Licensing Laws Are Shutting Young People Out Of The Job Market

By Ben Casselman of 538. Excerpt:

"A week ago, however, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a trove of new data on licenses — who has them, how much they earn and how they compare to other workers. The numbers are based on a new set of questions added to the monthly Current Population Survey in 2015, so there is no historical information available, but the new evidence is broadly consistent with what the White House and other economists have found: Close to a quarter of workers, 22.4 percent, have a government-issued license, and 25.5 percent have either a license or a privately issued certification. Unsurprisingly, licenses were concentrated in the medical field, where mistakes can cost lives, but even in nonmedical occupations, nearly one in five workers had a license in 2015.¹

Licensing rules are a particular problem for young workers trying to break into the job market, especially those without a college degree. The unemployment rate for adults ages 18 to 35 with neither a license nor a college degree was 9.9 percent in 2015; for those with a license (but still no degree), it was 5.2 percent.² Those who do manage to find full-time jobs earn 13 percent less than those with a license. Good jobs that don’t require a license are scarce, particularly for women: Nearly two-thirds of young women without a license or a degree earn less than $540 a week, roughly two-thirds of the median wage for full-time workers. (For women with a license, about half earn at least $540 a week, in part because women dominate many medical occupations.) Licensing rules don’t explain all or even most of that gap — there are likely other differences between people who have licenses and those who don’t — but they probably do play a role. The earnings gap shrinks, but doesn’t disappear, after controlling for education, occupation and other factors.

Young workers aren’t the only ones affected. Among older workers, the earnings disparities between those with licenses and those without aren’t as stark,³ likely because they have had more time to find their way into a career (and perhaps also because occupational licensing wasn’t as widespread when they entered the workforce). But when older workers lose jobs, licensing requirements can make it hard for them to get back to work, especially if they need to change careers. Workers over 45 consistently face longer spells of unemployment when they lose jobs compared with younger workers; unemployment lasts more than 40 percent longer for those without a license.⁴

One solution, of course, is for workers without licenses to get them. But state licensing programs are often long and expensive, which can deter low-income workers or those who aren’t yet sure what career they want to pursue. And licenses can be barriers in other ways as well, making it hard for people to move to other states, where their license may not be valid, or to pursue entrepreneurial ideas, which may not fit with licensing requirements.

Both Democrats and Republicans have spoken out against excessive licensing in recent years. But the problem is that the winners from licensing laws are clear, as Josh Zumbrun noted this week in The Wall Street Journal. Particularly for workers without a college degree, a license brings higher earnings and a reduced risk of unemployment. The losers, even though there are probably more of them, are harder to identify. Someone who avoids becoming a hairdresser because of the mandated training, for example, may not think of herself as being a victim of licensing, even if she is. As a result, supporters of licensing have a stronger incentive to defend their interests, making it hard to roll back the laws once they’re in place."

Are Millennials Buying Cars Again?

See Millennials are finally arriving in the car market by DEE-ANN DURBIN of AP. Excerpt:

"DETROIT (AP) — Millennials were once a source of panic in the auto industry. Dubbed the "go nowhere" generation, they weren't getting driver's licenses, never mind buying cars. Headlines declared it was "The End of Car Culture."

New data suggests at least some of that worry was misplaced. Millennials — especially the oldest ones — are these days buying cars in big numbers. They just had a late start.

Now the largest generation in the U.S., millennials bought 4 million cars and trucks in the U.S. last year, second only to the baby boomers, according to J.D. Power's Power Information Network, which defines millennials as those between 21 and 38 in 2015. Millennials' share of the new car market jumped to 28 percent. In the country's biggest car market, California, millennials outpaced boomers for the first time.

Industry watchers say it's been hard to get a read on millennials because the generation is big and diverse, ranging from recent college graduates to settled-down suburbanites. Automakers were also unsure about the impact of new transportation choices, like ZipCar and Uber, which helped millennials delay car buying. But as they got jobs and started families, millennials headed into car dealerships just like previous generations.

"This whole idea that they're not going to need cars is absolutely ridiculous," said Steven Szakaly, the chief economist for the National Automobile Dealers Association. "The new car buyer age is just happening much later."

It's a very different story from 2010, when millennials — who make up around 30 percent of the population — bought just 17 percent of new cars. Auto executives wondered aloud if the trend would be permanent.

In 2011, a University of Michigan study showed a steady decline in the number of young people getting their driver's licenses. In 1983, the survey found, 87 percent of 19-year-olds had a license. By 2010, that had fallen to 69 percent. Millennials told the study's authors that they were too busy to get licenses and were happy to hitch rides from others.

But there was more to the story. The advent of graduated licensing laws — which make teens practice driving in stages before granting a full license — was one reason millennials were getting their licenses later. An even bigger reason? The economy.

For many millennials, the Great Recession hit just as they were getting their first job or graduating from college. By 2010, millennials' unemployment rate reached 13 percent — four percentage points higher than the national average — according to a report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. For teens, things were even worse. The teen unemployment rate rose from 15 percent to 26 percent between 2006 and 2012.

Millennials' unemployment rate has improved to around 8 percent. Add low interest rates and low gas prices to the mix and the car market suddenly looks more enticing to young buyers."

Another interesting article is The baffling reason many millennials don’t eat cereal by Roberto A. Ferdman of The Washington Post.

Anxious? High Strung? You Might Be The Ideal Worker

There was an interesting article a few years ago in the New York Times magazine called Understanding the Anxious Mind by ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG. It discusses a study of anxiety that looks at subjects from birth as they age. Here is one interesting excerpt:

"LOOKING AT THE neurology of anxiety raises the inevitable question of why a trait that causes so much mental anguish would have evolved in the first place. For the species as a whole, it is most likely an advantage to have some group members who are hypervigilant and who see everything as a threat, always ready to sound an alarm and leap into action. For the individual, though, being inhibited can mean having fewer mating opportunities, not to mention the psychic burden, wearing yourself ragged with a brain that’s always on high alert.

In the modern world, the anxious temperament does offer certain benefits: caution, introspection, the capacity to work alone. These can be adaptive qualities. Kagan has observed that the high-reactives in his sample tend to avoid the traditional hazards of adolescence. Because they are more restrained than their wilder peers, he says, high-reactive kids are less likely to experiment with drugs, to get pregnant or to drive recklessly. They grow up to be the Felix Ungers of the world, he says, clearing a safe, neat path for the Oscar Madisons.

People with a high-reactive temperament — as long as it doesn’t show itself as a clinical disorder — are generally conscientious and almost obsessively well-prepared. Worriers are likely to be the most thorough workers and the most attentive friends. Someone who worries about being late will plan to get to places early. Someone anxious about giving a public lecture will work harder to prepare for it. Test-taking anxiety can lead to better studying; fear of traveling can lead to careful mapping of transit routes.

Kagan told me that in the 40 years he worked at Harvard, he hired at least 200 research assistants, “and I always looked for high-reactives. They’re compulsive, they don’t make errors, they’re careful when they’re coding data.” He said he would bet that when the United States sends people up in space, the steely, brave astronauts were low-reactive as infants, and the mission-control people down on the ground, doing the detail work that keeps the craft aloft, were high-reactive.

An anxious temperament might serve a more exalted function too. “Our culture has this illusion that anxiety is toxic,” Kagan said. But without inner-directed people who prefer solitude, where would we get the writers and artists and scientists and computer programmers who make society hum? Kagan likes to point out that T. S. Eliot suffered from anxiety, and that biographies indicate that he was a typical high-reactive baby. “That line ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’ — he couldn’t have written that without feeling the tension and dysphoria he did,” Kagan said."

Here is the link to the letters about the original column

This was a commercial back in 1986. It paints a bleak picture of America in the future, presumably caused by the growing national debt ($2 trillion then, it will be about $19.43 trillion when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget). I think this thing is way over the top but there may be some real dangers from the debt that I mention below. You might have to watch a brief commercial for some product first. We have been covering the deficit and debt this week in my macro classes. If the embedded video does not appear, use the link below it.

Ridley Scott - W. R. Grace Deficit Trials

Real problems the national debt might cause
1. About 34% of the debt is owed to foreign citizens. When they get paid back, they come and buy American goods. That leaves fewer goods for Americans (who can't afford to buy as much due to higher taxes that were needed to pay back the debt). BUT THIS MIGHT NOT BE A CONCERN IF WE ORIGINALLY BORROWED THE MONEY FOR A GOOD PURPOSE.

People borrow money all the time to buy houses and cars. Then they pay it back to a person outside of their family or household. We don’t consider this a burden since the money was put to good use. Right after World War II, the national debt was 120% of the GDP. This was much higher than it is now and we survived. No one complains that we borrowed to win the war.

2. Raising taxes might hurt economic incentives. At higher tax rates, people might want to work and invest less. Fewer businesses might expand and fewer new ones created since you will get to keep less profit. But again, THIS MIGHT NOT BE A CONCERN IF WE ORIGINALLY BORROWED THE MONEY FOR A GOOD PURPOSE. Also, if taxes only go up a little, and the debt is slowly paid off each year (like after WW II), it may not hurt too much.

3. We may have fewer government services in the future if we pay back the debt by lowering government spending. But this means that we are trading more government services today for fewer in the future. THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY A BAD THING IF THE MONEY IS SPENT WISELY (which everyone not might not agree on).

If taxes and interest rates are higher in the future due to the debt, that will lower our future economic growth rate. We will still probably grow, but not as much.

Should your company or insurer reward you for meeting exercise goals?

See Let your boss track your fitness, get an Apple Watch by ANICK JESDANUN of the Associated Press.

This reminds me of what economists call "asymmetric information." This is a situation in which the seller knows more about a product than the buyer (sometimes the buyer knows more about something important like how healthy or risky they are as it relates to insurance). These markets do not operate optimally. If insurance companies don't know how healthy or risky you are, they can't be sure of how much your premiums should be. But with fitness tracking, they learn more about you. My students might recall I discussed this after we played the supply and demand game in class. A good example is the used car market. Sellers usually know alot more about the product than the buyers.

Excerpts from the article linked above:

"You know you need to exercise more, but there's always next week, or the week after. To entice you to stop procrastinating, your company or insurer might soon reward you for wearing a fitness device to track your steps, heart rate and more.

For instance, in one program announced Wednesday, some workers can buy a $350 Apple Watch for just $25 by meeting exercise goals for two years. Miss goals, and see your discount shrink. Vitality, a provider of disease-prevention and lifestyle programs, is initially bringing the offer to U.S. employees at three companies, along with John Hancock life-insurance customers. It has been testing the program in South Africa since December.

Other programs let you redeem points from fitness activities for gift cards and other rewards. Submit to biometric screenings and nutrition classes, and in some cases you can earn insurance discounts."

"Adrian Gore, CEO and founder of Vitality parent company Discovery Group, says that for many people, the benefits from exercise might not be apparent for a few decades. Reward programs make the payoff more immediate."

"On Tuesday, health insurer UnitedHealthcare started offering up to $1,460 a year in credits toward deductibles for meeting daily goals while wearing a custom tracker. Oscar, which sells health insurance directly to consumers, has been giving out free Misfit trackers for opportunities to earn up to $100 a year in Amazon gift cards. Fitbit works with employers such as Indiana University Health and Emory University in Atlanta to subsidize fitness trackers for their staff."

"These programs are typically voluntary, but you must be willing to share data to earn the most rewards and insurance discounts.

Sound creepy? Program officials say that data from fitness trackers typically go to outside administrators, such as Fitbit or Vitality. Employers and insurers get only broad totals to verify eligibility and not details on heart rate and sleep. But participants need to trust that these systems won't get hacked.

Mike Doughty, president and general manager of John Hancock Insurance, says premiums won't rise if a screening uncovers higher blood pressure or other risks. Rather, he says, wellness incentives are about promoting longer lives — and collecting life-insurance premiums longer.

There's no proof that providing fitness trackers directly lowers health care costs, but there's plenty of evidence that exercise leads to better health, which in turn can improve productivity and reduce absences. Michael Staufacker, Emory's director of health management, describes the thinking as a "value of investment and not a hard-dollar return on investment as it relates to medical or pharmacy costs.""

"Programs from Vitality and others typically won't let you earn insurance discounts simply by exercising. You'll need to earn additional points by completing questionnaires and getting flu shots. You sometimes get bonus points simply by staying within recommended limits for cholesterol, blood pressure and other measures. Smokers can also get points for joining programs to help them quit.
"You change one thing about your behavior, and you can be more motivated to work on these other aspects," says Tammy Smith, who manages the employee wellness program at IU Health.

DaVita HealthCare Partners says health care spending by its employees slowed significantly after it offered tracker-based incentives through Vitality. But DaVita also increased the deductible on claims and started such initiatives as Fresh Fruit Wednesday. That makes the effect of the fitness program difficult to isolate.

With the Apple Watch program, you must pay back Vitality each month you miss your fitness goals, which typically call for four substantial workouts a week. The goals are meant to be achievable, but tough enough to change habits."

Some research shows that if the reward is not delayed, people are put in groups where only those succeeding get rewarded (since people hate to see others get a prize they could have had) and if the participants lose money if they don't meet the goal (called loss aversion), the policy is more successful. See Paying Employees to Lose Weight.

Older posts on similar topics:

Should Overweight People Pay More For Health Insurance?

Should We Pay People To Adopt A Healthy Lifestyle?

The more we build our human and financial capital, the more prepared we are when a downturn comes or to capitalize on other opportunities

See Oil layoffs are not because companies are greedy. From The San Antonio Express-News, by Christopher E. Baecker, who manages fixed assets for Pioneer Energy Services and is an adjunct lecturer of economics at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio. Excerpts:

"Our employment is at-will — meaning we are as free to leave the company as it is to eliminate our position or terminate our employment. It works both ways, and many people forget that when bemoaning “big evil corporations interested only in making a buck.”

Our labor market flexibility is one thing that makes the U.S. economy better than most, with fewer regulations on freedom of movement and deployment of resources. It’s a big reason we typically have a lower unemployment rate than other countries.

After the first such round of workforce reductions a year prior, the same daughter (the most inquisitive of my four) asked if I had a backup plan. I pointed to my efforts to sharpen my Spanish, among other things. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing many individuals who are proactive in that regard.

In addition to her speech pathology work, my sister, whose husband works in our industry, recently started selling cleaning supplies. One friend with whom I work is now an Uber driver in her free time. Another colleague at a previous job saved enough to open her own haircutting franchise. Many of the people working in the field have commercial driver’s licenses and experience in construction.

The more we build our human and financial capital, the more prepared we are when a downturn comes or to capitalize on other opportunities. Such behavior and farsighted use of spare time makes this possible — that’s why the best job security is job insecurity.

I have found that differentiating between cyclical unemployment (shifts in the business cycle from growth to downturn and back) and frictional unemployment (voluntary movements) is not terribly difficult for my college students to grasp in the abstract. But when it happens to you in real life, it naturally tends to have an adverse emotional impact.

There are various forms of temporary assistance available to people who find themselves swept up by large macroeconomic forces. Many companies offer severance packages. As a society, we have deemed it appropriate to offer unemployment insurance funded by taxes levied on employers. There’s COBRA and Medicaid for those qualifying to help with health expenses.

In December, the government helped by possibly flipping the script on the other type of unemployment — structural — when Congress and President Barack Obama lifted the ban on crude oil exports." 

"Also in the budget is a proposal to enhance unemployment insurance.

Assistance for workers who can prove they lost their job as a direct result of liberalized trade has always had support. It helps smooth acceptance of changes that will benefit our country as a whole. The proposed changes would pay a person a portion of the difference between the job lost and a lower-paying new job.

These modifications, however, would numb the incentives of the good habits spurred by job insecurity.

Current Federal Reserve policies don’t help, as they discourage folks from saving, a cruel irony given that those very same policies play a role in the boom and bust nature of our industry.

There have actually been a few calls to “bail out” the oil industry, but that’s the last thing that needs to happen.

We should be bailing out fewer companies, not more. What those employed in our industry, and likely laborers in general, would probably appreciate more than anything is stable policy from Uncle Sam, so they can shape and direct their lives on their own terms."

Do Some Sellers on eBay Have an Edge Over Other Sellers?

See Male Sellers on eBay Have an Edge Over Women, Study Finds. By PAM BELLUCK of the NY Times. Excerpts:

"on average, when men and women with equal selling reputations sold the same products, women received lower prices than men."

"The difference was far less pronounced for used items: Women sellers received about 97 cents for every dollar men received. But with new items, where the authors say direct comparison is easier, women received about 80 cents on average for every dollar men sellers received."

"“The basic point — that people have different expectations of women versus men and so we treat them very differently in the world — it’s fascinating and depressing,” said Linda Babcock, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who was not involved in the study."

"The study did not paint a universally negative picture for women. For some items, like toys and pet products, women received somewhat higher prices than men. And women tended to have better reputations as sellers, although they tended to have less selling experience.

Nor did the study, which controlled for seller reputation, experience, number of photos, use of bold lettering and other elements, indicate that buyers were actively or even consciously discriminating. Male and female buyers appeared to treat women sellers the same, the authors said."

"We actually think that most of it is unconscious,” said Tamar Kricheli-Katz, a professor of law and sociology at Tel Aviv University, who conducted the study with Tali Regev, an economist at IDC Herzliya."

"the researchers conducted an experiment to see if people could tell the gender of sellers from user profiles. People guessed correctly in 1,127 of 2,000 cases, wrong in 170 and did not know the rest.

In another experiment, the researchers asked people to place value on a $100 Amazon gift card sold by someone named either Alison or Brad. On average, Alison’s gift card was valued at $83.34, while Brad’s was valued at $87.42.

Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economist and expert on gender wage gaps, said the study was intriguing but needed more analysis. “Just perceiving that somebody’s a woman, what exactly does it mean?” she asked. “It’s got to mean something about the quality of the good or service or something that’s not captured in the data that they have.”"

Amusement Park Changes Its Pricing Strategy

See Disneyland 'demand pricing' will cost you $5 less on slow days and $20 more when it's busy.  I'm skeptical about Disney saying this not being about maximizing profits. Everything firms do is about profits, especially if they see demand being different on different days. When demand increases, price goes up. Excerpts:

"Walt Disney Co. is adopting a new pricing policy at Disneyland and other U.S. theme parks that would reduce ticket costs on low-demand days and boost entrance fees for more popular times.

Starting Sunday, anyone willing to drop in on a typically slow day — maybe a Wednesday in September — will pay a few dollars less than previously. But for most days of the year, expect to spend more for a daily ticket.

Disney is portraying the move to peak pricing as a crowd-management technique rather than a push to maximize profits.

Airlines and hotels do it during spring break and other high-demand times; Uber and Lyft also charge more when the need for ride-hailing services surges, such as New Year's Eve.

"The demand for our theme parks continues to grow, particularly during peak periods," Disneyland spokeswoman Suzi Brown said. "In addition to expanding our parks, we are adopting seasonal pricing on our one-day ticket to help better spread visitation throughout the year."

Disneyland and Disney California Adventure have been charging $99 for a one-day ticket. Under the new policy, each day on the calendar will be designated a "value" day, a "regular" day or a "peak" day. The new price will be $95 for a value day, $105 for a regular day and $119 for a peak day."

Okun's Law

In my macro classes when I talk about how the unemployment rate falls when GDP increases (because greater output usually requires more workers), I usually say something like "but we probably need at least some minimum increase in GDP to see the unemploymet rate go down." This where Okun's Law might come help out. See Mr. Okun Saw This One Coming: Jobs Report Follows His 'Law'.

This is the key passage:

""Okun's Law," as it came to be known, has been tweaked over the years, and now states that for every two percentage points the economy grows above its long-term trend annually, unemployment falls by a percentage point.

Most economists peg the economy's long-term trend rate at about 2.5%, which is roughly where economists polled by The Wall Street Journal estimate growth stands in the current quarter.That means, according to Okun's Law, that the economy isn't growing fast enough to bring down unemployment."

See also Arthur M. Okun from the Library of Economics and Liberty.

And Is Okun’s Law Really Broken? By JUSTIN WOLFERS.

This was a post from December, 2010. Here are the growth rates in real GDP for the years 2011-2015

1.60%
2.22%
1.49%
2.43%
2.38%

Now here are the unemployment rates for the years 2010-2015

9.6%
8.9%
8.1%
7.4%
6.2%
5.3%

So unemployment has fallen quite a bit despite sluggish growth. But the employment picture might not be that great. We see a drop in the unemployment rate of 4.3 percentage points but the increase in the percentage of 25-54 year olds employed was much smaller.  Only 2.26 percentage point increase or only about half of the fall in unemployment. Here are the numbers for the percentage of 25-54 year olds employed for the years 2010-2015.

75.08%
75.13%
75.73%
75.89%
76.71%
77.24%

Federal Reserve Economists May Have Discovered Another Cause Of Bankruptcy

See Why You Might Go Bankrupt If Your Next-Door Neighbor Wins the Lottery by Ben Leubsdorf at The Wall Street Journal blog. In case that link does not work, try Here’s why winning the lottery makes your neighbors go broke by the same author in The New York Post. Excerpts from the WSJ blog:

"Winning the lottery can be hazardous to your neighbors’ financial health.

Research released this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found a significant jump in bankruptcies among households living near someone who won a big lottery jackpot. The economists theorized that people may have seen the good fortune next door and felt pressure to accumulate more assets of their own, especially flashy purchases like cars, that they simply could not afford.

“Income inequality induces poorer neighbors to consume more visible (rather than invisible) commodities to signal their abilities to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ to their richer neighbors,” economists Sumit Agarwal, Vyacheslav Mikhed and Barry Scholnick wrote. “This tendency can lead to additional and unsustainable borrowing among the relatively poor to finance this additional conspicuous consumption, which can eventually result in financial distress and bankruptcy.”"

"The headline finding: For every $1,000 increase in the lottery prize, there was a 2.4% increase in bankruptcy filings by the winner’s neighbors over the next few years. “These results are more pronounced for low-income neighborhoods and high income-inequality areas,” they wrote.

Why would someone winning the jackpot cause someone living down the street to go bankrupt a year or two later? The economists argued that people who feel they are poorer than their peers may spend more in a conspicuous fashion, financing their purchases with debt. But that debt will need to be repaid, potentially leading to financial difficulties and even bankruptcy.

Messrs. Agarwal, Mikhed and Scholnick analyzed the Canadian bankruptcy data and found “evidence that those who filed for bankruptcy after a larger lottery win of a close neighbor have significantly larger holdings of visible assets (e.g., cars, motorcycles, houses) relative to the holdings of these same visible assets by those who filed for bankruptcy after smaller lottery wins of a close neighbor,” they wrote. There was no similar difference for “invisible assets” like cash or pensions, they said.

In other words, when someone wins a big lottery prize, neighbors appear more likely to buy cars and remodel their houses to show that they can keep up—and go broke in the process."

I put conspicuous consumption in red because that is a well known term in economics and sociology. See Thorstein Veblen and What is Conspicuous Consumption .Veblen first coined the term over 100 years ago. The idea is that rich people buy things just to show how rich they are.

Adam Smith may have beaten Veblen to the punch. In The Wealth of Nations, he wrote:

"With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves. In their eyes the merit of an object which is in any degree either useful or beautiful, is greatly enhanced by its scarcity, or by the great labour which it requires to collect any considerable quantity of it, a labour which nobody can afford to pay but themselves. Such objects they are willing to purchase at a higher price than things much more beautiful and useful, but more common." (the entire book is online)

See also an earlier blog post I did called Conspicuous Consumption, Conspicuous Virtue, Thorstein Veblen (and Adam Smith, too!) . See also Doctoral Thesis Says Rich People Spend More on Conspicuous Things

A Special Valentine's Message On Romantic Love

The first one is Researchers at AAAS Annual Meeting Explore the Science of Kissing. The following quote gives you an idea of what it is all about: "Kissing, it turns out, unleashes chemicals that ease stress hormones in both sexes and encourage bonding in men, though not so much in women." I guess economists call this "interdependent utility functions." Meaning that what brings one person pleasure brings brings the other person pleasure, and vice-versa.

The other is Cocoa Prices Create Chocolate Dilemma. The article opens with "Soaring cocoa prices are creating a Valentine's Day dilemma for chocolate makers. They don't want to raise retail prices when recession-weary consumers are trying to limit their spending." The problem is crop diseases in Ivory Coast and Ghana. You might need to be a WSJ subscriber to read the whole article.

Here is a new article from yesterday's San Antonio Express-News (2-13-2011). Romance in bloom at workplace: Survey indicates 59% have taken the risk-filled leap. It seems like many people admit to having a romance at work and/or meeting their spouse at work. So what starts out as economic activity leads to some other needs being met.

Now the economic definition of romantic love.

 Abstract: "Romantic love is characterized by a preoccupation with a deliberately restricted set of perceived characteristics in the love object which are viewed as means to some ideal ends. In the process of selecting the set of perceived characteristics and the process of determining the ideal ends, there is also a systematic failure to assess the accuracy of the perceived characteristics and the feasibility of achieving the ideal ends given the selected set of means and other pre-existing ends.

The study of romantic love can provide insight into the general process of introducing novelty into a system of interacting variables. Novelty, however, is functional only in an open system characterized by uncertainty where the variables have not all been functionally looped and system slacks are readily available to accommodate new things. In a closed system where all the objective functions and variables must be compatible to achieve stability and viability, adjustments in the value of some variables through romantic idealization may be dysfunctional if they represent merely residual responses to the creative combination of the variables in the open sub-system."

The author was K. K. Fung of the Department of Economics, Memphis State University, Memphis. It was from a journal article in 1979. More info on it is at this link. The entire article, which is not too long, can be found at this link.

Then there was this related article: Love really is blind, U.S. study finds. Here is an exerpt:

"Love really is blind, at least when it comes to looking at others, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

College students who reported they were in love were less likely to take careful notice of other attractive men or women, the team at the University of California Los Angeles and dating Web site eHarmony found.

"Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to work in very specific ways in enabling you to push thoughts of that tempting other out of your mind," said Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony, whose study is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

"It's almost like love puts blinders on people," added Martie Haselton, an associate professor of psychology and communication studies at UCLA."

More links:

How to Be a Better Valentine, Through Economics by economist Paul Oyer.

Here’s what science says is the secret ingredient to making your love spark 

Can Giving Up Money And Material Things Lead To More Love?

What Do Men In China Need To Get A Bride?

Adam Smith, Marriage Counselor

A Special Valentine's Message On Romantic Love

Can You Put A Price Tag On Love?

Do Opposites Attract? Not Usually, Except Maybe When It Comes To Money

Return of the Love Headhunters

eHarmony To Provide Personal Counselors To Help You Find Mr. Or Ms. Right

Economist Paul Zak, aka Dr. Love (he studies the brain with "neuroeconomics")

This is your brain on love   (brain scans and biology seem to confirm the economic definition given above)

Dollars & Sex: The Blog of Marina Adshade

U.S. Economy Added 151,000 Jobs in January; Unemployment at 4.9%

See Click here to read the NY Times article.

One weakness of the unemployment rate is that if people drop out of the labor force they cannot be counted as an unemployed person and the unemployment rate goes down. They are no longer actively seeking work and it might be because they are discouraged workers.

We could look at the employment to population ratio. But that includes everyone over 16 and that means that senior citizens are in the group but many of them have retired. The more that retire, the lower this ratio would be and that might be misleading.

But we have this ratio for people age 25-54 (which also eliminates college age people who might not be looking for work). Click here to see this data from the BLS.

The percentage of 25 to 54 year olds employed went from 77.4% in Dec. to 77.7% in Jan. It was 79.7% in Dec. 2007, the month the recession started. So there might still some catching up to do. But it was good to see a 0.3% increase in one month

Who Is Most Likely To Default On Their Student Loans?

See Should Anyone Be Eligible for Student Loans? by Josh Mitchell of The Wall Street Journal. Excerpt:

"For decades, the federal government has imposed no underwriting standards in its student-loan program. Just about any American can borrow as much as $57,500 for college—and essentially unlimited amounts for graduate school—with little regard for the person’s ability to repay. Everyone taking out federal loans in a given year pays the same interest rate.

Supporters of that no-questions-asked policy say it guarantees every American a shot at a degree and a secure middle-class income. Imposing underwriting standards would deny a higher education to many poor people who can’t get loans from private lenders, they argue.

But a sharp rise in delinquencies in the $1.2 trillion federal student-loan program is drawing comparisons to subprime mortgage lending, which added to the housing crisis. It is also stirring debate on other ways to allot student aid.

New research shows a preponderance of the millions of borrowers who have defaulted on student loans in recent years are poor, were unprepared for college, and attended troubled schools that offered little hope of leading to a decent job.

“It’s not a gift to a poor person who is not going to be able to complete a degree program to give them a loan,” said Caroline Hoxby, a Stanford University economics professor, who calls the soaring load of student debt “a self-inflicted wound on the part of the federal government.

As of Sept. 30, just over 7 million borrowers had gone at least a year without making a payment on their federal student loans, Education Department figures show.
 
The student-loan delinquency rate has jumped to around 12%, roughly double its level before the recession, according to the New York Federal Reserve. When excluding borrowers still in school, roughly a quarter of all student debt is at least 90 days behind on payments. The comparable number for home-mortgage debt never exceeded 9% after the housing crash.

A recent Brookings Institution study by Treasury Department economist Adam Looney and Stanford’s Constantine Yannelis attributes the rise in both borrowing and defaults since the recession largely to “nontraditional students” who enrolled at for-profit schools and community colleges. Those schools typically have low or no academic standards for enrolling.

Such students made up more than two-thirds of defaults among those who left school in 2011, the study found, analyzing government tax records and student-loan figures. The defaulted borrowers tend to be older, from lower-income families, and more likely to be first-generation college-goers compared with students who attend four-year schools.

Likewise, an October paper by Federal Reserve researchers linked defaults to those who had weak credit scores. About 30% of those who had credit scores of between 500 and 599 a year before they left school eventually became delinquent on their loans. But among those with a score of 680 to 729, only 9% became delinquent, according to the paper, by Fed economists Alvaro Mezza and Kamila Sommer."

Another Semester Has Started

Welcome to any new students. The entries usually have something to do with a basic economic principle that is related to a recent news story. If you want to learn more about me go to Why is college so hard? (you may have to be patient with this site but the article is not long)

If that link is not working try this one

The San Antonio Express-News Printed An Article By Me On Terrorism

It does not seem to be online anywhere. It is titled "Fight Terror With Entrepreneurship." It is in the Monday, Dec. 21, 2015 edition on page A11. Here is what I sent them:

Last year the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal titled The Capitalist Cure for Terrorism Military might alone won’t defeat Islamic State and its ilk. The U.S. needs to promote economic empowerment . He favored promoting economic empowerment in less developed countries.

In his research, de Soto has documented the great difficulties poor people face in legally starting a business and establishing titles to property. When you can’t get title to a property and establish that you own it legally, it makes it hard to get credit at a bank. That limits your business’s size and income.

Any business a poor person starts remains in the underground economy and can’t grow and flourish to its full potential. Just starting a business legally in a less developed country can take months of filling out a great deal of paper work, something only the well off and well educated can do easily.

In Egypt, de Soto says in another article, Egypt's Economic Apartheid “To open a small bakery… would take more than 500 days” and “an aspiring poor entrepreneur would have to deal with 56 government agencies.”

He explained how the Shining Path terrorists were defeated in Peru. A change in policy “gave indigenous entrepreneurs and farmers control over their assets and a new, more accessible legal framework in which to run businesses, make contracts and borrow.”

This led to more economic growth than the rest of South America as well as a faster growing middle class. He recommended doing the same in Arab countries.

In the Arab Spring in 2010, the big problem was small entrepreneurs being harassed by government bureaucrats who constantly demanded bribes and payoffs to let them continue operating their businesses.

James Surowiecki wrote a similar article in The New Yorker in 2011 called The Tyrant Tax. He argued that the stifling of entrepreneurship was especially hard on young people since it limits their opportunities and slows down economic growth.

That just increases their chances of turning to terrorist groups like ISIS. But given we have a case, Peru, where terrorism was successfully fought through the expansion of entrepreneurship, we should again be looking at it as a viable policy option.

The views of de Soto and Surowiecki are supported by more widespread research done by economists William Easterly and Ross Levine. They found that institutions matter more for economic growth than natural resources.

What are those institutions? They include, along with political stability, protection of property, security of contracts and freedom from regulatory burdens.

How much difference can this make? If Mexico had the same institutions as the U.S., its per capita income would be just as high, instead of only being about one-third as much.

If there were greater opportunities in Arab countries because regulatory burdens were eased, then maybe fewer young people would turn to terrorism.

Fighting terrorism through reduced regulations might seem farfetched. But George McGovern, the very liberal democratic candidate for president in 1972, told of how the regulatory burden affected him.

He ran an inn after he left the senate. It went bankrupt and he wrote in a Wall Street Journal article that costly regulations may have played a role. He also noted that we should make sure policies are not “choking off those opportunities” for entrepreneurs.

If someone like McGovern had problems with regulations, just imagine how hard it is for a poor entrepreneur in a less developed country who faces even more bureaucracy, delays and red tape. We get slow growth economies that fall short of opportunities for young people, creating a breeding ground for terrorism. Hernando de Soto shows us this can be reversed.

***********

A good resource on these issues is the book Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity By William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, Carl J. Schramm

What Anthropologist Melvin Konner Fails To See When He Criticizes Economists And Their Views On Gift Giving

See What Economists Fail to See in the Act of Gift-Giving: New research suggests why holiday gifts—unlike purchases for oneself—have a value far higher than some economists previously thought from the WSJ. Here is a letter I submitted to the WSJ:

"Melvin Konner takes economists to task because they ignore the fact that gifts symbolize your friendship with someone else and instead focus only on their efficiency ("What Economists Fail to See in the Act of Gift-Giving," Dec. 5.) He argued that gifts have sentimental value, too. That may be true, but we could just as easily see gift giving as an example of what economists call signals. If I spend money on a gift for you, that signals that I am willing to incur a cost to show to you that I am truly your friend. You would not spend money on another person if you did not think you were friends. Konner actually hints at this when he says we feel cheated if we give gifts to a friend but they never reciprocate. Their not spending money on us signals their lack of feelings for us."

 To me, just the very fact that we spend money to prove to another person that we are their friend shows that economics is a very significant part of gift giving. Konner did not mention this possibility at all.

The unemployment rate held at a 7-1/2-year low of 5 percent

See Sturdy U.S. employment report a green light for December rate hike.

One weakness of the unemployment rate is that if people drop out of the labor force they cannot be counted as an unemployed person and the unemployment rate goes down. They are no longer actively seeking work and it might be because they are discouraged workers.

We could look at the employment to population ratio. But that includes everyone over 16 and that means that senior citizens are in the group but many of them have retired. The more that retire, the lower this ratio would be and that might be misleading.

But we have this ratio for people age 25-54 (which also eliminates college age people who might not be looking for work). Click here to see this data from the BLS.

The percentage of 25 to 54 year olds employed went from 77.2% to 77.4% in Nov. It was 79.7% in Dec. 2007, month recession started. So there might still some catching up to do.

Is There Economic And Political Meaning In "The Wizard of Oz?"

We covered international trade in my micro class recently and the text book has something about this in that chapter.

To get a handle on this, you can read Money and Politics in the Land of Oz By Quentin P. Taylor. Also, for my students, there is an article in chapter 15 of the micro book by Tucker and in chapter 18 in the macro book.Below is an excerpt from the Taylor paper:

"Dorothy, the protagonist of the story, represents an individualized ideal of the American people. She is each of us at our best-kind but self-respecting, guileless but levelheaded, wholesome but plucky. She is akin to Everyman, or, in modern parlance, “the girl next door.” Dorothy lives in Kansas, where virtually everything-the treeless prairie, the sun-beaten grass, the paint-stripped house, even Aunt Em and Uncle Henry-is a dull, drab, lifeless gray. This grim depiction reflects the forlorn condition of Kansas in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when a combination of scorching droughts, severe winters, and an invasion of grasshoppers reduced the prairie to an uninhabitable wasteland. The result for farmers and all who depended on agriculture for their livelihood was devastating. Many ascribed their misfortune to the natural elements, called it quits, and moved on. Others blamed the hard times on bankers, the railroads, and various middlemen who seemed to profit at the farmers’ expense. Angry victims of the Kansas calamity also took aim at the politicians, who often appeared indifferent to their plight. Around these economic and political grievances, the Populist movement coalesced.

In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Populism spread rapidly throughout the Midwest and into the South, but Kansas was always the site of its most popular and radical elements. In 1890, Populist candidates began winning seats in state legislatures and Congress, and two years later Populists in Kansas gained control of the lower house of the state assembly, elected a Populist governor, and sent a Populist to the U.S. Senate. The twister that carries Dorothy to Oz symbolizes the Populist cyclone that swept across Kansas in the early 1890s. Baum was not the first to use the metaphor. Mary E. Lease, a fire-breathing Populist orator, was often referred to as the “Kansas Cyclone,” and the free-silver movement was often likened to a political whirlwind that had taken the nation by storm. Although Dorothy does not stand for Lease, Baum did give her (in the stage version) the last name “Gale”-a further pun on the cyclone metaphor.

The name of Dorothy’s canine companion, Toto, is also a pun, a play on teetotaler. Prohibitionists were among the Populists’ most faithful allies, and the Populist hope William Jennings Bryan was himself a “dry.” As Dorothy embarks on the Yellow Brick Road, Toto trots “soberly” behind her, just as the Prohibitionists soberly followed the Populists.

When Dorothy’s twister-tossed house comes to rest in Oz, it lands squarely on the wicked Witch of the East, killing her instantly. The startled girl emerges from the abode to find herself in a strange land of remarkable beauty, whose inhabitants, the diminutive Munchkins, rejoice at the death of the Witch. The Witch represents eastern financial-industrial interests and their gold-standard political allies, the main targets of Populist venom. Midwestern farmers often blamed their woes on the nefarious practices of Wall Street bankers and the captains of industry, whom they believed were engaged in a conspiracy to “enslave” the “little people,” just as the Witch of the East had enslaved the Munchkins. Populists viewed establishment politicians, including presidents, as helpless pawns or willing accomplices. Had not President Cleveland bowed to eastern bankers by repealing the Silver Purchase Act in 1893, thus further restricting much-needed credit? Had not McKinley (prompted by the wealthy industrialist Mark Hanna) made the gold standard the centerpiece of his campaign against Bryan and free silver?"

Now an excerpt from Tucker:

"Gold is always a fascinating story: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was first published in 1900 and this children's tale has been interpreted as an allegory for political and economic events of the 1890s. For example, the Yellow Brick Road represents the gold standard, Oz in the title is an abbreviation for ounce, Dorothy is the naive public, Emerald City symbolizes Washington, D.C., the Tin Woodman represents the industrial worker, the Scarecrow is the farmer, and the Cyclone is a metaphor for a political revolution. In the end, Dorothy discovers magical powers in her silver shoes (changed to ruby in the 1939 film) to find her way home and not the fallacy of the Yellow Brick Road. Although the author of the story, L. Frank Baum, never stated it was his intention, it can be argued that the issue of the story concerns the election of 1896. Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan (the Cowardly Lion) supported fixing the value of the dollar to both gold and silver (bimetallism), but Republican William McKinley (the Wicked Witch) advocated using only the gold standard. Since McKinley won, the United States remained on the Yellow Brick Road."

But not everyone agrees with this. Economist Bradley Hansen wrote an article titled The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics in the Journal of Economic Education in 2002. Here is his conclusion:

"Rockoff noted that the empirical evidence that Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as an allegory was slim, but he compared an allegorical interpretation to a model and suggested that “economists should not have any difficulty accepting, at least provisionally, an elegant but controversial model” (Rockoff 1990, 757). He was right—we did not have any difficulty accepting it. Despite Rockoff’s warning, we appear to have accepted the story wholeheartedly rather than provisionally, simply because of its elegance. It is as difficult to prove that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was not a monetary allegory as it is to prove that it was. In the end, we will never know for certain what Baum was thinking when he wrote the book. I suggest that the vast majority of the evidence weighs heavily against the allegorical interpretation. It should be remembered that no record exists that Baum ever acknowledged any political meanings in the story and that no one even suggested such an interpretation until the 1960s. There certainly does not seem to be sufficient evidence to overwhelm Baum’s explicit statement in the introduction of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that his sole purpose was to entertain children and not to impress upon them some moral. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a great story. Telling students that the Populist movement was like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz does seem to catch their attention. It may be a useful pedagogical tool to illuminate the debate on bimetallism, but we should stop telling our students that it was written for that purpose."

I found a review of the book in the NY Times from 1900 and it does not mention anything about OZ having political or economic meaning. The book was also made into a musical a few years later and none of the reviews of the musical mention any political or economic meaning.

What Is Is the Richest City in America?

See This Is the Richest City in America by Alexandra Mondalek of Time. Excerpts:

"According to data compiled by Bloomberg, the newest reigning metropolitan area for wealth and productivity is San Jose, Calif., the third-largest city in the state and a hub of Silicon Valley. The 2014 gross metropolitan product (GMP) per capita—which is a technical way of saying economic output per resident—in the San Jose metro area was $105,482, more than double the national average.

Since the Great Recession, technology hot spots have inched their way forward in attracting the smartest and most highly compensated residents, surpassing the East Coast centers of the financial elite. To be sure, the other coast is well represented: cities like Boston and Philadelphia still rank highly, and Bridgeport, Ct., comes in second on Bloomberg’s list, with a per-resident GMP of $94,349."

The article later says: 

"Good news to those living in some of Bloomberg’s top-ranked cities (looking at you, Boston, San Fran, and Seattle): Your towns are among MONEY’s best places to live for rich singles."

I'm usually skeptical of any "best places" lists because if those places are so great, more people will move there, driving up the cost of living. Then it might not be such a great place.

Suppose that San Francisco is 6 times better to live in than Omaha, Nebraska. That is about how many times higher the median home price is in San Francisco. There is definitely more to do and more great sights in San Francisco, but it costs alot more to live there.

If SF were so great, everyone would leave Omaha and head to SF. But they don't. This is where  the "Indifference Principle"comes in.

If people really believe that SF is better many of them go there, but things won't be very fun due to the crowds (which reminds me of something that Yogi Berra said about a restaurant: "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded").

Prices of everything will be bid up. This also illustrates what economist Steven Landsburg calls the "Indifference Principle." "Except when people have unusual tastes or unusual talents, all activities must be equally desirable."

This applies to SF. Once everyone sees it as a good deal or great place, they start going there. Only people with unusual tastes will really enjoy it. That is, you will have to like what that SF has to offer alot more than the average person or the crowds and congestion and high prices will erode your enjoyment. It won't be any better than anywhere else to live. Other places will be just as desirable.

If home prices were only twice as high in SF, then lots of people will move there because it is such a great place. But then that drives up the home prices and eventually there is no advantage to moving to SF. All of its extra benefits are eaten up in higher costs of living.

The Deficit Trials 2017 A. D.

This was a commercial back in 1986. It paints a bleak picture of America in the future, presumably caused on the growing national debt ($2 trillion then, about $18.6 trillion now). I think this thing is way over the top but there may be some real dangers from the debt that I mention below. You might have to watch a brief commercial for some product first. We have been covering the deficit and debt this week in my macro classes. If the embedded video does not appear, use the link below it.

Ridley Scott - W. R. Grace Deficit Trials

Real problems the national debt might cause
1. About 34% of the debt is owed to foreign citizens. When they get paid back, they come and buy American goods. That leaves fewer goods for Americans (who can't afford to buy as much due to higher taxes that were needed to pay back the debt). BUT THIS MIGHT NOT BE A CONCERN IF WE ORIGINALLY BORROWED THE MONEY FOR A GOOD PURPOSE.

People borrow money all the time to buy houses and cars. Then they pay it back to a person outside of their family or household. We don’t consider this a burden since the money was put to good use. Right after World War II, the national debt was 120% of the GDP. This was much higher than it is now and we survived. No one complains that we borrowed to win the war.

2. Raising taxes might hurt economic incentives. At higher tax rates, people might want to work and invest less. Fewer businesses might expand and fewer news ones created since you will get to keep less profit. But again, THIS MIGHT NOT BE A CONCERN IF WE ORIGINALLY BORROWED THE MONEY FOR A GOOD PURPOSE. Also, if taxes only go up a little, and the debt is slowly paid off each year (like after WW II), it may not hurt too much.

3. We may have fewer government services in the future if we pay back the debt by lowering government spending. But this means that we are trading more government services today for fewer in the future. THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY A BAD THING IF THE MONEY IS SPENT WISELY (which everyone not might not agree on).

If taxes and interest rates are higher in the future due to the debt, that will lower our future economic growth rate. We will still probably grow, but not as much.