The economics world has numerous individuals doing fascinating analysis, and as a lot as we strive at Planet Cash, there’s a number of stuff that we do not find yourself overlaying. So periodically, we wish to perform a little roundup of attention-grabbing analysis we have come throughout and share it with you within the Planet Money newsletter.
Welcome to Planet Cash Paperpalooza. OK, no. Planet Cash Researchstock. Hmmm. Paperchella? Wonderful, we nonetheless haven’t got a superb identify for this recurring publication sequence. Please ship options: planetmoney@npr.org. And enjoyable concepts for a brand 😉
In any case, right now within the Planet Cash publication: 5 latest papers that we discovered attention-grabbing and value sharing.
A protracted financial historical past of firewood in America
Why we favored this paper: a deep, historic dive into one thing we hardly ever take into consideration — firewood.
Consider it or not, this one is buzzy and making the rounds. A latest working paper, “Firewood in the American Economy: 1700 to 2010,” actually received our curiosity burning. We simply needed to huddle round it and indulge in its insights.
Carnegie Mellon College economist Nicholas Muller explains how central firewood was within the American financial system. Firewood was humanity’s foremost power supply for hundreds of years.
But, regardless of that, students have lengthy lacked stable statistics about firewood costs over the lengthy sweep of historical past. Muller explains that one massive purpose for that is that many People chopped down wooden themselves. They typically did not purchase it available in the market, so historic costs have been exhausting to return by.
However as cities grew, many People might not chop down wooden themselves. And so market transactions for firewood started to happen. Newspapers started publishing firewood costs of their categorised sections. On this examine, Muller finds greater than 6,000 value quotes from historic sources and constructs a value index for firewood going all the way in which again to 1700.
This paper presents a bundle — ahem — of attention-grabbing information, together with:
+ Round 1860, firewood accounted for round 85% of power consumption in america.
+ Within the 1830s, the U.S. began to see large-scale coal manufacturing. Nevertheless, coal remained comparatively costly in contrast with firewood, so it took some time for coal to dominate the U.S. power market.
+ Throughout the early- to mid-Nineteenth century, the value of firewood outpaced total inflation. Firewood saved getting an increasing number of costly. In the meantime, coal received cheaper and cheaper. “The change in relative costs of those fuels seems to have performed a elementary function within the transition from wooden to coal,” Muller writes.
+ After 1870, demand for firewood started declining, and coal turned the most popular power supply within the nation. By 1900, coal accounted for 71% of power use in america. After World Struggle I, Muller writes, coal’s dominance started being eroded away by oil and pure gasoline.
This firewood paper reminded us of a classic paper from Yale College economist William Nordhaus, who calculated how the price of lighting modified over a thousand years. Try this Planet Money episode about it.
Political spending within the wake of college shootings
Why we favored this paper: a sobering take a look at curiosity group political spending within the wake of tragedies.
One other new examine is … darker. It is titled “Financial Firepower: School Shootings and the Strategic Contributions of Pro-Gun PACs.” The economists Eric Baldwin, Takuma Iwasaki and John Donohue take a look at what occurs to political spending within the wake of college shootings.
Between 2000 and 2024, the economists write, there have been greater than 500 faculty shootings within the U.S. that resulted in at the least one fatality. “But slightly than resulting in important coverage change, these tragedies hardly ever lead to greater than empty guarantees,” the economists write. They level to at least one important purpose for this.
The economists discover that pro-gun political motion committees “enhance contributions by 30.2% to [congressional] candidates in districts with deadly faculty shootings.”
This spending seems to be strategic. The economists discover that pro-gun PACs enhance spending solely actually in congressional districts that see deadly faculty shootings, not nonfatal faculty shootings or different mass shootings. The PACs’ spending ramps up as elections strategy and is generally concentrated in congressional districts the place elections are aggressive.
NIMBYism spreads to the Sunbelt?
Why we favored this paper: It makes America’s worsening housing affordability disaster make extra sense.
The analysis of economists Ed Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko has lengthy shined a highlight on the issue of housing provide in america. We’re not constructing sufficient housing, and it has been inflicting a housing affordability disaster.
For a very long time, this lack of recent housing appeared to be primarily an issue in coastal cities. In 2005, Glaeser and Gyourko revealed a study that divided America’s housing market into three massive areas: high-cost, high-demand coastal markets that didn’t construct a number of new housing and noticed explosive development in housing prices (like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Boston); low-demand, declining industrial cities (like Detroit and Cleveland); and roaring Sunbelt markets that constructed a number of new housing (like Miami, Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix). The constructing of recent housing in these Sunbelt areas helped reasonable value hikes whilst demand grew.
In this new study, Glaeser and Gyourko discover that one thing massive has modified within the Sunbelt over the past couple of many years: They’ve begun to look much more like coastal areas of their lack of development of recent housing. The outcome: an explosion of house costs.
“From 2000-2024, Miami, Tampa and Phoenix ranked 1st, fifth, and ninth, in value development throughout the twenty areas that make up the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20 Metropolis Composite House Value NSA Index,” the economists write. “Every of those areas skilled extra value development than the New York Metropolis space, whose costs nonetheless elevated by a wholesome 70 p.c. Between 1975 and 1999, no sunbelt metropolis (outdoors of California) was among the many high twelve of the identical 20 markets.”
Why have Sunbelt areas begun to look extra like coastal areas lately, with a decrease price of recent housing development and an explosion of house costs? The economists hypothesize that, mainly, NIMBYism has unfold there. They counsel that “wealthier or higher educated residents” have moved in and altered the regulatory setting, making it tougher to construct housing.
The economists discover that, if the speed of recent housing development between 2000 and 2020 appeared prefer it did between 1980 and 2000, “America would have 15 million extra housing models.”
“The important thing driver seems to be that the depth of housing manufacturing has dropped considerably over time, particularly in lots of increasing sunbelt markets that have been as soon as housing manufacturing superstars,” the economists write. “Extra typically, there’s a marked convergence within the tempo of housing unit manufacturing throughout markets all through the nation: Miami has grow to be way more like Los Angeles.”
Curiously, coastal areas have begun to reckon with the regulatory limitations to constructing new housing. Final week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom took actions to roll again environmental laws which have held again improvement in California.
The financial results of Native American casinos
Why we favored this paper: It gives an attention-grabbing perspective on Native American casinos.
Native American communities have lengthy struggled economically. Within the late Nineteen Eighties and early Nineties, tribal leaders started to embrace an business to assist elevate them up: casinos.
A new working paper from economists Randall Akee, Maggie R. Jones and Emilia Simeonova categorizes tribal gaming as a sort of “place-based coverage,” a program aimed toward economically growing an impoverished neighborhood versus immediately serving to people.
On that entrance, tribal gaming appears to have been remarkably profitable. It is now an business that rakes in additional than $40 billion a 12 months. And the economists discover that it’s a actual engine of alternatives for Native People. They discover “considerably increased employment of American Indians within the Lodging, Meals Providers, Arts and Leisure Industries in contrast with non-casino reservation ZIP codes in the identical state. Additional, we discover a rise in wages for AIAN staff in these similar industries, suggesting each an growth of employment and higher compensation on this sector for American Indians.” Casinos additionally usher in cash that tribes use in varied methods to assist their communities, together with money transfers to tribe members, infrastructure, training and enterprise funding.
Longer kindergarten faculty days enhance moms’ work hours
Why we favored this paper: It gives extra proof on a approach to shut the gender pay hole.
During the last decade, there was a number of financial analysis suggesting that the gender pay hole between ladies and men is pushed by the truth that ladies, on common, proceed to bear a lot of the burden of household caregiving. Claudia Goldin, who gained the 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Financial Sciences, has achieved a lot of important research on this space. And certainly one of her coverage proposals to shut the gender pay hole is fairly easy: prolong faculty hours. That, she hypothesizes, will release extra time for girls to pursue their careers and earn cash.
A new study by economists Chloe Gibbs, Jocelyn S. Wikle and Riley Wilson presents extra proof supporting this concept. The working paper is titled “A Matter of Time? Measuring Results of Public Education Expansions on Households.”
The economists take a look at the consequences of a exceptional change in early childhood training: the dramatic growth of kindergarten from half day to full day over the previous couple of many years. Since 1992, the share of American kindergartners in full-day education has virtually doubled, from 43% to 83%.
The economists do a bunch of spectacular statistical work to take a look at the informal impact of this variation on household work hours. Curiously, they discover that this variation hardly affected fathers, on common. They discover that males with youngsters in half-day kindergarten “truly spend extra time at work than fathers of full-day kindergarten college students.”
Nevertheless, the economists discovered a giant change for moms: “Our findings counsel that expansions in full-day kindergarten can clarify roughly 2 proportion factors, or 24 p.c, of the 8.5 percentage-point enhance in employment amongst moms of 5- and 6-year-olds between 1992 and 2022.”
P.S. In the event you come throughout attention-grabbing economics papers and wish us to incorporate them in future newsletters like this one, ship away! E mail us at planetmoney@npr.org.
