What is the total number of deaths that occur each year because of government regulations?

What is the total number of deaths that occur each year because of government regulations?

Research

There has been some discussion about parts of this question. For example, the FDA rules delay life saving drugs getting approved and may even prevent many drugs from being developed in the first place. MPG regulations make cars lighter and increase the number of traffic accident deaths. What is the cost of having drugs being illegal in terms of drug gangs? Regulations that lower wealth also increase deaths because wealthier countries have higher life expectancies. Can we sum them up? Thanks to Martyn Reiss for his email.

A simple test of union control of local public schools?

A simple test of union control of local public schools?

Research Unions

New Jersey is going to allow school districts to decide whether to leave their school board elections in April or to change them to November. Public teacher unions like April because the low voter turnout during those off elections give teacher union members who always vote a great say in determining who wins the elections. The issue here is simple: the public school districts where teacher unions have the greatest influence will be the least likely to switch from April to November.

The school elections bill passed the Senate by a vote of 34-3 and the Assembly by a vote of 62-11 with three abstentions.
It makes moving the election to November optional but allows school districts that do move to forgo votes on the district’s school budget, provided the spending plan calls for a tax levy within the state’s 2 percent cap.
Supporters of the measure claim it will save money on election expenses and increase voter participation.
“Politicians and pundits have talked about doing this for years, but special interests and inertia have prevented progress on this important issue — until today,” said Assemblyman Lou Greenwald, D-6th of Voorhees, who sponsored the legislation. “Empowering towns to move their school elections to November will give voters better control of their local finances while saving property taxpayers the costs of holding yet another local election.” . . .

A chance to see how elastic is the demand for using cars?

A chance to see how elastic is the demand for using cars?

Research

I frequently hear people discuss how much driving will be reduced from increases in the price of gasoline. One of the problems with measuring the impact is that so many other things are changing at the same time. That problem might not be too huge given that we still have so much of a variation in the price of gasoline over time. Still these huge increases in NJ road tolls over the last few years do significantly increase the price per mile of travel and it allows one to compare the changes versus other highways at the same time that are facing the same increase in price. From the WSJ:

. . . Tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike will go up by 53% in the new year; on the Garden State Parkway, they will jump about 50%.

Drivers could be forgiven for having forgotten the new cost: The increase is the second of a two-phase hike adopted by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority and approved by former Gov. Jon Corzine in 2008. Tolls went up by about 40% that year.

Still, the authority advertised the hikes on digital signs on the highways and fliers passed out at toll plazas, said spokesman Thomas Feeney. Of the dozen New Jersey drivers interviewed at the Thomas Edison rest stop here on Friday, most knew that the increases were coming.

"I take highways everyday, so I don't have a choice. It's crazy," said Karan Hannalla, 57, an East Brunswick customer service manager who commutes 26 miles a day to Cranford. She will be paying about $2.50 more a day to commute to and from work. . . .

Question: Are votes counted in primaries more quickly than in general elections

Question: Are votes counted in primaries more quickly than in general elections

Research

I am wondering whether votes are counted faster in Republican or Democrat primaries. Or whether they are counted faster in primaries or general elections. There is always the claim that certain districts will hold back on releasing their votes until they know the number of votes need to win a close election. If so and if one party is more likely to do it than another party, in close elections there should be a difference across parties in terms of how quickly votes are reported.

Feyrer and Sacerdote's claims about the Stimulus

Feyrer and Sacerdote's claims about the Stimulus

book Research stimulus

I have been reading through Feyrer and Sacerdote's paper on the Stimulus (available here), and there were a couple points. It seems to me that their state level results that are very dependent on a couple very small states, namely North Dakota and Vermont. It appears that North Dakota is particularly problematic because 60 percent the job growth that occurred during the time period that you studied was simply due to jobs in the oil industry boom (and presumably there was some secondary job creation from that expansion), jobs which would seem difficult to relate to the Stimulus. In addition, you weight your county level regressions by population, but if you do the same thing for the state level regressions, the results seem to go away. I have used slightly different months, but I believe that the pattern is the same. Sorry that this is hard to read, but the coefficients and t-statistics are in bold.


. reg changeemppop122010to022009 recoveryfundsawardedpercapita if state~="DC"

Source | SS df MS Number of obs = 50
-------------+------------------------------ F( 1, 48) = 5.94
Model | 5.2409e-10 1 5.2409e-10 Prob > F = 0.0186
Residual | 4.2381e-09 48 8.8295e-11 R-squared = 0.1101
-------------+------------------------------ Adj R-squared = 0.0915
Total | 4.7622e-09 49 9.7188e-11 Root MSE = 9.4e-06

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
c~op12100209 | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
recoveryfu~a | 7.69e-09 3.16e-09 2.44 0.019 1.34e-09 1.40e-08
_cons | -.0000224 3.48e-06 -6.44 0.000 -.0000294 -.0000154
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


. reg changeemppop122010to022009 recoveryfundsawardedpercapita if state~="DC" & state~="North Dakota" & state~="Vermont"

Source | SS df MS Number of obs = 48
-------------+------------------------------ F( 1, 46) = 1.65
Model | 1.0780e-10 1 1.0780e-10 Prob > F = 0.2060
Residual | 3.0137e-09 46 6.5516e-11 R-squared = 0.0345
-------------+------------------------------ Adj R-squared = 0.0135
Total | 3.1215e-09 47 6.6415e-11 Root MSE = 8.1e-06

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
c~op12100209 | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
recoveryfu~a | 3.71e-09 2.89e-09 1.28 0.206 -2.11e-09 9.52e-09
_cons | -.0000193 3.09e-06 -6.25 0.000 -.0000256 -.0000131
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

. reg changeemppop122010to022009 recoveryfundsawardedpercapita [aweight= pop2010] if state~="DC"
(sum of wgt is 3.0918e+08)

Source | SS df MS Number of obs = 50
-------------+------------------------------ F( 1, 48) = 0.54
Model | 2.5924e-11 1 2.5924e-11 Prob > F = 0.4649
Residual | 2.2924e-09 48 4.7759e-11 R-squared = 0.0112
-------------+------------------------------ Adj R-squared = -0.0094
Total | 2.3183e-09 49 4.7313e-11 Root MSE = 6.9e-06

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
c~op12100209 | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
recoveryfu~a | 3.29e-09 4.47e-09 0.74 0.465 -5.69e-09 1.23e-08
_cons | -.0000182 3.97e-06 -4.58 0.000 -.0000262 -.0000102
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newly Published Research: "The effect of macroeconomic news on stock returns: New evidence from newspaper coverage"

Newly Published Research: "The effect of macroeconomic news on stock returns: New evidence from newspaper coverage"

mediabias Research

Here is some newly published research that I have with Gene Birz in the latest issue of the Journal of Banking & Finance. This paper finds that media bias can have real economic effects. We will see how many downloads this paper gets. Hopefully, it will get some attention.

Journal of Banking & Finance

Volume 35, Issue 11, November 2011, Pages 2791-2800



The effect of macroeconomic news on stock returns: New evidence from newspaper coverage



Gene Birz and John R. Lott Jr.

Received 19 May 2010; accepted 13 March 2011. Available online 17 March 2011.

Abstract

Previous literature has produced weak evidence to support the hypothesis that real economic news affects stock returns. This is, in part, attributed to the difficulty of measuring how investors interpret macroeconomic announcements in different economic environments. In this paper, we choose a different approach of measuring macroeconomic news to better estimate its effect on stock returns. Since newspaper stories provide an interpretation of the statistical releases, we choose newspaper stories as our measure of news. Our findings indicate that news about GDP and unemployment does affect stock returns.

Keywords: Stock returns; Macroeconomic news; Information

Data on speed limits by state

Data on speed limits by state

Research

This data is current as of today. Click on picture to make chart bigger. All of it is available here. What can I say? I like to collect data.