How Best to Reintegrate Ex-Prisoners?
"Two-thirds of those released from prison in the United States will be re-arrested within three years, creating an incarceration cycle that is detrimental to individuals, families, and communities." So writes Jennifer L. Doleac in "Strategies to productively reincorporate the formerly-incarcerated into communities: A review of the literature" (posted on SSRN, July 21, 2018), Doleac's approach is straightforward: look at the studies. In particular, look at fairly recent studies done since 2010 that use a "randomized controlled trial" approach--that is, an approach where a group of participants are randomly assigned either to receive a particular program or not to receive it. When this approach is carried out effectively, comparing the "treatment group" and the "control group" provides a reasonable basis for drawing inferences about what works and what doesn't.
- 11/10/2018
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Boglehead Wisdom
The Bogleheads believe in Jack Bogle, who "founded Vanguard in 1974 and introduced the first index mutual fund in 1975." An index fund seeks only to mimic the average market return, and thus can do so at very low cost. In contrast, an "active" fund looks for ways to beat the market, through picking certain stocks or timing movements in the market, but also charges higher fees.
- 11/10/2018
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Economics Nobel 2018: William Nordhaus and Paul Romer
Both William Nordhaus and Paul Romer are deserving of a Nobel Prize in Economics, but I was not expecting them to win it during the same year. The Nobel committee found a way to glue them together. Nordhaus won the prize "“for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis," while Romer won the prize “for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis.” Yes, the words "climate change" and "technological innovations" might seem to suggest that they worked on different topics. But with the help of "integrating ... into long-run macroeconomic analysis," Nordhaus and Romer are now indissolubly joined as winners of the 2018 Nobel prize.
- 10/10/2018
- 4
Taking the Medal Through Fargo Airport Security
Brian Schmidt was a co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize for "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae." This is the discovery that leads physicists to infer the existence of "dark energy," which although we have no direct way to measure or observe it is apparently causing the expansion of the universe to speed up. At the Scientific American blog, Clara Moskowitz reports the story recently told by Schmidt about ttaking his Nobel medal to show his grandmother in Fargo, North Dakota -- a city on the eastern edge of North Dakota, on the border with my home state of Minnesota. Fargo has a little more than 100,000 people, which makes it the largest population city in North Dakota. Here's how Schmidt tells the story:
- 09/10/2018
- 3
When Hayek Opposed the Nobel Prize in Economics
As the pedants among us never tire of pointing out, the so-called "Nobel Prize in economics" is not literally a "Nobel prize." It was not established by the original bequest from Alfred Nobel, but instead was first given in 1969, with the prize money provided by a grant from Sweden's central bank as part of the 300th anniversary of the founding of the bank. Thus, the award is officially "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel." (Justin Fox gives a nice brief overview of the history here.) Although I am pedantic in many matters, this doesn't happen to be one of them, so I will continue following the conventional usage in calling it the "Nobel prize in economics."
- 09/10/2018
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