EclectEcon

Academic Freedom and the Study of Racial Differences

I don't like this research. I don't like these published results.



But I believe so strongly in the strength of the marketplace for ideas that I defend scholars' endeavours in these areas. I hope the competition ends up proving them wrong.



From Philippe Rushton's review of Lynn's book, Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis [please note that these are averages],

He concludes that the East Asians -— Chinese, Japanese and Koreans -— have the highest mean IQ at 105. Europeans follow with an IQ of 100. Some ways below these are the Inuit or Eskimos (IQ 91), South East Asians (IQ 87), Native American Indians (IQ 87), Pacific Islanders (IQ 85), South Asians and North Africans (IQ 84). Well below these come the sub-Saharan Africans (IQ 67) followed by the Australian Aborigines (IQ 62).



The lowest scoring are the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert together with the Pygmies of the Congo rain forests (IQ 54).

I truly would like someone to present evidence that counters these results, but please no more moral outrage for examining the questions. And please, no firings of professors who openly discuss the question, as happened recently in the UK:

Dr Frank Ellis was suspended from his post as a lecturer at Leeds University pending disciplinary procedures.



... The lecturer in Russian and Slavonic Studies told a student newspaper there was a "persistent gap" in IQ levels.



... [U]niversity secretary Roger Gair said in a statement that details of the disciplinary process "must remain a private matter" between employer and employee.



But he said three issues were being looked into.

1. In publicising his personal views on race and other matters, Dr Ellis had acted in breach of the university's equality and diversity policy, "and in a way that is wholly at odds with our values".
2. He had "recklessly jeopardised" the fulfilment of the university's obligations under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.
3. He had failed to comply with "reasonable requests" - for example, to apologise for the distress which his remarks on race and other matters have caused to many people, or to give an undertaking he would make no further public comments suggesting one racial group is inherently inferior (or superior) to another "unless there is no possibility whatsoever that anyone hearing or reading his comments might reasonably associate him with the University of Leeds".

... Leeds University had previously said that those views were "abhorrent" but there was no evidence he had discriminated against students.

Phil Rushton and I are both members of the social science faculty at The University of Western Ontario. We are both members of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, and we are also irregular participants in a group which meets late on Saturday mornings at the the Masonville Starbucks in London, Ontario.



As I said above, I hope someday somebody demonstrates he is wrong.

Freedom of the Press vs. the Alberta Human Rights Commission

This morning I read in the Trono Globe & Mail that the Danish newspaper that published the infamous cartoons is being sued:

A group of 27 Danish Muslim organizations have filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper that first published the caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, their lawyer said Thursday.



The lawsuit was filed Wednesday, two weeks after Denmark's top prosecutor declined to press criminal charges, saying the drawings that sparked a firestorm in the Muslim world did not violate laws against racism or blasphemy.



Michael Christiani Havemann, a lawyer representing the Muslim groups, said lawsuit sought $16,100 in damages from Jyllands-Posten Editor in Chief Carsten Juste and Culture Editor Flemming Rose, who supervised the cartoon project.



“We're seeking judgment for both the text and the drawings which were gratuitously defamatory and injurious,” Mr. Havemann said.

Then I checked my e-mail and read the following message from Ezra Levant, publisher of The Western Standard, where I sometimes blog:

Our magazine has been sued for publishing the Danish cartoons, and I need your help to fight back!



As you know, the Western Standard was the only mainstream media organ in Canada to publish the Danish cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed.



We did so for a simple reason: the cartoons were the central fact in one of the largest news stories of the year, and we're a news magazine. We publish the facts and we let our readers make up their minds.



Advertisers stood with us. Readers loved the fact that we treated them like grown-ups. And we earned the respect of many other journalists in Canada who envied our independence. In fact, according to a COMPAS poll last month, fully 70% of Canada's working journalists supported our decision to publish the cartoons.



But not Syed Soharwardy, a radical Calgary Muslim imam.



He asked the police to arrest me for publishing the cartoons. They calmly explained to him that's not what police in Canada do.



So then he went to a far less liberal institution than the police: the Alberta Human Rights Commission. Unlike the Calgary Police Service, they didn't have the common sense to show him the door.



Earlier this month, I received a copy of Soharwardy's rambling, hand-scrawled complaint. It is truly an embarrassing document. He briefly complains that we published the Danish cartoons. But the bulk of his complaint is that we dared to try to justify it - that we dared to disagree with him.



Think about that: In Soharwardy's view, not only should the Canadian media be banned from publishing the cartoons, but we should be banned from defending our right to publish them. Perhaps the Charter of Rights that guarantees our freedom of the press should be banned, too.



Soharwardy's complaint goes further than just the cartoons. It refers to news articles we published about Hamas, a group labelled a terrorist organization by the Canadian government. By including those other articles, he shows his real agenda: censoring any criticism of Muslim extremists.



Perhaps the most embarrassing thing about Soharwardy's complaint is that he claims our cartoons caused him to receive hate mail. Indeed, his complaint includes copies of a few e-mails from strangers to him. Some of those e-mails even go so far as to call him "humourless" and tell him to "lighten up". Perhaps that's hateful. But all of those e-mails were sent to him before our magazine even published the cartoons. Soharwardy isn't even pretending that this is a legitimate complaint. He's not even trying to hide that this is a nuisance suit.



Soharwardy's complaint should have been thrown out immediately by the Alberta Human Rights Commission, just like the police did. But it wasn't. Which is why I'm writing to you today.



According to our lawyers, we will win this case. It's an infantile complaint, without basis in facts or law. Frankly, it's an embarrassment to the government of Alberta that their tribunal is open to abuse like this.



Our lawyers tell us we're going to win. But not before we have to spend hundreds of hours and up to $75,000 fighting this thing, at our own expense. Soharwardy doesn't have to spend a dime - now that his complaint has been filed, Alberta tax dollars will pay for the prosecution of his complaint. We have to pay for this on our own.



Look, $75,000 isn't going to bankrupt us. But it will sting. We're a small, independent magazine, not a huge company with deep pockets. All of our money is needed to produce the best possible editorial product, not to fight legal battles. This is clearly an abuse of process designed to punish us and deter other media from daring to cross that angry imam in the future.



One of the leaders in Canadian human rights law, Alan Borovoy, was so disturbed by Soharwardy's abuse of the human rights commission that he wrote a public letter about it in the Calgary Herald on March 16th. "During the years when my colleagues and I were labouring to create such commissions, we never imagined that they might ultimately be used against freedom of speech," wrote Borovoy, who is general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Censorship was "hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions. There should be no question of the right to publish the impugned cartoons," he wrote.



Borovoy went even further - he said that the human rights laws should be changed to avoid this sort of abuse in the future. "It would be best, therefore, to change the provisions of the Human Rights Act to remove any such ambiguities of interpretation," he wrote. That's an amazing statement, coming from one of the fathers of the Canadian human rights movement.



I agree with Borovoy: the law should be changed to stop future abuses. But those changes will come too late for us - we're already under attack. The human rights laws, designed as a shield, are being used against us as a sword.



We will file our legal response to Soharwardy's shakedown this week. And we will fight this battle to the end - not just for our own sake, but to defend freedom of the press for all Canadians.



Do you believe that's important? If so, I'd ask you to help us defray our costs. We're accepting donations through our website. It's fast, easy and secure. Just click on http://www.westernstandard.ca/freedom



You can donate any amount from $10 to $10,000. Please help the Western Standard today - and protect freedom for all Canadians for years to come.



Yours gratefully,



Ezra Levant

Publisher



P.S. Remember, Soharwardy's complaint will be prosecuted using tax dollars and government lawyers. We have to rely on our own funds - and the generous support of readers like you.



P.P.S. Please help us now, at http://www.westernstandard.ca/freedom

It could just as easily happen in any province in Canada.



From the Western Standard's Blog or see here to read all the comments there as well:

UPDATE 1: Here is a scan of the imam's complaint.



UPDATE 2: We are currently working to change our legal defence fund web page to accept donations from outside Canada. In the meantime, please e-mail Rita at [email protected] or phone us at 403-216-2270 and we can help you that way — thanks!

New Zealand Moves Toward Tradeable Water Permits

Speaking of water, as I did yesterday, from Stuff in New Zealand comes news that at least some people are beginning to consider allowing markets to help allocate water:

Environment Minister David Benson-Pope and Agriculture and Forestry Minister Jim Anderton have prepared a Cabinet paper, which is expected to rule out privatisation but allow limited trading of water rights and establish an economic "price" for water.



... the Government did not want a regime which would prompt users to exploit their full water right, because that might encourage them to use more, not less, water.



One option could be a "cap and trade" system which could allow consent holders to trade a proportion of their water right, but not the full amount.



... The South Island river faces competing demand for hydro-generation, irrigation, industry and recreation, while the available flow is arguably "over-allocated" in dry years.



Existing users effectively have priority, on a first-come-first-served basis, which may not allow for new or more economic uses.

Let's see, now:

• Well-defined property rights.
• Dramatically lowered transaction costs

It all sounds pretty Coasean/Coasian to me.



[h/t to Rodney Hide]

The Water Shortage in Sussex-Kent.What Will Happen to the Castle's Moat?

The castle where I will be teaching this summer is in southeast England, in the heart of the region experiencing a water shortage. Hosepipe and watering bans are already in place, long before the real dryness of summer will be upon them.



I bristle every time I read or hear the words "shortage", "rationing", and "ban on watering". I know that any time there is a shortage, the price is below the market-clearing price. There wouldn't be a shortage if the price were raised (or allowed to rise). I wrote the same thing last month about water in Phoenix, Arizona.



Recently, I asked a person at the castle whether showering had been banned yet and whether the castle would receive special dispensation, allowing them to water their gardens and flowers. She replied,

Water situation is dire - they're talking about standpipes in the streets.



However we're all still quite clean here at the moment. I don't think the Castle will get any special consideration when it comes to watering the gardens.

The Protocols of the Elders of Harvard

About a century ago, there appeared a heinous anti-semitic document called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alleging there was a Jewish plot to take over the world. I wrote about this fraud here.



There is a new document that rivals the Protocols for anti-semitism, only this one is more subtle. Its title is "Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy". BenS calls it "The Protocols of the Elders of Harvard" .

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy [$ Subscription req'd] - James Taranto

The New York Sun reports on a paper, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, about the allegedly far-reaching influence of an "Israel lobby." White supremacist David Duke, a one-time Ku Klux Klan leader, called the paper "a great step forward." The "working paper" claims a network of journalists, think tanks, lobbyists, and largely Jewish officials have seized the foreign policy debate and manipulated America to invade Iraq. Included in this network, the authors say, are the editors of the New York Times, the scholars at the Brookings Institution, "pro-Israel" senior officials in the executive branch, and "neoconservative gentiles" including columnist George Will.

Walt and Mearsheimer's method of analysis presumes Israel's guilt. Every past or present Israeli transgression is evidence of its wickedness, whereas Arab ones, if they are acknowledged at all, are "understandable." This approach is anti-Semitic in effect if not in intent. It is telling that David Duke finds their ideas congenial. (Wall Street Journal)



See also Critics Question Harvard Paper - Meghan Clyne

Marvin Kalb, founding director of the Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, said, "It clearly does not meet the academic standards of a Kennedy School research paper....It is a rather sensational example of 'realist' journalism....Walt would be better advised to stick to scholarship and leave journalism to journalists, who generally check their 'facts' before publishing them." President Clinton's special Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, said the authors displayed "a woeful lack of knowledge on the subject....It is masquerading as scholarship." (New York Sun)

"The content [of the paper] is not significant," said the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein. "Those seeking to damage the U.S.-Israel relationship have been saying this for a while. The fact that it carries the imprimatur of the Harvard Kennedy School is. Those that don't know better would assume it has validity, when it doesn't." (New York Sun)

Christopher Hitchens, in Slate, adds

It's slightly hard to understand the fuss generated by the article on the Israeli lobby produced by the joint labors of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was published in the London Review of Books. My guess is that the Harvard logo has something to do with it, but then I don't understand why the doings of that campus get so much media attention, either.



The essay itself, mostly a very average "realist" and centrist critique of the influence of Israel, contains much that is true and a little that is original. But what is original is not true and what is true is not original.



... Mearsheimer and Walt belong to that vapid school that essentially wishes that the war with jihadism had never started. Their wish is father to the thought that there must be some way, short of a fight, to get around this confrontation. Wishfulness has led them to seriously mischaracterize the origins of the problem and to produce an article that is redeemed from complete dullness and mediocrity only by being slightly but unmistakably smelly.

The explanations for these assertions are in his article. I recommend it.



Addendum: Despite the above criticisms, The Emirates Economist wonders about the exceptionalism in U.S. - Israel relations.

Arguably, self-interest has not always led the U.S. in an admirable or honorable path - numerous alignments of convenience with foreign dictators come to mind. But in general it is hard to argue that it is not right for a country to pursue a policy which aims to ensure its own survival and promote the welfare of its citizens. And that that is exactly what the U.S. has done throughout its history.



It would appear that since the Truman administration, U.S. foreign policy towards Israel is more of an "infatuation" with a "favorite nation." This seeming departure from a pragmatic approach has been hard explain. And it feeds a theory spun in coffee shops and shisha bars throughout the Middle East; that theory being that the Jews run America. What else, these theorists say, can explain the apparent exceptionalism of U.S. policy toward Israel?



... [Even] If the charges of the critics hold true - ... - the exceptionalism question will still remain.

Given the contrasts between Israel and the various countries surrounding Israel, it seems quite reasonable to me that the U.S. would give it special consideration.

What Has Happened to U.S. M3 Growth Rates?

If you're interested in growth rates of the U.S. money supply (and Fed policy concerning them), you might enjoy this cartoon from the Wall Street Examiner.



For more on The Fed's decision to stop reporting M3, see this at the Wall Street Examiner.

The Fed discontinued publication of M3 data this week. According to them it was no big deal.



... Translation:



We have given up on reporting M3. We ceased to have any influence, let alone control, over M3 many years ago. It's embarrassing that no matter what we do M3 just keeps growing faster and faster than the rate at which we are growing our monetary base (printing money), and faster and faster than M2, over which we are also gradually losing control.



Because M3 makes our own impotence so obvious, we are going to pretend that the explosion of the worldwide supply of dollars doesn't exist, and will only continue to report those measures which don't make us look like such incompetent wussies, that is, the monetary base, M1, and M2 which includes a few items that are also spiraling out of control. M2's days are probably numbered, but we will do our best to make it look like we are really doing something.

Macroblog, in its Odds and Ends posting, says,

In the some-think-it-matters-I-don't category, The Capital Spectator comments on the retirement of M3. So does Tim Iacono. That makes the graphs at Economist's View on M3 velocity -- explained here -- somewhat obsolete, but don't worry -- there is still M1 and M2 to absorb your attention.

A Condemnation of Canadian Education

I know the Canadian Education system is not terrific is many ways, but is it really this bad? From the Freakonomics blog:

Hello. I am Rohan Patel, I am 10 years old. Your book was amazing! I loved it, but I found one mistake in it. In the chapter “What Makes A Perfect Parent?” it says that changing schools does not have an impact on the child. This is untrue, as i moved from Canada to India. In India the school system is much harder, when I came here I was way behind. I am emailing my friends and they are behind me, what they learn is very different from what I learn. So changing schools makes a huge impact on the child, I myself am an example of this.

How many 10-year-olds do you know who can read, much less understand, Freakonomics?



Or is the letter a hoax?

Professor Leniency, Student Learning,and Student Evaluations of Professors

After several e-mail discussions with Phil Miller and King Banaian, I have decided to post here about some research I did quite some years ago on this topic. To be immodest (and open myself up for telling criticisms in the comments), I haven't seen anything else as good as this work, though I don't follow the topic any more. At any rate, given the continuing interest in the topic, the framework should provide a good basis for additional research in the area. Here is the abstract:

Previous studies have yielded mixed results concerning the relationships between the amount students learn, instructor leniency, and student evaluations of instructors. One reason for the conflicting results is that grades and learning are highly correlated, and the effects of leniency and learning have not yet been separated precisely.



We present a three equation model that disentangles learning from leniency and relates the results to evaluations. The first equation measures the impact of each instructor on the amount of knowledge students have acquired. The second measures the leniency of each instructor. The third relates these two measures to student evaluations of instructors. For our sample, there was no significant relationship between either leniency or learning and evaluations.

To download the paper in pdf format, click here.



The hypothesis being tested was that professors buy or earn good evaluations by providing students with what they want: good grades, leisure, and some kind of knowledge or learning. To test the hypothesis, one must construct measures of how much the professor contributes to a student's knowledge, ceteris paribus, and how lenient a professor is, ceteris paribus.



We had a sample of sixteen introductory microeconomics instructors. We gave their students a pre-test the first day of class, and gave the same 19-question test as a post-test during the final exam. We then estimated the instructors' contributions to the post-test scores. We then also estimated their leniency by comparing grades with how much the students knew. We then ran regressions of evaluations on the derived measures. The estimated co-efficients were really close to zero (and not significantly different from zero).



I still harbour some suspicions that our results might have been idiosyncratic to our group of instructors. But I don't know that for sure. And, unfortunately, we are not able to replicate the study at this university because we have moved to offering fewer larger sections of the introductory course (and to assure anonymity and privacy, student numbers are not required on the evaluation forms).



Our guess at the time was that providing a supportive atmosphere and a sense of interest in the students and caring about how they do are important determinants of how they evaluate professors. Entertainment value and speaking clearly also seem to be important. But these things seemed unrelated to leniency and to learning.



Please, before you criticize the method and methodology based on what I've written above, read the study; it isn't all that long.

Round-up of Recent Economics Blog Postings

Dave Altig at Macroblog has a very comprehensive round-up of recent blog postings from all over creation, all grouped by various economics topics. It is very thorough and useful.

You Have to Love Anette Norberg for this...

Anette Norberg, skip [sort of like a team captain] of the world champion Swedish curling rink [team], was interviewed by mediot Joan McCusker of CBC following Sweden's win in the finals [I'm paraphrasing here]:

McCusker: Anette, tell us, how important was this win after your team won the gold medal at the Olympics?



Norberg: It wasn't really very important....

I absolutely love her.



Maybe someday mediots will stop asking such stupid, cliched questions like that.



Update: I just noticed that several months ago, I posted something very similar, but as a sarcastic criticism -- how I wished someone would respond to such questions:

I am especially offended by Russell's asking questions which contain stupidly obvious answers within them:



Scott: How important is this game for you?



Answer: Gee, Scott, I think I'd rather go for a beer than be here playing this game....

More on Disaster Preparedness;Avian Flu

Back in October I posted what Ms. Eclectic and I have been doing to prepare for disasters. In our area, the most likely natural disasters are ice storms and the resulting power outages. These are not likely to last longer than a week at the very most.



Avian flu is a different story, though. Being prepared for a week will not be enough; many people think we will need to be prepared to survive for several months under serious adversity. If the virus mutates to human-to-human transmission, public Health authorities are not going to be able to stop it. And, as they say at Avian Flu,

Revere offers a five minute crash course on what you need to know about avian flu, correctly emphasizing that [we] need to stop thinking we can somehow stop a pandemic in its tracks. Good planning, not vaccine stockpiles, will be key.

Here, thanks to Jack for the pointer, are several different articles about being prepared for avian flu. they are lengthy, but perhaps it is time to start giving serious thought to preparing your home, your family, and yourself for the possibility. These articles appear on the Flu Wiki, which seems quite thorough.



Jack suggests, in light of evidence the current strain of the virus seems to sit deep in the lungs, that a good way to reduce the probability of transmission to yourself (should the virus mutate to become transmittable between humans) is to avoid people who breathe deeply: stay out of gyms and bordellos.

A Period of Calm?

Melanie Phillips has another gem:

As far as the west is concerned, there is no terrorism going on against Israel at present. Western intellectuals can therefore continue to attack it for being the source of world evil without the tiresome business of having to somehow wrench the spectacle of Israelis being blown to kingdom come to fit their narrative of the all-powerful global Zionist conspiracy. They think this because there are no reports whatsoever – at least in the British media – of the rocket attacks that have been mounted from Gaza upon Israel ever since disengagement (so far with no casualties). There have been no reports of the two human bomb attacks in the last few days that were intercepted by the Israelis before they reached their target.



... [There have also been] 50 general and 11 specific terror warnings. If America or the UK were facing such an onslaught by Iran, they would call it war. When Israel is the victim, it’s called ‘a period of calm’.

Another Benefit of Small-town living

The other evening, as Ms. Eclectic and I sat in a restaurant in our small town [population ~3K], I thought to myself, "Gee, it might be nice to live in a large city and have tonnes of restaurants to choose from."



But then I realized that when we lived in a larger city [London, Ontario; population >300K], we never had more than one or two restaurants within a fifteen minute walk of any of the three different places where we lived. Sure, we had more choice if we were willing to drive and park and...



Here, in Clinton, Ontario, we have at least ten restaurants within a 5-15 minute walk. That's a lot of convenient choice we never had in the city. And if we're willing to drive and park, we have lots of choice in the many nearby towns within a 20 minute drive, door-to-door, with no city driving and no parking problems.

Another Curling Broadcasting Scandal?Are all the major media deceitful cads?

Check out the TSN broadcast schedule (if it is still available) for the Ford Women's World Championships in 2006.

Mar 24

Ford Women's Worlds - Page Playoff Game #1 6:30pm

Ford Women's Worlds - Page Playoff Game #2 9:30pm

Then look below the schedule, and you will see:

(TD) - Tape Delayed coverage

There is no TD listed after the 6:30pm time for Page Playoff Game #1.



This is scandalous.



TSN has known since the beginning of the tournament that the first page playoff was scheduled to be played at 3pm this afternoon [concluded just prior to 6pm with Sweden defeating the US 8-5]. They should not be allowed to

1. List tape delayed broadcasts in their schedule without clearly identifying that the broadcasts will be tape delayed.
2. Make so bloody many tape-delayed broadcasts.
   
   

Surely the CCA has messed up again in its negotiation of broadcast/media contracts. Surely they should be able to induce CTV, owner of TSN, to carry more live coverage. If they don't or won't carry the coverage live on TSN, then CTV can carry it on their other sports network; after all they own two of 'em. Failing that, they can license it to someone else.



CCA:broadcasting contracts::EclectEcon:socionomology

Stop the Presses!It's U.S. Policy to Try to Bribe Other Countries

Is there any reason to think this policy is not a good one? From Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, citing a paper by Ilyana Kuziemko and Erik Werker:

... US foreign aid increases dramatically to countries elected to the [United Nations] Security Council.



The result isn't that surprising but Werker did a good job of ruling out explanations other than bribery. Foreign aid, for example, increases just as a country joins the council and drops just at it leaves. Foreign aid also increases especially dramatically in important years, as measured by the number of New York Times stories involving the council. Perhaps most interestingly, although US foreign aid is larger for democracies than for autocracies on average, autocracies get bigger increases in aid when they join the council. The result makes a lot of sense. Autocracts can sell their votes more easily than democratically elected leaders (no domestic constituencies to worry about) and transactions costs are lower - the aid goes directly to the vote seller.

From the abstract to the paper,

Using country-level panel data, we find that a country’s foreign aid receipts rise substantially when it is elected to the Security Council: on average, U.S. aid increases by 54 percent and U.N. development aid rises by 7 percent. We find that the positive effect of Security Council membership on aid is much greater during years in which key diplomatic events take place, when members’ votes are likely to be especially valuable.

But are these bribes effective?

I would hope the U.S. also reduces aid to those countries that don't support it at the UN. But the paper finds it difficult to test for the effectiveness of these bribes:

Ideally, a study of vote-buying in the United Nations would test for the ability of Security Council aid to influence actual voting. Unfortunately, this is difficult for two reasons. First, we cannot observe the counter-factual: how the country would have voted in the absence of vote-buying activity. Second, votes themselves are strategic. Agenda setters typically know, before putting a resolution up for a vote, the preferences of each member. Perhaps this is why most Security Council resolutions are passed unanimously, and why failed resolutions are rare—recall that the 2003 resolution to authorize the invasion of Iraq never actually came to a vote. Due to these identification problems, we believe that actual outlays of aid are the most trustworthy way to measure the presence of vote-buying in the Security Council. By providing extra aid to non-permanent members of the council, especially during years when council votes are especially important, agenda setters have implicitly revealed their faith in the Security Council’s relevance in world affairs.

I guess that's a kind of revealed preference argument --- they wouldn't be making the bribes if they didn't think the bribes were effective.

What Were the Feasible Options?

Okay, so the war in Iraq has not gone the way the U.S. thought it would.



Okay, so the war in Iraq looks to be mired in civil strife.



So what would you have done differently back in 2003? Here is Melanie Phillips's answer:

There were three interlinked reasons why the US and British governments – along with every other western country at the time – considered Saddam Husein to be such a menace to the west. They were his sponsorship of terrorism, his pursuit of WMD and his aim to become the leader of the Arab world. In Britain the anti-war crowd – now in hysterical overdrive over the continuing war in Iraq – now flatly deny that Saddam was involved in global terror and that he posed any threat to the west at all. The claim that he was in bed with al Qaeda is laughed to scorn. The documents reported by Stephen Hayes show once again that this relationship was not a figment of a crazed neocon imagination; and as the Foreign Affairs paragraph tells us: Preparations for ‘Blessed July,’ a regime-directed wave of ‘martyrdom’ operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion. [ital in original]



Whatever the horrors now engulfing Iraq and whatever mistakes were made since the fall of Baghdad, the fact remains that the toppling of Saddam was a necessity for the west. Just because things are bad does not mean they could not have been worse. This simple fact has been all but obliterated from public discourse by the avalanche of lies and distortions from the anti-war crowd who have rewritten both history and present circumstances in order to say ‘I told you so’. The pathological hysteria with which they are doing so, however (see today’s Independent newspaper, for example) suggests that at some level they know they are denying this patently obvious truth.

Phillips references these two sites:

• Foreign Military Studies
• Stephen Hayes

Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, cites those same two items as well in his article, "My Ideal War".

I know that a lot of people feel that they were cheated or even lied into the war. It seems amazing to me that so many people have adopted the "Saddam Hussein? No problem!" view before the documents captured from his regime have even been translated, let alone analyzed. I am sure that when this task has been completed, history will make fools of those who believed that he was no threat, had no terror connections, was "in his box," and so forth.

Do Social Policies Trap the Poor in Their Poverty?

Of course they do. It is impossible to construct welfare programmes that do not reward some type of behaviour, and, because people respond to incentives, poor people often or sometimes [I didn't say always!] become trapped by the system.



Tom Hanna provides further evidence. He cites the great old-time liberal interventionist State of Minnesota, explaining why that state has among the lowest rates of housing ownership among people of colour:

I’d argue that the results are not “despite” Minnesota’s progressivism, but in fact because of it. From trapping poor minority families in public housing to trapping poor minority children in failing schools (and a dozen other examples of the soft bigotry of low expectations), lower outcomes for minorities are the predictable result of government programs which entice people to accept the status quo under the assumption that they are incapable of helping themselves.

Gasoline Pricing Re-Revisited

If the gasoline refiners and the major oil companies are such dirty rotten monopolist capitalist pigs, what happened to their market power in February? In Canada,

Lower gasoline prices helped push Canada's annual rate of inflation down to 2.2 per cent in February, Statistics Canada said Thursday.



The government agency says the price of gasoline dipped 6.8 per cent in February — pushing inflation down from January's 2.8 per cent.

[h/t to Canadian Econoview]

More on the Dubai-Ports Issue

HispanicPundit has an excellent quote from David Ignatius:

The truth is, this is one of the few places in the Arab world where things have been going in the right direction — away from terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism and toward an open, modern economy. That’s why congressional opposition came as such a surprise here. People in the UAE think they’re America’s friends. The ports deal was part of the UAE’s embrace of things Western.

Anatomy of the [Coming?] Housing Market Crash

Is the housing market slowing down yet? Should we expect a crash?



I had written earlier that I expected the bubble to deflate slowly, but not burst. Lee Adler, of the Wall Street Examiner thinks it will be worse.

The inventory of existing unsold homes has been rising at an accelerating rate for 13 months.



... Sales volume is declining.



... Prices have begun to decline, down 6% since November overall... . This is consistent with the pattern of past real estate bubbles that I have experienced first hand, with four important differences. This one was bigger, lasted longer, was more widespread, and was the engine of growth for the entire US economy and world financial system.



... What's going on worries me greatly.



... The crash will begin to show up in prices over the next couple of months, but the full effect will not be felt for a year or more. January is the first time since the bubble began that house prices were lower than they were seven months ago.



The worst is yet to come.

Keep in mind that Adler is writing about the U.S. market; things will likely be different in Canada, especially in Alberta. At any rate, The Wall Street Examiner is an interesting, sobering site. It has been on my blogroll since its inception.

We Have Met the Enemy and He is....... ours ...... us ...... Socionomology

Go Sparky!



King Banaian, of SCSU Scholars writes:

The enemy on campuses isn't gay studies, women's studies, area studies, peace studies, or whatever, separately. It is one agenda. It is leftism. It is socialism. Strike at the root[s], which are most sociology programs in American universities, and the entire edifice crumbles.

I certainly couldn't have said it as well.

Tolerance Does Not Equal Religious Freedom;Tolerance Might Equal Forgiveness;Huh??

Just what does "tolerance" mean?



In North America and in western cultures, it means something like live and let live, roughly speaking. It does not mean, "We will tolerate you if you give up your beliefs and espouse what we believe."



But that seems to be the definition applied by Sharia Law and conservative Muslims in Afghanistan. From the BBC [h/t to A Canadian Econoview] (Can you imagine the outrage if any Western country did this?):

Abdul Rahman is charged with rejecting Islam and could face the death sentence under Sharia law unless he recants.



He converted [to Christianity] 16 years ago as an aid worker helping refugees in Pakistan.



... The BBC's Mike Donkin in Kabul says reformists, like the government under President Hamid Karzai, want a more liberal, secular legal system but under the present constitution it is hard for them to intervene.



Afghanistan's post-Taleban constitution is based on Sharia law, and prosecutors in the case says this means Abdul Rahman, whose trial began last Thursday, should be put to death.



Trial judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah told the BBC that Mr Rahman, 41, would be asked to reconsider his conversion, which he made while working for a Christian aid group in Pakistan.



"We will invite him again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance. We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him," the judge told the BBC on Monday.

As my friend Jack says, in Islam apostasy has always been worse than being an infidel.



But this sure isn't my idea of "tolerance". For the sake of freedom, I hope our presence in Afghanistan helps encourage the Western definition of tolerance.

Risk and Return in the NFL

This isn't an old maid's portfolio we're dealing with here.

That is how Dallas Cowboy's owner, Jerry Jones, described their internal assessment of the expected risks and returns involved with signing Terrell Owens on the weekend. [Washington Post, reg. req'd].

Jones, the savvy NFL owner who has found more ways to circumvent the salary cap than there are galaxies, explained the risk-return trade-off so that even football mediots could understand it:

Jones said the Cowboys, after failing to reach the playoffs the past two seasons, believed that Owens's gifts as a pass receiver made signing him worth the risks. He said there are risks in signing any player, and added: "That's just life in this game. You take risks. This isn't buying bonds.

In other words, Jones and Cowboys know full well that if the signing works out, they have a very good chance of making the playoffs and doing well financially. They also know that if the signing does not work out well, the team stands a good chance of having a losing season. The Cowboys are way out on the risk-return frontier [the Markowitz efficiency frontier]

The sad thing is that most of the NFL mediots won't get it. They don't grasp the basic economics of risk and return trade-offs. If Owens works out well, for the Cowboys, the mediots will

1. Hail Jones as a genius, or
2. Condemn him as a lucky idiot.

and if the signing doesn't work out, the mediots will

1. Condemn Jones as an idiot, or
2. Sympathize with him as an unlucky genius.

All four possible responses would be ex post assessments of the signing. As the mediots analyze this signing ex ante, as one must assess any decision when one makes it, we see the difficulty of assessing the signing of Owens. Jones' statement reveals that he understands very well that this signing might not work out. Also, the structuring of the contract makes it clear that both sides understand the risks involved: there are large bonuses if it works and annual "outs" for the Cowboys if it doesn't.

My own, ex ante assessment, is that this is a good gamble for the Cowboys to take. Parcells is a coach who probably has a better chance of working with Owens than many others, and Owens skills as a wide receiver are superb. I.e., my assessment is similar to that of Jones.

But we both might be wrong.

Cross-posted at The Sports Economist

Fainting Spells? This Might Help

From the CBC, courtesy of Ms. Eclectic:

Of 223 frequent fainters aged 16 to 70, muscle-tensing exercises reduced the risk of an episode by more than one-third, found the study, presented by van Dijk at a meeting of heart specialists in Atlanta on Sunday.



... In the 14-month study, half of the subjects were taught three exercises for preventing fainting. The rest were given conventional advice, such as avoiding triggers.



The three exercises were:

• Crossing the legs at the ankles while squeezing the thighs together and tensing the abdominal muscles.
• Hand-gripping moves, where the fingertips are laced and arms are pulled in opposite directions.
• Arm-tensing, squeezing a ball while again tensing the thighs and abdominal muscles.

The exercises are simple, cheap and carry no known sign-effects [sic], said van Dijk.

I Love Burgers, Too!

I love burgers, but I doubt if eating them has improved my figure.

Salma Hayek gorged herself on hamburgers to increase her curves before filming sex scenes with Colin Farrell for their new movie.



... Salma - who recently claimed it is boring to be skinny all the time - decided to go a junk food diet to gain the weight quickly.



She said: "The character needed more weight so I ate a lot of hamburgers."

[h/t to Emirates Economist, who pointed me here]

More Evidence That Demand Curves Are Downward-Sloping

Policy making is so much easier when you simply assume your conclusion, isn't it?

That's the conclusion of Brian Ferguson, of Canadian Econoview, presenting yet another convincing case that demand curves are downward-sloping.... even for medical procedures and prescription drugs.

• He quotes from The Wall Street Journal about laser eye surgery:

  The WSJ points out that LASIK laser eye surgery is generally not covered by insurance, meaning that most patients having it have to pay the whole shot out of pocket. the result is that the market is open and competitive, in the microeconomic textbook sense, and that competition has been driving the price of the procedure down - one of the few cases in which the price of a medical service has actually fallen.

• and he quotes Nancy Pavcnik about prescription drubs:

  producers significantly decrease prices after the change in insurance. Price declines are most pronounced for brand name products. Moreover, branded products that face more generic competitors reduce prices more.

• And he adds information about Dutch pharmaceuticals:

  A few years ago the Dutch cut the reference price on a whole range of drugs, so that, if the price of the prescription remained unchanged, the amount the patient had to pay out of pocket would increase. In fact, drug companies cut their prices, something they would only do if the market was very competitive.

Brian Ferguson's summary:


Now, one of the loudest claims made by opponents of increased market involvement in Canadian health care is that increased market involvement will drive the cost of health care up - just look at the US, right? So does this evidence give them a moment's pause? Of course not.

I won't name names, since I wouldn't want to embarass the University of Toronto by pointing out the type of logic employed by faculty in their medical school, but anti-market types have been faced with the LASIK evidence before, and their response has been that the fact that competition drives the price of care down is bad because it encourages people to have unnecessary care (by which, of course, they mean care that the individual patient thinks is worth sacrificing purchasing power to obtain but which the experts think he should just do without). So, markets are bad because they drive costs up except when they drive down costs in which case markets are bad because they drive costs down. Got that?

It's much clearer if you start from the premise that whatever markets do must be bad. [emphasis added]

Policy making is so much easier when you simply assume your conclusion, isn't it?

Field Trips in Economics

What would be a good field trip in an introductory economics course with maybe 15 - 20 students? Field trips are a regular part of the teaching at the castle where I will be teaching this summer [see blog ad at the left].

• A trip to a farm to learn about optimizing decisions on inputs and outputs?
  
  
• A trip to a water-management authority to learn about water pricing and provision decisions over both the short-run and long-run?
  
  
• A trip to a sports franchise to learn about fixed costs, complementary goods, and demand-determined pricing?
  
  
• A trip to a pub to learn about optimal pricing decisions for price-searchers? to study the drift in utility functions?
  
  
• A trip to a "financial management" firm to learn how they make their forecasts?
  
  
• A trip to a city planner to learn how they deal with congestion problems?
  
  
• A visit with a central banker to learn about the criteria for monetary policy and about their interpretation of the monetary mechanism?

Suggestions are welcome (but please keep them clean and reasonable -- I won't even suggest trips to massage parlours).

Oh Yeah? Well Fark U.

I am pleased to announce that I have been added to the list of faculty members at Fark U. where, of course, we teach economics from "The World According to Fark"*. The concept and programme, intiated by John Chilton, is called Farkonomics.

For more, see here.



*

TAGS: farkonomics

Capital Punishment: There Are Many Fates Worse than Death

Posner and Becker have both come out in favour of capital punishment for murder. I reluctantly agree, but for somewhat different reasons.



There is mixed evidence that capital punishment deters murders (cited by Posner and Becker). Both Posner and Becker think this evidence is persuasive. Posner even restates the powerful neoclassical economics explanation for why capital punishment has a strong deterrent effect:

it is exceedingly rare for a defendant who has a choice to prefer being executed to being imprisoned for life.

My question: does anyone know the suicide rate for prisoners incarcerated for life? Does it depend on prison conditions? Does it depend on the types of cell-mates and fellow prisoners one must deal with? How does it compare with suicide rates for people of similar intelligence and background but not in prison?



I can think of many fates worse than death [an evening with a life insurance salesman? (cf Woody Allen)], and I can readily imagine that many? some? prisoners would prefer to take their own lives rather than be subjected to life in some prisons.



To the extent that this supposition makes sense, capital punishment might not have much of a deterrent effect. In fact, it might very well be a better deterrent to keep the criminals alive under horrid prison conditions.



So why do I reluctantly favour capital punishment? To put a polite term on it: retributive justice. Less politely, vengefulness. There are some criminals who commit crimes so heinous they don't deserve to live (And this from a guy who was a long-time pacifist). If I thought we could punish them more by keeping them alive in horrid prison conditions, I would favour that option, but given all the bleeding-heart tendencies for prison reform, I know that ain't gonna happen.



For more of my thoughts on cruel and unusal punishment, see this.

A Futures Market for Ventilators?

One source of life-saving technology for people seriously hit by the flu is a ventilator. From Wikipedia:

A medical ventilator is a device designed to provide mechanical ventilation to a patient. Ventilators are chiefly used in intensive care medicine, home care, and emergency medicine (as standalone units) and in anesthesia (as a component of an anesthesia machine).



In its simplest form, a ventilator consists of a compressible air reservoir, air and oxygen supplies, a set of valves and tubes, and a disposable or reusable "patient set". The air reservoir is pneumatically compressed several times a minute to deliver an air/oxygen mixture to the patient; when overpressure is released, the patient will exhale passively due to the lungs' elasticity. The oxygen content of the inspired gas can be set from 21 percent (ambient air) to 100 percent (pure oxygen). Pressure and flow characteristics can be set mechanically or electronically.

One problem we might very well face in the not-too-distant future is that if there is an Avian Flu pandemic, the quantity demanded of ventilators will greatly exceed the quantity supplied. From the NYtimes [reg. req'd, h/t to Jack]:

Right now, there are 105,000 ventilators, and even during a regular flu season, about 100,000 are in use. In a worst-case human pandemic, according to the national preparedness plan issued by President Bush in November, the country would need as many as 742,500.

Economists know what to do when there is a shortage: let the market price rise until the quantity supplied increases and the quantity demanded declines. Right?



Of course if/when the flu hits, the short-term price elasticity of supply will be really close to zero. Where will the additional ventilators come from?



And so the result of letting market forces determine who gets a ventilator would be that price would rise until some relatives told the doctor, "Forget it. We'd rather have a plasma HDTV than have Dad stay on the ventilator."



Or something to that effect. After all, in the spot market for ventilators, the sick person won't be negotiating for the ventilator, the sick person's relatives will be.



Consequently, spot markets will probably never be allowed to emerge. Instead we will sit back and blame various levels of gubmnt for not making sure more ventilators are available in our community. And we will let physicians and public health officials decide who gets to use a ventilator when. As one of my physician friends says, so typically,

Ideally, issues such as prospects for survivability, expected number of years to be lived, would apply. Then more important issues such as potential social contribution (e.g. education) , good-looking index, gender, hair color (no blondes) , and race, would enter the equation.



Tom Cruise no doubt has his own ventilator as well as a stand-by staff to run it.

When I asked him making life-and-death decisions, he followed up with:

This actually happens all the time with those on transplant lists. And folks who need a hospital bed are booted out of emergency and ward beds in ALL major hospitals here daily because a more 'seriously ill' person is the successful competitor.

This approach and attitude is unfortunate, in a way. This model for allocating scarce resources ignores the long-run benefits of using market forces.



If we were told now that the only way we could get the use of a ventilator is if we paid the going rental price, a lot of us would start taking more precautionary actions now [and encouraging our children and grandchildren to take more precautionary actions now: see this].

• To reduce the risk that we or our heirs might be forced to shell out for a ventilator [or that they might be forced to make a decision to let us die rather than be on a ventilator], we would wash our hands frequently and, when the pandemic hits, we might tend to isolate ourselves more.
  
  
• Insurance markets would develop. "Buy your ventilator insurance here!" I can just see the local newspaper ads. "We guarantee that if you pay us $X, you will have the use of a ventilator for at least a week and up to a month." I haven't found an insurance company that makes such an offer ... yet. But the providers of such insurance would already be placing more orders for ventilators, and the anticipated shortage would be much smaller as a result.
  
  
• Life insurance companies would have a large incentive to place orders for more ventilators for use by their own policy holders.
  
  Suppose you are hit by the avian flu. Your life insurance company would like to keep you alive, and so it sends a letter to all its policy holders: Go to ABC hospital or medical centre or warehouse or whatever if you are hit by the avian flu because we have extra ventilators and staff on hand there to care for you.
  
  
• The long-run price elasticity of supply of ventilators is probably very high. If the demand grows now, and/or if current and potential producers expect to receive a market price for their ventilators (rather than have them commandeered by gubmnt officials who decry profiteering during a disaster of their making), then there will be lots more ventilators around in the future.

And yet, you and I both know that people who didn't buy the ventilator insurance would successfully convince many politicians that those who have the ventilators must provide them to those who are sick and "need" them.



This is a good situation in which we can ask the two important questions from economic analysis of law:

1. What is the risk?
   
   
2. Who is the least-cost bearer of that risk?

What is the risk?

The risk is not just that avian flu will spread and become transmitted between humans; in this situation, the risk is also that there will not be a ventilator available when you or I would like to have access to one.



Who is the least-cost bearer of this risk?

The answer to this question has two components. First, who is the least-cost preventer of the situation? and second, if the situation cannot efficiently be prevented, who is the least-cost insurer of the risk?



Who is the least-cost preventer of the situation? If we left health care to markets, the answer would be consumers and ventilator producers. With reasonable information and expectations, the efficient number of ventilators would be available later.



The reality is, I expect, many people do not have reasonable information and reasonable expectations. We expect "someone" to make sure ventilators will be available; we do not assume responsibility for anticipating the risk or for doing anything about it. I.e., we assume that someone else is responsible for reducing the risk by making sure more ventilators are available.



In other words, we expect gubmnts to be providers and insurers of last resort, and we eschew private insurance. If I were a consultant with insurance companies, I would be lobbying, strongly, for hospitals and gubmnts to acquire more ventilators and provide training on how to use them to a lot of people. I'm not convinced this would be an economically efficient way to deal with avian flu (and it still doesn't answer the question of who would have priorty access to them), but it seems like a realistic way that politicians and insurers will deal with the potential problem.



Update:For more on ventilators, see here for a brief discussion of the rationing [aka "triage"] decisions to be made.

[h/t Emirates Economist]