Via FoxNews we learn:

"A study of 85 infant boys found a correlation between increased exposure to some forms of the chemical phthalate and smaller penis size and incomplete testicular descent.

A paper describing the research will appear in a future issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, a journal of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences."

A sample of 85--this reeks of junk science and we haven't even examined how the researchers measured "increased exposure."

A friend of mine from my days at Buckeye, Omar Altalib has started a classical liberal think tank focused on Iraq. From the website:

The Iraqi Institute for Law, Liberty, and Prosperity (IILLP) seeks to attain individual freedom and the rule of law for the Iraqi people through targeted mentoring of the most promising future Iraqi leaders, a coordinated program of widespread Iraqi public education, and a series of detailed policy proposals for Iraqi institutional change, such as privatization of Iraqi state-owned industries, elimination of Iraqi state monopolies in such areas as education and Iraqi telecommunications, reform of the Iraqi judicial system, better definition and enforcement of Iraqi property rights, elimination of restrictions on Iraqi free exchange, and establishment of effective guarantees of Iraqi freedom of religion and speech.

I wish him the best of luck.

Story here.

Mostly because video piracy is such a problem, Bollywood films are typically released to dvd in the US as soon as they leave the theaters in India – which is usually a week or two after being released. (Thirty years ago, smash-hit Bollywood films used to celebrate 25 weeks in the theaters. Now a three-week run constitutes a smash hit.) Immediate dvd release also allows the dvd to benefit from the same publicity campaign that launched the film in theaters. Sure, the knowledge that the dvd is coming so soon cuts into theater ticket sales, but those are an ever-smaller part of the revenue pie these days anyway.

Hollywood is beginning to follow suit. The Boston Globe reports that the average delay between theatrical and dvd release for US films has shrunk to 4 months, down from 6. Some studios are planning to experiment with immediate dvd releases. If the experiments go well, look for dvd release lags to shorten even further. Really, even if the movie will be out on dvd as soon as it leaves the theaters, your date will still be impressed that you took her to the theater to see it.

As expected, French voters rejected the European Constitution. The margin, 55% to 45%, was even larger than expected. The vote pitted the centrist UMP ruling party of Jacques Chirac (“oui”) against a coalition (“non”) of just about everyone else: socialists, conservative nationalists, and classical liberals. The ruling party is so shocked, they’re even talking some sense. Party leader Nicolas Sarkozy (his family is originally Hungarian), has viewed the vote as calling France to move toward a more free-market economy:

The leader of France's ruling UMP conservatives called on Sunday for major changes in France's economic and social policy after initial results showed voters overwhelmingly rejected the EU constitution.

Sarkozy has said he wants to reform France's social model, revered by the left-wing and many conservative voters. He says it has lumbered France with chronically high unemployment.

Sarkozy has been described as an “admirer of the Thatcher-Blair revolution in Britain”. (Aside: Thatcher revolution, okay, but “Thatcher-Blair”?! What did Tony do, except not reverse what Maggie had accomplished?)

The vote showed that France has a split between rouge-etats (Paris) and bleu-etats (the rest of the country). While the rest of the country rejected the constitution,

Parisians voted 66.5 percent 'oui' and 33.5 percent 'non.'

Is available in this CBO document (apologies if Larry already linked to it). I especially liked the appendix, which contains explanations of various reform proposals.

Upshot seems to be that there is relatively little that can be done to extend the life of the "trust fund" and that most proposals hit the upper half of the income distribution (go figure).

I don't know which is more scary - the document or this.

From Buzzwhack.com:

MBA: To a small part of the workforce, it's a coveted business degree. To the folks who work for bosses with MBAs, it more often stands for Mediocre But Arrogant.

An excerpt from an article in today's AJC:

"When it comes to pens, some people couldn't care less. But others, like Jumanne, care a lot. They want the right color, the right feel and the right look.

Satisfying those tastes remains a huge business, even in the age of digital assistants and laptops conspiring against simple writing implements. Pen makers these days are constantly trotting out new tweaks on an age-old design to try to keep pens in fashion."

With a nod to MR, markets in ink pens. There are also echoes of Virginia Postrel.

Cyndi Lauper sues over rent control. Hat tip: Tyler Cowen.

Time after time (sorry, I just couldn't resist) we see wealthy or politically connected folks reaping the benefits of rent control. Other examples are Mia Farrow and Ed Koch. An econometric analysis can be found here; it finds that:

"Pollakowski found that rent control provides little benefit to residents of the outer boroughs or the lower and middle-income neighborhoods of Manhattan: residents in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Upper Manhattan, the Lower East Side and Chinatown save less than $10 a month from rent control.

Only residents of controlled units in the affluent parts of Manhattan -- the Upper East and West Sides, down through much of lower Manhattan -- gain significant benefits, as their rents are about $400 a month lower than their counterparts in the unregulated sector.

In effect, Pollakowski found that rent control mainly benefits those already well off."

Just got back from four wonderful days in Virginia learning more about Public Choice. David Levy has done a wonderful job taking over from Mark Crain as he put together a wonderful outreach conference. The faculty included James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Sandra Peart, Don Boudreaux, Mike Munger, Bryan Caplan, Daniel Houser, Thomas Stratmann, Robin Hanson, and David Colander. I was very excited to have the opportunity to meet David as I have been a big fan of David's since reading The Making of an Economist and Why Aren't Economists as Important as Garbagemen? He was as delightful to talk to in person as his work is to read.

The Public Choice Outreach Conference is a wonderful time and I highly recommended it to any graduate students interested in public choice. You get the opportunity to spend considerable time with some cool faculty and students.

I believe some photos as well as some video from the conference is available here for those interested.

The Christian Science Monitor ponders "Is Shopping at Wal-Mart Immoral?" There's lots of teeth-gnashing about ethics (based on notions of "distribution" not personal freedom, of course), but it also includes this claim:

"This "race to the bottom" in labor costs also seems to rub off on a surrounding area, according to research from economists Stephan Goetz and Hema Swaminathan at the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development at Penn State University. While the national poverty rate dropped 2.4% between 1990 and 2000, the rate fell by just 0.2% on average in counties that added a Wal-Mart. One theory: Although Wal-Mart creates jobs, the company also eliminates jobs by putting others out of business.

"We didn't expect Wal-Mart would be able to affect poverty on a countywide basis, but lo and behold it did," says Goetz."

I found the underlying paper here; I haven't yet given it a careful read but a quick skimming already finds a problem with the passage in CSM. The sentence reporting "the national poverty rate dropped 2.4% between 1990 and 2000, the rate fell by just 0.2% on average in counties that added a Wal-Mart" is incorrect. The study finds that the marginal effect of an additional Wal-Mart is 0.2 percentage points not the 2.2 (=2.4-0.2) percentage points impied in the quoted sentence. As Stephan Goetz summarizes on his website:

"The statistical model developed for this study suggests that the counties that added a Wal-Mart store during the decade saw the poverty rate decline by a smaller amount than did counties not adding a store. The net predicted effect of a new store was relatively small, amounting to a 0.2 percentage point higher poverty rate for one new store, 0.4 percentage points for two new stores, and so forth compared to the case where no new store was added. Even so, the effect was statistically significant."

The 0.2 percentage point effect is a more plausible magnitude, but I'm still skeptical that Wal-Mart caused a smaller decrease in poverty between 1990 and 2000. Instead I suspect that it's locations just happen to be correlated with places where poverty declined more slowly in the 1990s. (Note that the study does attempt to control for other factors that might be related to poverty; how well it does so might be another matter.)

If you're not getting enough Wal-Mart here at DOL try AlwaysLowPrices.

UPDATE: Art Carden has a Wal-Mart article on the Mises blog.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I've written a letter to the editor of CSM about the incorrect poverty statistics. Based on the anti-Wal-Mart letters that CSM has already printed (link here, scroll down), I'm not optimistic about having my letter published.

I am not an oil economist, but on a whim I grabbed active oil and natural gas rig counts from Baker Hughes and end-of-month spot oil prices from the EIA. I limited the sample to January 2002 through April 2005 and estimated (simple) price elasticities of active rigs: U.S. about 0.56, Canada 0.51, Middle East 0.27, South America 0.49, Far East 0.28, Africa -0.17, and Europe -0.49.

What's up with Europe and Africa?

Here is Europe's rig count plotted against end of month spot oil prices from January 2002 through April 2005:

Here is Europe's rig count and the end-of-month spot price trend lines from January 2002 through April 2005:

For comparison, here are the similar pictures for:
Rigs versus spot prices: World, USA, and Canada
Rigs versus spot prices: Middle East (different scale)
Rigs versus spot prices: USA

My initial thoughts:

1. Perhaps the US (and most of the rest of the world?) is firing up more natural gas rigs over the sample period thereby giving spurious results. If Europe and Africa do not have natural gas reserves, then the Europe/Africa results might be spurious - but I don't buy that.
2. Perhaps if I expand the sample back into the 1980s or 1970s there will be a different overall relationship, but this still wouldn't explain the negative relationship post Iraq invasion.
3. Perhaps there is a political (oil for food?) explanation?
4. Perhaps the US (and most of the rest of the world?) has more marginal oil rigs that activate when price increases? (this picture at the Dallas Fed might support the marginal-rig claim)
   
5. African and European rigs are running dry just at the time price is increasing - dumb luck that.
   
6. African and European rigs are owned by the government and therefore the owners are anti-profit
   
7. There is some odd optimal extraction rate algorithm being used in Europe and Africa
   
8. Africa and Europe operate on target revenue rather than profit maximization

If someone has an explanation, I'm listening. It's kinda late over here, so maybe I am missing something obvious.

For those interested - here's the STATA data file.

In the "for what it's worth" section, the Southern Poverty Law Center has the scoop on who's hatin' in the USA.

In Texas there are supposedly 40 active hate groups. The count is probably a little low because I don't think they consider that in Texas Aggies hate Longhorns, Hornfrogs hate Ponies, and Owls hate Cougars. I am not trying to belittle the work of the SPLC, I guess it is worthwhile keeping a "private" eye on these groups to make sure they don't act crazy, but I have lived in the Dallas area for nine years and I haven't heard of any of the groups they mention as "active" in the Dallas area. I suppose you can be an active hate group and not do anything newsworthy - perhaps that's the point nowadays?

Anyway, it is good to know that the SPLC doesn't find any active hate groups in Arlington, although I know some Cowboys' fans who really don't like the Washington Redskins.

My home state of Georgia has 41 active hate groups, with Black Separatist groups being the largest single category with 14 groups (although combined White Separatist/Supremist groups still outnumber the Black Separatists - 27 to 14).

Florida, New Mexico and South Dakota are hate group free? Isn't La Raza active in New Mexico?

The website also has a list of hate incidents here

U.S. paper money in circulation, as of Dec. 31, 2004, by denomination:

Note - Value in circulation (billions)
$1 - $8.3
$2 - 1.4
$5 - 9.8
$10 - 15.1
$20 - 107.6
$50 - 60.6
$100 - 516.7
TOTAL - 719.5
Source: here.

That’s right, 72% of US currency (516.7/719.5) is in $100 bills. 55-66% of the US currency stock is estimated to be circulating overseas. For obvious reasons, it’s difficult to know exactly how much is in suitcases in Moscow versus briefcases in Miami.

If the $100 is so popular, why isn't there a $500 bill? The European central bank issues €100, €200, and €500 notes. Here is a similar breakdown for the euro:

Note - value in circulation (billions)
€5 - €6.1
€10 - 16.3
€20 - 39.9
€50 - 159.1
€100 - 91.2
€200 - 28.3
€500 - €159.3
TOTAL - 500.2

Note that the euro is much less skewed toward the high end of the spectrum. €100 and up accounts for only 56% (278/500) of euro notes in circulation.

Inference: euro notes don’t yet circulate as widely as the dollar in the "bulk cash" markets outside their home area (e.g. in Russia, Latin America, Asia).

France holds a national referendum on May 29, with opinion polls currently running slightly (closer than previously) against the European Constitution. The Netherlands votes on June 1, with polls tilting similarly.

There are many bad arguments on both sides of the debate, but the crucial point (for me, if I were a European voter) is that the European Constitution would centralize power in the European Parliament and its unaccountable “Euracracy”, removing the last traces of inter-jurisdictional competition that remain today. Its defeat might help return the European Union to focusing on areas where it can be useful, dismantling barriers to trade and migration. Economic regulation and social engineering are already bad enough at the national level; they would be even less restrained at the trans-European level.

The February issue of the Review of Economics and Statistics contained an article by Missouri's Emek Basker analyzing the effects of Wal-Mart on job creation. Abstract below (full version can be downloaded from SSRN):

This paper estimates the effect of Wal-Mart expansion on retail employment at the county level. Using an instrumental-variables approach to correct for both measurement error in entry dates and endogeneity of the timing of entry, I find that Wal-Mart entry increases retail employment by 100 jobs in the year of entry. Half of this gain disappears over the next five years as other retail establishments exit and contract, leaving a long-run statistically significant net gain of 50 jobs. Wholesale employment declines by approximately 20 jobs due to Wal-Mart's vertical integration. No spillover effect is detected in retail sectors in which Wal-Mart does not compete directly, suggesting Wal-Mart does not create agglomeration economies in retail trade at the county level.

Yep--contrary to the rants of the anti-Wal-Mart hysterics, Wal-Mart doesn't, on net, "destroy" jobs. Of course, they'll whimper and whine about the pay or the benefits or ...

Of course, regardless of Wal-Mart's real or imagined effects, the real issue is liberty--things like freedom of association, freedom of exchange, ...

ADDENDUM: Basker also has a paper examining Wal-Mart's effect on prices. Not surprisingly, Basker finds that Wal-Mart does push down retail prices--a big benefit to lots of poor consumers, but you won't hear that from Wal-Mart bashers. The paper is available here.

As if things weren't bad enough, we now have a trade deficit in dogs with China. Evidently, China can make dogs faster and cheaper (but are they of higher quality?).

Okay, seriously...From the May 25th New York Daily News:

Thirty dogs, given a reprieve from death at a Beijing animal shelter, are being flown to Long Island, where they'll be put up for adoption. The pooches - basset hounds, Dalmatians, German shepherds, terriers and, yes, Pekingese - land at Kennedy Airport tonight.

The North Shore Animal League in Port Washington and the International Fund for Animal Welfare raised $30,000 to bring the dogs over.

I don't want to hear any New Yorkers complain that the economy is in the tank when they can find 30 grand to fly dogs across an ocean and a continent. Have these people ever encountered the concept of opportunity cost?

A side note:

In Beijing, some 41 breeds are verboten, and it's illegal to own a dog taller than 14 inches. Also, the residents of China's capital can't have more than one dog each.

It's illegal in Beijing to own anything but a yip dog? What about seeing eye dogs and such? Alas, another cost of statism.

Update: Perhaps there are no seeing eye dogs for two reasons. Either there are no blind people in China or China is so labor intensive that there are seeing eye people instead of seeing eye dogs.

Veteran Bollywood actor Sunil Dutt, 75, died on Wednesday. He had amazing range: he most famously played an embittered poor young farmer in the classic 1957 melodrama Mother India, and – at the opposite extreme – a clueless rich young urbanite in the classic 1968 comedy-romance Padosan [the title roughly means Girl Next Door].

His last appearance was a cameo in Munna Bhai MBBS, a popular 2003 comedy starring his son Sanjay. It has been reported, by the way, that -- in a reversal of the usual pattern in which Bollywood borrows plots from Hollywood -- director Mira Nair will be remaking Munna Bhai MBBS as a Hollywood movie entitled Gangsta MD.

From the Beatles:

"If you drive a car-car I'll tax the street
If you try to sit-sit I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk I'll tax your feet"

And from Denmark via Reuters and the (highly recommended) TaxFoundation blog:

"Denmark, with the world's highest income tax levels, wants sperm donors to pay tax on the 500 crown (46 pounds) reimbursement men receive for their services."

Andrew Chamberlain of the TF rightly notes:

"However, the story isn't what it seems. It turns out that until recently fees earned by sperm donors have been tax exempt. So the so-called "sperm tax" is in fact the removal of a distortionary tax preference from the Danish tax code. For better or worse, that's usually good tax policy since it simplifies tax rules and treats income from different sources more equally."

Angela Shah at the Dallas Morning News takes a crack at explaining some of the issues around the Wright Amendment and actually tackles, however briefly, how economists would try to evaluate the impact of the amendment's repeal. Personally, I think she does a pretty good job.

From the article:

"There's economics and there's economics," said Craig Depken, a professor of economics at the University of Texas at Arlington, referring to the unique ability of the dismal science to sometimes enable conflicting analyses. "It depends on whose ox is being gored."

I actually meant to say something like "there's economics and then there's the bottom line," but oh well.

Some more:

Broadly speaking, economists have a philosophical allegiance to creating a marketplace free of protectionism.

So dueling opinions aside, Wright "is a textbook case of protectionism," said Michael Ward, a UT-Arlington associate professor of economics.

"This is one of the things we teach the students all the time. It's a standard midterm question, on the Wright amendment."

He started a petition signed by 20 other local economists advocating Wright's repeal.

I like the first paragraph touching on philosophy, although there are probably some who might take issue.

From the BBC:

"[British emergency] doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing."

And a classic from The Onion:

"WASHINGTON, DC--Vowing to "vigilantly defend the Second Amendment and preserve our most basic civil liberties," the National Machete Association denounced congressional efforts to enact machete-control legislation Monday."

The Adam Smith Institute is raising funds to install a large bronze statue of Adam Smith in a prime location in Edinburgh. Can you believe there isn't one already?

Donations are tax deductible.

As Tyler Cowen of MR posted recently, Medicaid has paid for FL and NY sex offenders to receive Viagra. Today's Atlanta rag reports that Georgia has also done so.

No, there isn't such a thing, but apparently there used to be until the league owner had his 42 fighters challenge a lion. Story here--note the bit about the Cambodian govt approving the event as long as it got a 50% cut of the proceeds. Death and taxes ...

Hat tip: Todd

UPDATE: Mark tells me the suspicious sounding article is indeed a hoax. Details here.

Economists like to examine how incentives mold behavior. However, they often ignore an important controlling force, social opprobrium. Shame costs little and can provide beneficial externalities for the community. It is now being used by city governments to shame lax homeowners.

Dayton has joined a small number of cities nationwide that try to pressure property owners into cleaning up their act by posting large signs on rundown, vacant houses identifying the owners and how to contact them.

"We're basically calling it shaming," said Bill Nelson, director of Dayton's building services department. "Even if it has only marginal success, the impact will help some of our neighborhoods."

Colleague Mike Ward has a penchant for on-line petitions. His latest deals with the so-called Wright Amendment which protects Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport from direct competition with Love Field. Southwest Airlines is not allowed to take long-haul flights out of Love - they must stop in one of the border states of Texas.

The Amendment is a classic example of the infant industry argument taken to extreme. Proponents suggest that DFW must be protected from competition in order to remain an economic engine in the area. The argument might have held some water 30 years ago - after all we do live in a second-best world - but now that DFW is one of the five busiest airports in the nation, I suspect they can handle a little competition.

I think repealling the amendment will lead to a contestable market outcome rather than direct competition, at least for many people. Love field is about thirty miles away - almost a forty minute drive on a good day - and DFW is only twelve miles and about twenty minutes away. For most of us in Tarrant County (where Ft. Worth and Arlington are located) the airport of choice will continue to be DFW.

Mike's petition made it into today's Ft. Worth Star-Telegram and couple of North Texas congressmen have introduced legislation in Congress to repeal the Wright Amendment. They don't have a good acronym, but the bill is the Right to Fly Act. Unfortunately, most of our Republicrat Congressional Caucus is hesitant to repeal the act - either because they are truly protectionist at heart or they fear lost campaign contributions.

From the Startelgram article:

Southwest officials said they weren't surprised that the economists support repealing the law.

"It takes about 10 seconds to figure out this is a ridiculous law," said Ed Stewart, a Southwest spokesman.

Stewart said Southwest was unaware of the economists' petition until informed by the Star-Telegram Wednesday. Ward said he did not talk to anyone at the airline.

Officials with American said they hadn't seen the petition, and they declined to comment.

Economists are used to howling in the wind, so it isn't surprising that AA was unawares of our little protest. What is interesting is that 21 economists who agree about a single issue (which is rare enough) is considered news.

5:00pm update: Today has been interesting. Dallas Morning News, Star-Telegram editor, and an airline employee have responded to the original story. Even a small contribution to the removal of the protectionist policy would be a great victory (especially after the trouncing "we" took last November in the stadium vote).

Here's a link to Mike's petition.

If you are thinking of traveling to the North Slope to despoil the environment, here are some Quickfacts that might be of interest to you. Over the last decade there has been a population explosion of 23.4%. The current population is 7,218 and the population density is one person for every 12.3 square miles. At this rate of growth there will be about 59,000 on the North Slope 100 years from now and only 1.5 square miles per person.

The good news is it only takes on average 7.9 minutes to get to work and the average household income is $63,173. The bad news is that 100 years from now they might need a traffic light and the cost of a green salad is probably horrendous.

Gender discrimination may extend beyond potty bias. Entrepeneurs.com has just listed the Hot 100 entrepreneurs for 2005. Of the Hot 100 only 9 are women. Why do males dominate this aggressive group of entrepreneurs? Which is it Larry Summers, nature or nurture? Do we need a government program to provide incentives for female risk takers?

One of the central problems in economics is that of how to ration scarce goods among competing users. We can use market prices to ration goods, but we can also use various non-price mechanisms. Some examples:

New York City Marathon: c. 30,000 Quota and Lottery.

Chicago Marathon: 40,000 Quota and First-Come/First-Served.

Boston Marathon: Qualifying Time Required.

Hiking Mt. Whitney: Quota of 100 dayhikers and 60 overnight hikers per day during season. Lottery in case of excess demand.

For Discussion (ala Arnold Kling): Why don't we just use price to ration the spots in these marathons or to hike Mt. Whitney?

The NFL just awarded the 2009 SuperBowl to Tampa. So much for promising the 2009 Super Bowl to New York if the Jets got their new stadium. Does this mean that if the Jets get a stadium the 2010 Super Bowl will go to New York, or the 2011 Super Bowl?

Wait a second. The NFL promised us the 2011 SuperBowl for building the Cowboys stadium. Would the NFL have the gall to promise the same Super Bowl to two different cities?

The land grab here in Arlington began yesterday. The first three houses have been approved for purchase - at least one for more than appraised value.

The old Eastern Star retirement home, which is on 30 acres of nice property, is being seized for the stadium. The original plan was to seize 75 acres of land, but this has now increased to 165 acres. The main problem? It isn't clear if the Rangers and the Cowboys will be able to share parking!! Please.

Now, there is a developer who would like to use the Eastern Star land for a hotel, condominium and retail development. It isn't clear from whom he would buy the land - the Cowboys, the city of Arlington, or the original owners of the Eastern Star retirement home.

My bet? He would buy the land from the Cowboys.

Let's see. The city of Arlington purchases private property with the not-so-veiled threat of eminent domain in their back pocket. The taxpayers of Arlington get the bill for that. Then the city gives the land to the Cowboys who then turn around and sell it to a developer.

Sounds like a winning deal to me. Here's some more at Heavy Lifting

"Metro Nashville police said [Titans player Tyrone] Calico, 24, was issued the misdemeanor citation early on May 12 near Nashville's Music Row area. A police officer found the player and Domonike Wheeler, 18, having sex in the back seat of Calico's Cadillac Escalade, police spokesman Don Aaron said Monday."

Story here.

"First large study defining premature ejaculation by stopwatch and patient reported outcomes"

Yesterday the House passed a bill calling for the use of embryos created for IVF but never implanted to be used for stem cell research. The underlying idea is that these "excess embryos" would be discarded so they might as well be used for research purposes. Well here's one (of perhaps many) reason not to do so--it's a dynamic world. Using so-called excess embryos for research might create an incentive to produce more IVF embryos thereby leading to more embryos being destroyed.

Story here.

From yesterday's WaPo:

"Wal-Mart's opponents, led by Local 400 and Giant Food, have already won several high-profile victories. Six jurisdictions, including Prince William, Calvert and Montgomery counties, have passed zoning rules that make it harder, if not impossible, for the chain to open a supercenter, its most profitable format. Several more jurisdictions, including the District, are considering such rules. And in April, the Maryland General Assembly passed a bill backed by Giant and Local 400 requiring Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health benefits. The governor vetoed the bill, but some legislators have vowed to override it.

"Our goal is to block them out," Lowthers said. The union has circulated sample zoning bills targeting Wal-Mart to local governments, rallied members to speak out against the retailer at public meetings and called on state leaders to support anti-Wal-Mart legislation.

It was a Local 400 official, for example, who first suggested the idea of a big-box bill targeting Wal-Mart in the District, said D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), who sponsored the legislation. Catania said he agreed to offer the measure because he believes Wal-Mart's employee health care benefits are inadequate. As the bill was drafted, Catania said, the union was consulted on the language."

More:

"The results can be seen at the cash register. At the Wal-Mart supercenter in Spotsylvania County, which opened in March, a basket of 23 popular household products, including such brands as Jif peanut butter, Maxwell House coffee and Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil, cost $60.37. At the nearby Giant, less than a mile away, the same 23 products cost $75.55, or about 25 percent more."

How about Google Maps interacted with Gas Buddy?

Available here

Reported Chicago Area Crimes.

Most homicides occur on the street (23 according to the database). As for Aggravated assault: Hands, feet, fists, there have been 247 reported assaults of this type in Chicago public schools and only 3 in private schools. Perhaps there is a reporting bias with the private schools. After all, aggravated assualt doesn't look good on the private school's recruiting brochure.

Here's the map for fake checks. Is there something about the South Side of Chicago? Must be White Sox Fans (he he he). It is not surprising that most reported fake checks come from banks (34 versus 4 at department stores), what is surprising is that 34 folks would try to put one over on a bank.

The Dallas Police Department has a similar set of maps showing Dallas city crimes. Here's one on homicides in Dallas.

His first take here.

He responds to his critics here.

My sense is that he's not an old fogey because:

1. He still can clean the boards like Bill Russell in his prime.

2. He's right.

I'll never forget the day I scheduled to take the GRE in Athens. It was the Friday after Thanksgiving. The testing place was across from the econ department so I stopped by after the test to see if someone I knew might be working. I was expecting to find no one.

I was suprised to find three people working. All full professors. All over 65 years old.

Now it may be that everyone else was working from home, or working at other times, or was allocating the work effort differently over their lifetime, but one couldn't infer that from their vitas. And I think that's Munger's point.

James Buchanan said the best piece of advice he ever got about how to be a succcessful academic was "keep the ass to the chair." While it is not a sufficient condition for success, it is a necessary condition. And that seemed to be the basic point Mike was making.

And even if Mike is wrong it is still a good strategy to act as if he is right.

Interesting seminar on Freakonomics over at Crooked Timber including a response from Levitt.

25% off good through May 30.

Not too shabby.

Six long and glorious days of being unplugged from the matrix have come to an end.

Our flight back from Greeneville-Spartanburg was 2 1/4 hours, and it took us almost an hour to get from gate to car. I fail to understand why in the twenty-first century it should take this long to get one's bags and head to the parking lot, but DFW has perfected the art out of making it increasingly difficult to get from point A to point B on the airport grounds. This in spite of spending almost a billion dollars on a new "people mover" system.

I'm working hard on the updates for the 2005 Economic Freedom of the World report to be released in September. Taking a break from the mind-numbing data entry work this morning I decided to check out the relationship between the mean tariff rate (i.e., the statutory mean of tariffs) and the average revenue raised by tariffs (as a share of exports and imports) for the countries in my data set.

One should expect a Laffer Curve type relationship. As the tariff rate increases, revenue should increase at a diminishing rate eventually turning in the negative direction.

The graphic below shows the results. While individual tariffs on certain goods may be so high as to be prohibitive, it doesn't appear that too many countries are on the "wrong side" of the Laffer Curve as a whole.

The NYT has also picked up on JC's Mazzone Effect research--this article even has quotes!

I ran the Cleveland Marathon this morning to beautiful skies and mild temperatures.

Final Times: 3:29:56 (clock); 3:29:27 (chip)
Placements: 250/1600 Overall; 222/1114 Men; 31/185 Men 35-39

All in all a good day.

Having campaigned successfully for a ban on indoor smoking, Mayor Bloomberg now wants to micro manage indoor plumbing. His proposal, the Women's Restroom Equity Bill, will ensure equality of outcome in public facilities.

...the legislation would require bars, opera and concert halls, movie houses, theaters, dance halls, stadiums and a variety of other buildings to provide roughly two bathroom stalls available to women for every stall or urinal available to men.

The Central Planning Authority has determined that it is optimal to have two stalls for women for every one for a man. Yes, two for one! Moreover, a men’s urinal counts the same as a toilet. Not only are men denied a seat, but women are awarded two in return for a standing quickie. As a male, my feelings are hurt. But I shouldn’t be too fast to criticize. The legislated gender ratio of toilets is probably based upon some high-powered studies paid for by public funds. These have most likely been followed up with focus groups that got at our deep feelings on potty parity.

No doubt more needed rules will follow. I don’t think Mayor Bloomberg considered the many other factors that must be controlled. You can’t go about planning in a half-hearted manner like the Soviets did. We need to get serious. For example, the current act does not regulate sheets of toilet paper or water flow. Men use less toilet paper than women and urinals require less water per use. How can we be sure that money grubbing capitalists will stock the additional women’s restrooms with the needed amenities? There needs to be a statement on the proper ratio of men’s to women’s toilet paper and water usage rates; otherwise, the whole planning hierarchy is likely to collapse.

"I think it's good business, quite frankly," said Councilwoman Yvette D. Clarke, who first introduced the bill in December 2003. "It enhances everyone's quality of life. There is something a bit degrading about standing in line to use a bathroom."

Obviously, Yvette knows what is good for business and it is nice of her to share it with those whose livelihood depends on attracting customers. Without her free advice, these retailers (useful idiots) would most likely work against their own self-interest. While some may view this as socialist planning, it should be seen as attempt to save the capitalist system from its self destructive ways.

What the commissars really must now consider is the whole question of disparate impact. The only way we will really know if we have achieved parity is to measure gender specific effluent. Is two for one really optimal and is it optimal in all parts of the country? In colder regions where individuals wear more clothes the ratio may be different than in others where one can more easily achieve the proper arrangement of garments. The correct objective is a one-to-one ratio of male to female body waste.

You might suggest that the ratio of men to women visiting an establishment like a sports bar may be different from the ratio at the local mall. Therefore, we might not expect an equality of outcome. That, however, takes too narrow view of the problem. Inequality of effluents is proof of either inequality in the availability of facilities or other more insidious discrimination. Sports bars are notorious for attracting more men than women. These establishments must find ways of correcting this gender imbalance. Effluent equity could be an effective way of achieving a better balance. Just like colleges have disbanded wrestling teams to achieve a better balance in women’s sports, something similar could be done in sports bars. The men’s room could be locked until effluent equity is achieved. We need to all get behind Mayor Bloomberg and all be Proud Proponents of Potty Parity.

Remember, what’s good for women is good for men. We should all thank God or Mother Earth for concerned citizens like Professsor John F. Banzhaf III of the George Washington University Law School. This self-proclaimed father of potty parity is the driving force behind this needed legislation. I am sure he has hung around enough public restrooms to know what he is talking about.

Because I’ve repeatedly criticized Paul Krugman’s columns on Social Security, I should note for the sake of fairness that I think his recent column on Iraq is basically right. Saddam was a bad guy, but not a threat to the United States (neither via WMDs, nor via terrorism). The invasion and occupation have been very costly. The sensible course is to get out sooner rather than later.

A California school district names all 575 of its teachers as teachers of the year. Hmmm ... here again we have an example of the mentality that has led to the widespread adoption of so-called high stakes testing.

An excerpt from The Economist:

"Fierce competition and a limited supply of talent is resulting in high turnover rates. “The biggest issue is retention of people,” says E&Y's Mr Wu. “Retention is much cheaper than recruitment.” One in ten executives changed job in the southern city of Shenzhen last year and one in 12 in Beijing, according to Hewitt. The same research points to a nationwide employee churn rate of 11.3% in 2004, up from 8.3% in 2001. Some smaller firms see turnover as high as 30%, but leading global firms are not immune. L'Oréal, with 3,000 people in China, says that staff turnover in its marketing department is nearly 15%. “A lot of fresh graduates leave. We lose almost all we hire in the first three years,” says Daisy Dai, its human-resources director.

Pay and benefits are soaring. A Chinese middle manager at a foreign company in Beijing or Shanghai can now command total annual cash compensation (salary plus bonus) of $27,000-$32,000, says Hewitt. Senior managers receive between $46,000 and $54,000 and top executives can expect $80,000 to $90,000 or more. While underlying inflation in China is around 2%, average annual salary increases for mid-level and senior managers are now 6-10%. Lai Kam-tong at the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management says that accountants' salaries are rising by 14% a year. Jürgen Viethen, general manager for F&G China Electric, a small Spanish-owned electrical switchgear-maker, is offering key employees raises of up to 50%—and still losing them.

Bonuses, longer-term incentives, free housing and meals, a mobile phone and a set of wheels are becoming standard perks. More than one-third of 1,600 multinational firms surveyed by Hewitt now offer a company car. More holidays, maternity and paternity leave, more frequent job rotation and share options also now feature. Add in the big contributions that employers must make to China's national security fund system and the total cost of an employee can be double his basic pay."

Full story here.

I saw this quote in the comments section of a sports blog:

"I have to say that these personal attacks, though slightly funny, are just petty. I guess it comes with making so much money at our expense, but I wish everyone who posts could get grilled this bad for making mistakes at work, especially those connected to pride and overconfidence."

The quote is part of an exchange about the Braves awful closer Dan Kolb; much of the exchange is garbage so I don't want to dignify it with a link. Kolb has been rotten, but baseball players don't make money at our expense. They make money in exchange for providing us a service--entertainment--and both parties benefit. Some players don't perform up to the expectations at the time teams sign them to contracts, but Kolb is hardly alone in this regard.

Congrats to my friend JC of Sabernomics for having his work on Leo Mazzone cited in today's WSJ "By the Numbers" column. JC's Mazzone studies are here and here.

I am happy to report that my former undergraduate student, Todd Nesbit, successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation at West Virginia University on Wednesday. I was honored to serve on his dissertation committee. He'll be starting a one-year position at Wabash College this fall.

There's a new study on the "gender gap" around the world published by the World Economic Forum.

This analysis came to me from Berry College's Wilson Mixon:

I ran a rank correlation between the Econ Freedom Index and this one. Here are the results:

For the variables 'MktWtchR' and 'EFI'
Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (rho) = 0.673367
Under the null hypothesis of no correlation, rho follows N(0, 0.132453)
z-score = 5.083812, with one-tailed p-value 0.000000

The scatter plot is below. EconFreedom index on X-axis.