Pass-through rates of minimum wages into retail consumers
Fascinating study by Tobias Renkin, Claire Montialoux, and Michael Siegenthaler that uses micro-level supermarket scanner data (retail is famously good at tracking data).
libertarian
Ben Sasse on the space between Nebraska and Neverland
LinkBen Sasse on the space between Nebraska and Neverland
Fantastic conversation between Tyler Cowen and Ben Sasse. Sasse is everything a conservative ought be (and, consequently, the opposite of what Trump is): thoughtful but principled, well-read but humble and aware of the limits of academic reasoning, and interested in root causes, rather than surface problems.
Democrats won’t fix their religion problem any time soon
LinkAbout that bogus claim that North Carolina is no longer a democracy . . . – Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
LinkA few reasons this matters:
- It wrongly hurts our credibility to condemn abuses abroad, as per the quote above
- It wrongly suggests that the best use of resources (government or nonprofit) is to focus on electoral abuses in NC, rather than places like North Korea
- (most important to me) It’s a reminder that academics often publish conclusions with sketchy methodology, and that even mainstream, credible media outlets will uncritically accept them if the conclusions fit their broader narrative. To me, this is equally (if not more) dangerous as (or maybe than) the fake news phenomenon. It’s also just indicative of a trend in American politics, particularly among the elite (on both left and right) to replace dialogue with one-line soundbites from studies that they didn’t read