The economics world has numerous individuals doing fascinating analysis, and as a lot as we attempt at Planet Cash, there’s lots of stuff that we do not find yourself masking. So periodically, we prefer to do some roundup of fascinating analysis we have come throughout and share it with you within the Planet Cash publication.
Welcome to Planet Cash Paperpalooza. OK, no. Planet Cash Researchstock. Hmmm. Paperchella? Effective, we nonetheless haven’t got title for this recurring publication sequence. Please ship ideas: planetmoney@npr.org. And enjoyable concepts for a emblem 😉
In any case, immediately within the Planet Cash publication: 5 current papers that we discovered fascinating and price sharing.
An extended financial historical past of firewood in America
Why we preferred this paper: a deep, historic dive into one thing we not often take into consideration — firewood.
Imagine it or not, this one is buzzy and making the rounds. A current working paper, “Firewood within the American Financial system: 1700 to 2010,” actually received our curiosity burning. We simply wished to huddle round it and delight in its insights.
Carnegie Mellon College economist Nicholas Muller explains how central firewood was within the American financial system. Firewood was humanity’s predominant power supply for hundreds of years.
But, regardless of that, students have lengthy lacked strong statistics about firewood costs over the lengthy sweep of historical past. Muller explains that one large purpose for that is that many People chopped down wooden themselves. They usually did not purchase it out there, so historic costs have been onerous to come back by.
However as cities grew, many People may not chop down wooden themselves. And so market transactions for firewood started to happen. Newspapers started publishing firewood costs of their labeled sections. On this research, Muller finds greater than 6,000 value quotes from historic sources and constructs a value index for firewood going all the best way again to 1700.
This paper presents a bundle — ahem — of fascinating info, together with:
+ Round 1860, firewood accounted for round 85% of power consumption in the US.
+ 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.
+ In the course of the early- to mid-Nineteenth century, the worth of firewood outpaced total inflation. Firewood saved getting increasingly 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 grew to become the most well liked power supply within the nation. By 1900, coal accounted for 71% of power use in the US. After World Battle I, Muller writes, coal’s dominance started being eroded away by oil and pure fuel.
This firewood paper reminded us of a traditional paper from Yale College economist William Nordhaus, who calculated how the price of lighting modified over a thousand years. Try this Planet Cash episode about it.
Political spending within the wake of college shootings
Why we preferred this paper: a sobering have a look at curiosity group political spending within the wake of tragedies.
One other new research is … darker. It is titled “Monetary Firepower: College Shootings and the Strategic Contributions of Professional-Gun PACs.” The economists Eric Baldwin, Takuma Iwasaki and John Donohue have 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 a minimum of one fatality. “But relatively than resulting in important coverage change, these tragedies not often end in 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 method and is generally concentrated in congressional districts the place elections are aggressive.
NIMBYism spreads to the Sunbelt?
Why we preferred 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 the US. We’re not constructing sufficient housing, and it has been inflicting a housing affordability disaster.
For a very long time, this lack of latest housing appeared to be primarily an issue in coastal cities. In 2005, Glaeser and Gyourko printed a research that divided America’s housing market into three large areas: high-cost, high-demand coastal markets that didn’t construct lots of new housing and noticed explosive progress 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 lots of new housing (like Miami, Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix). The constructing of latest housing in these Sunbelt areas helped reasonable value hikes at the same time as demand grew.
In this new research, Glaeser and Gyourko discover that one thing large has modified within the Sunbelt over the past couple of a long time: They’ve begun to look much more like coastal areas of their lack of development of latest housing. The end result: an explosion of dwelling costs.
“From 2000-2024, Miami, Tampa and Phoenix ranked 1st, fifth, and ninth, in value progress 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 progress than the New York Metropolis space, whose costs nonetheless elevated by a wholesome 70 p.c. Between 1975 and 1999, no sunbelt metropolis (exterior of California) was among the many high twelve of the identical 20 markets.”
Why have Sunbelt areas begun to look extra like coastal areas in recent times, with a decrease price of latest housing development and an explosion of dwelling 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 latest housing development between 2000 and 2020 seemed 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 turn out 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 growth in California.
The financial results of Native American casinosÂ
Why we preferred this paper: It gives an fascinating perspective on Native American casinos.
Native American communities have lengthy struggled economically. Within the late 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 type of “place-based coverage,” a program aimed toward economically creating an impoverished neighborhood versus straight 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 Companies, 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, schooling and enterprise funding.
Longer kindergarten faculty days enhance moms’ work hours
Why we preferred this paper: It gives extra proof on a technique to shut the gender pay hole.
During the last decade, there was lots of financial analysis suggesting that the gender pay hole between men and women is pushed by the truth that girls, on common, proceed to bear many of the burden of household caregiving. Claudia Goldin, who received the 2023 Nobel Memorial Prize in Financial Sciences, has carried out lots of essential analysis on this space. And one in every of her coverage proposals to shut the gender pay hole is fairly easy: lengthen faculty hours. That, she hypothesizes, will liberate extra time for girls to pursue their careers and earn cash.
A new research 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 have a look at the results of a exceptional change in early childhood schooling: the dramatic growth of kindergarten from half day to full day over the previous few a long time. 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 an enormous change for moms: “Our findings counsel that expansions in full-day kindergarten can clarify roughly 2 share 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 case you come throughout fascinating economics papers and need us to incorporate them in future newsletters like this one, ship away! Electronic mail us at planetmoney@npr.org.
