s dismal performance, and why experts and deregulation advocates failed so badly to predict what would happen after deregulation 30 years ago.
From a pair of Harvard economists, Alberto Alesina and Nathan Nunn, and a UCLA business school professor, Paola Giuliano, comes this working paper (Abstract here and below; full version here) that tests the hypothesis that current gender role differences can be traced to shifting methods of agriculture, particularly the introduction of the plow, which required significant upper body strength, grip strength, and burst of power that favored men over women.
It’s been a busy week for JPMorgan Chase. It’s only Wednesday, and already the bank has settled one civil fraud lawsuit, and been slapped with another one. Both shed light on Wall Street’s flawed system of incentives that helped bring on the financial crisis. They also raise questions as to the morals of bankers.
On Tuesday, JPMorgan agreed to pay $153 million to settle civil fraud charges brought by the SEC alleging that it “misled” investors when it sold them junky mortgage bonds. The deal in question was put together by Magnetar Capital. If you’re not familiar with Magnetar, it’s an Illinois-based hedge fund that made a killing shorting synthetic mortgage-backed securities that were essentially built to fail. Here’s how it worked: Magnetar would put down a few million bucks to start a collateralized-debt obligation (CDO), cram it full of the junkiest mortgage bonds it could find, then get a bank like JPMorgan to sell it off to investors as a triple-A, gold-plated piece of the booming housing market; when in reality it was a time bomb filled with toxic waste.
If you’ve ever bought alcohol in Pennsylvania, you know what a weird, controlled system it has. As 1 of 19 “alcoholic beverage control” states in the U.S., Pennsylvania has some of the more strict, if not bizarre, laws regulating the retail sales of booze. Wine and spirits are sold only by state-owned stores, which don’t even have names; they’re designated by call numbers instead. Prices are kept uniform in all locations. Many of the stores operate at a loss. If you’re under 21, you’re not even allowed inside, and until recently, you couldn’t buy alcohol on a Sunday. Oh, and check out its “Kafka-esque” system of grocery store wine vending machines.
This may all be about to change. Pennsylvania is debating whether to privatize its liquor sales as a way to raise money and bridge its budget gap.
Last week we took stock of the Civil War commemoration situation: namely that the South seems to be taking more pride than the North in commemorating the 150th anniversary of the war’s start. We wondered why that was, particularly when it was the South that was left so economically devastated by the war. For some answers, we turned to Peter Coclanis, a professor of economic and business history at the University of North Carolina, whose research focuses on the American South in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Coclanis offered some intriguing thoughts on the economic legacy of the Civil War in the South, and why many southerners are still so keen to remember it. We also solicited your questions for him. Now, Coclanis gives you his answers.
So, yesterday I wrote about the handful of studies that have been done showing that large sporting events do not lead to higher rates of hospital visits, or for that matter, deaths or public violence. The latest study comes from Canada, and showed that during the 2010 Olympic gold medal ice hockey match between the U.S. and Canada, that emergency room visits declined by 17 percent in Canada. I thought it was a pretty good indication of how much Canadians love ice hockey, and also of the tranquility with which they seem to consume it. I imagined an entire country transfixed by the game on their TV sets, peacefully watching their countrymen beat the world in their most-beloved sport.
But then I saw this: “Vancouver Fans Riot After Stanley Cup Loss” And read this:
Rioting hockey fans clashed with police officers, set vehicles ablaze, smashed windows and looted stores and set several fires in downtown areas here on Wednesday night moments after the Vancouver Canucks lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals to the Boston Bruins.
Local hospitals reported eight people treated for stab wounds, according to Alyssa Polinsky, a spokeswoman for Vancouver Coastal Health, the regional hospital authority.
Sports fans are nuts, right? Prone to erratic, irrational behavior when their team is playing. You’d think that during the Big Game, violent behavior would spike, and maybe lead to higher rates of emergency room visits and even deaths? Not true. A number of studies show that big sporting events do not increase the number of patients admitted to emergency rooms, and in some cases, hospital visits and even heart attack rates have been shown to decrease during a major sporting event. Unless, of course, your team is losing.
The latest study in this vein, published this week in the Journal of Open Medicine, comes from Canada, where researchers examined emergency room visits during the 2010 Olympic gold medal ice hockey game between the U.S. and Canada. The game ended in a 3-2 overtime win by Canada and was seen by roughly half the country, some 16.6 million people, making it the most popular TV broadcast in Canadian history. The study found that the rate of total emergency room visits during the game decreased by 17 percent, compared with corresponding hours for 6 control days.
This effect extended throughout Canada’s largest province, amounted to a decrease of about 136 fewer patients per hour, appeared accentuated for adult men living in rural locations, and was most evident for those with milder triage severity scores presenting with abdominal pain, musculoskeletal disorders, or traumatic injuries.
A Brookings report shows that for the first time, the share of working-age immigrants in the U.S. who have college degrees (29.6%) exceeds the share without a high school education (27.8%). In 1980, there were more than twice as many low-skilled immigrants living in the U.S. as high-skilled ones.
The report focuses on demographic trends in the 100 biggest metropolitan areas of the country over the past 15 years. While the Southwest and Great Plains remain destinations for low-skilled immigrant labor, much of the Northeast and Rust Belt now attract more immigrants with college degrees than those without.
I recently finished the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia. It’s a one-year program that lets business journalists take classes across the university to “enhance their understanding and knowledge of business, economics and finance.” One of the program’s perks, and there are many (including dinners with the likes of Paul Volcker, Jamie Dimon, and Joseph Stiglitz), is that you can get an M.S. degree from Columbia’s journalism school by taking just six additional credits. Considering it usually takes 30 credits, and about $53,000, to get one of those, it’s a pretty good deal.
Back in 2006 I got my M.S. from the J-school, the old-fashioned way. So during my Bagehot tenure, I didn’t take a single additional class there. And yet, come graduation day, they gave me a second diploma. Expecting just the certificate in economics and business journalism that comes with the fellowship, I was too stunned to say anything as they handed it to me up on stage, and I certainly wasn’t going to give it back. But what the heck am I going to do with two degrees from the same school?
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. Celebrations, commemorations, remembrances of all kinds are planned over the next four years. Twenty-two states are getting in on the action. But the majority of events, and the people displaying the most zeal for the occasion, are in the South.
In December, a mostly white crowd turned out in their antebellum best for the Secession Ball in Charleston, S.C. In February, the Sons of Confederate Veterans descended on the state capitol in Montgomery, Ala., to cheer the reenactment of Jefferson Davis being sworn in as president of the Confederacy. My home state of Virginia, where a third of all Civil War battles were fought, is spending millions in hopes of cashing in on the four-year event. In the South, the Civil War is still big business, which got me thinking: why are the ones who lost the war trying the hardest to remember it? The Civil War devastated the South, and plunged much of the region into a century of poverty and economic stagnation, the effects of which are still apparent in many areas. The South’s relationship with the “Lost Cause” is obviously complicated, but where else in history do we see the losers commemorating a war while the winners, by comparison, largely ignore its anniversary?
According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, 57 percent of Americans say “the higher education system in the United States fails to provide students with good value for the money they and their families spend.”
Does that mean that college isn’t worth it? Not exactly. In fact, given the crappy economy, a college degree is more valuable than ever, a point that Levitt makes in a recent Freakonomics Radio podcast. The most telling statistic as to the value of college: the unemployment rate among college graduates is less than half (4.5%) that for people with only a high school diploma (9.7%) (See the BLS employment status table here.)
In an interview with ESPN that aired over the weekend, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis said that if the NFL lockout results in a lost season, crime rates will increase. “Watch how much crime picks up if you take away our game,” Lewis told ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio.
Are Americans really so addicted to professional football that its absence will lead people to go on some kind of crime rampage? Or, is Lewis saying that it’s more of a distraction that keeps us occupied, and our violent tendencies sated? Better to watch Troy Polamalu knock a guy unconscious than doing it yourself. And if so, then why don’t crime rates increase once the season’s over?
Major League Baseball is off to one of its wettest starts ever. The league came into this week having already postponed 26 games, which is 6 more than were washed out all of last season. According to Dailybaseballdata.com:
From 2006-2009, each season had from 33-38 rainouts. But 26 through mid-May puts us on a pace to wash out 100 games this year!
Today’s weather forecast and schedule looks to spell more rainouts.
On May 5, we asked readers to submit questions for Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, authors of the recent book A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire.
The response was, well… passionate. Many of the comments expressed anger over the authors’ research and resulting book. While some readers called into question the validity of their methodology, others complained that some of the terms they use in their book (“MILF,” e.g., and “Shemale”) were derogatory and insensitive. In the end, one thing was clear: when it comes to sex research, people tend to have strong opinions.
Now, Ogas and Gaddam respond, first with an opening summary of their methodology and results, and then with detailed responses to some of your questions.
Strange how the traditional laws of supply and demand go out the window when it comes to traffic. Studies over the last decade (like this one, this one, and this one; plus the book Suburban Nation) have pretty much dismantled the theory that more roads equal less traffic congestion. It turns out that the opposite is often true: building more and wider highways can increase traffic congestion. If only people like Robert Moses and Le Corbusier had known this before their grand urban plans left our cities clogged with traffic, and carved up by ugly, value-destroying highways.
The first researcher to systematically investigate human sexual desire was the Indiana University sociologist Alfred Kinsey, more than 60 years ago. Kinsey spent years surveying people’s sexual habits, interviewing thousands of middle-class Americans in the 1940s and ’50s. But what if all that information had been publicly available? What if you could access the secret sexual behaviors of more than 100 million men and women from around the world?
Today, thanks to the internet, you can.
In what is claimed to be the largest experiment ever, two neuroscience PhDs from Boston University, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, analyzed a billion web searches, a million web sites, a million erotic videos, millions of personal ads, thousands of digital romance novels, and combined it all with cutting-edge neuroscience.
Photo: Nokia Connect A new report from the consultants at McKinsey touts the impact that a new generation of HTML code will have on the world’s smartphones. HTML is the programming standard that’s the backbone of the Internet. The latest version, HTML5, will essentially allow mobile programs to run through a Web browser rather than a specific operating system. That . . .
For years, linguists believed it impossible to trace the genealogy of human language past about 9,000 years ago, when Indo-European tongues split somewhere near present-day Turkey. A new study out of the University of Auckland indicates that split is but the first among many, in a tree whose roots extend all the way to southwestern Africa, some 70,000 years ago. . . .
According to a new study by the London School of Economics, one in every three children in the U.K. between 9 and 12 has his/her own Facebook page, despite Facebook’s minimum age requirement of 13. Among 13-16 year-olds, that number shoots to 43 percent. Researchers noted that European children are taking undue risks online.
Last week, a severe outbreak of tornadoes tore across much of the southeast U.S., killing at least 43 people. Despite the destruction, meteorologists are working on a handful of advancements that should greatly improve our ability to predict tornadoes.
With Butler playing for the national championship for the second straight year, having defeated VCU in the Final Four, everyone’s debating the reasons behind the recent success of mid-major teams in the NCAA Tournament. Evidence abounds: Since George Mason went in 2006, four of the last six Final Fours have included a team from a mid-major conference— defined as any . . .
In the two weeks after Google switched its algorithm, content farm Demand Media saw its weekly uniques increase by about 1 million.
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