Tryan02

Six basic principles—and a dash of Reaganite wisdom—will set us back on course.

I don't know how widespread this phenomenon is, but I thought I would share an email I received this morning:

I have been teaching multiple sections of economics for four years now at several Colleges and Universities in the State of Indiana. I have also been a frequent user of your texts in the classes that I teach.

With the implementation of the ACA (Affordable Care Act) these institutions are giving notification to their part-time faulty that their individual teaching schedules will now be limited to three sections. At the college this will likely result in the cancellation of 20-25% of the class sections in economics, and I would assume other areas will have a similar result. The students are not fully aware of the situation and many will be surprised that their desire to get a college education is now being impacted by the need to avoid the full implementation of the ACA.

Regardless if you are a Republican or a Democrat I would hope full-time faculty would voice their concern regarding the impact the implementation of the ACA could have on the attainment of higher education for the current student population and upon the lives of the dedicated part-time faculty that have been devoted to serving this student population.

My hope is that if faculty across the nation brought this to the public attention that we as a nation could have a more open and complete dialogue regarding the course we wish to set as a nation.

Update: Another example.

The author is Angus Deaton and the subtitle is Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality.  It is a very good book, as you might expect.  Here are two bits I found especially interesting:

In Sweden in 1751 — well before the modern mortality decline — it was riskier to be a newborn than to be an 80-year old.

And, somewhat more recently:

…until around 1900, adult life expectancy in Britain was actually higher than life expectancy at birth.  In spite of having lived for 15 years, those teenagers could expect a longer future than when they were born.

The book’s home page is here.

Here is a fascinating TED talk about the Chinese political culture.  It takes about 20 minutes.

Addendum: And here is a thoughtful commentary on the talk.

Schliesser has been hoping to catch me in an economic error but has been unable to do so. (His strategy in responding to me so far has been to read me uncharitably.) Martin Brock, a loyal BHL reader, on the other hand, did catch me:

You obviously know your experience better than I, but I doubt that your button pushing in a factory required less skill than mopping, and even if some measure of “skill” finds the two occupations equally skillful, the degree of economic loss possible by pressing the wrong button on a mass production assembly line presumably is greater, so the level of responsibility, if not the skill, of the button pusher presumably is greater, and the proprietor of a production line will pay more for a more responsible worker.

…The way you tell the story, your $16.25/hr sounds like some sort of gift from the factory owner, who simply has more to give than a grocer employing you to mop floors, but marginal value is not this sort of gift at all.

I responded,

Yes, you’re right that I exaggerated* the lack of difference between the two jobs. And you’re right that much more was at stake. Quite literally, if I pressed the wrong buttons, I would have instantly destroyed $45,000 or more in electronic equipment.

Sean II added,

“so the level of responsibility, if not the skill…”

Being able to handle responsibility is a skill. From an employer’s point of view, it’s probably the most important skill of all.

An IV infusion pump is operationally not much different from a milkshake machine. The difference between the person you trust to operate the one, and the person you trust to operate the other is NOT just a difference of applied capital.

I had the floor-mopping job in high school and the button-pushing factory job when I took a semester off from college to earn enough money to finish. The people who were hired to do the latter kind of job were different from the people hired to to the former. For the factory job (at Analog Devices), one needed work experience demonstrating responsibility and a high school diploma.

*It’s not a complete exaggeration, though.

According to research published this spring, people make healthier menu choices when calories are listed beside each item – but they make even better choices when they’re told how far they’d have to walk to burn off the calories consumed. This makes sense: for most of us, a calorie is a nebulous, hard-to-visualise thing, while a listing such as “burger: 2.6 miles” brings things sharply into focus. Somebody, it occurs to me, ought to design an app along these lines, for eating out: it would ask me what kind of food I’d like, then direct me only to those restaurants sufficiently far away that I’d neutralise the effect of the meal by walking there. In the mood for salad? There’s a place on the corner. Hungry for sausages, cheesy chips and a large slice of cake? Time to dig out the hiking boots.

Here is more, by Oliver Burkeman, via Claire Morgan.

1. I would bet against betting therapy.

2. The Delhi dilemma (FT).

3. Power struggle in Pakistan.

4. Cola-flavored wine, from France.

5. When police are recorded by video cameras, citizen complaints go way down.

1. 12 amazing outdoor steps and staircases.

2. Mismarked exam results in Taiwanese lawsuit.

3. Why are Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

4. Pavement that eats smog.

5. Science fiction novels for economists.

1. How kids rate and review Pixar movies, and Steven Pinker’s desert island discs.

2. A short essay on measurement and its consequences.

3. Kenneth Minogue has passed away.

4. The political culture that is Sweden (Sörmland).

5. Why genre rules eBooks.

6. Greg Mankiw on Jason Furman.

7. Kurt Schuler’s monetary economics reading list.

8. What are the best pens of all time? (speculative)

Chris Blattman, author of one of the key papers on cash transfers to the poor, takes a page from Albert Hirschman’s book and practices a bit of self-subversion.

First, the message can be misunderstood. It is not, “Cash transfers to the poor are a panacea.” More like, “They probably suck less than most of the other things we are doing.” This is not a high bar.

Second, cash transfers work in some cases not others. If a poor person is enterprising, and their main problem is insufficient capital, terrific. If that’s not their problem, throwing cash will not do much to help. I recommend the paper for details….

Third, a cash transfer to help the poor build business is like aspirin to a flesh wound. It helps, but not for long. The real problem is the absence of firms small and large to employ people productively. The root of the problem is political instability, economic uncertainty, and a country’s high cost structure, among other things. A government’s attention is properly on these bigger issues.

If I were an enterprising young researcher looking for an idea and experiments that will prove powerful in five years, I would try to find the stake I can drive into the heart of the cash transfer movement.

…That is not depressing. That is science. We should welcome it.

In that spirit: I look forward to the stake-wielders.

That query is from AskReddit, the link is here, and here are a few of the nominations:

It’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.

And:

Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.” The waitress replies, “I’m sorry, Monsieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”

And:

Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel, and Noam Chomsky walk into a bar. Heisenberg turns to the other two and says, “Clearly this is a joke, but how can we figure out if it’s funny or not?” Gödel replies, “We can’t know that because we’re inside the joke.” Chomsky says, “Of course it’s funny. You’re just telling it wrong.”

I don’t find that latter one funny at all, as they are telling it wrong.

The pointer is from Jodi Ettenberg of Legal Nomads fame.

What are your picks?  You get mine every day.

The co-founder of Florida-based Specialty Medical Supplies has been held since Friday in the executive quarters of his factory on the outskirts of Beijing, he said. About 80 of his 110 employees are blocking doors and locking gates, refusing to let the 42-year-old entrepreneur go until they get severance packages, according to Chip Starnes, the co-founder.

It’s not all bad, however:

Speaking on Monday from behind the bars of a window of the 10-year-old factory that makes alcohol pads and diabetes equipment, Mr. Starnes apologized for his fatigue. He said during the first few nights of his entrapment that employees treated him like a prisoner of war, depriving him of sleep by making jarring noises and shining bright lights in his eyes. There are no guns, however, and Mr. Starnes said that he hasn’t been physically harmed in any way.

And:

Despite becoming a prisoner in his own offices, Mr. Starnes said he is willing to stick it out in China and even a few more weeks in his present confines. “Thankfully when I built the place, I put a toilet in it,” he said.

I noted this sentence from the article:

It is unclear how often executives are held hostage.

Perhaps this should be added to the Doing Business index as a new variable.  (Update: it’s pretty common.)  In any case, you can read more here.

Teaching students how to write well is a task that I am confronted with on a regular basis and for which I am hopelessly ill equipped. I have no training in the subject. I am not a native English speaker. I did not even attend high school or college in an English speaking country (at least not before doing graduate work). So, I want to be sympathetic to Verlyn Klinkenborg’s call in Sunday’s New York Times for a renewed role for the humanities (or really English literature) in teaching students how to write “clearly, simply, with attention and openness to their own thoughts.” The humanities, writes Klinkenborg, can provide students with the gift of “clear thinking, clear writing and a lifelong engagement with literature.” I agree that all of these are good things.

Then he writes this:

Studying the humanities should be like standing among colleagues and students on the open deck of a ship moving along the endless coastline of human experience. Instead, now it feels as though people have retreated to tiny cabins in the bowels of the ship, from which they peep out on a small fragment of what may be a coastline or a fog bank or the back of a spouting whale.

Sentences like this usually lead me to liberally spread red ink. What do you mean? Why should studying be like observing a coastline rather than interacting with human experience? Why the clichés? And what’s that whale all about?  You can sort of figure out what the author means with all the vague metaphors but “sort of being able to figure out” an argument is hardly an advertisement for clear and simple nonfiction writing.

I often see sentences like this in my students’ writing: unnecessary and extensive usages of metaphors that muddle rather than clarify thinking. I guess it raises the question of whether the study of English literature does really give students and teachers a good basis for becoming clear thinkers and writers on nonfiction issues. I am not entirely sure what the alternative is or whether I am being a disciplinary (or Dutch) curmudgeon who unduly favors clear precise statements over flowery language. Thoughts?

I broke the law yesterday and again today and I will probably break the law tomorrow. Don’t mistake me, I have done nothing wrong. I don’t even know what laws I have broken. Nevertheless, I am reasonably confident that I have broken some laws, rules, or regulations recently because its hard for anyone to live today without breaking the law. Doubt me? Have you ever thrown out some junk mail that came to your house but was addressed to someone else? That’s a violation of federal law punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

Harvey Silverglate argues that a typical American commits three felonies a day. I think that number is too high but it is easy to violate the law without intent or knowledge. Most crimes used to be based on the common law and ancient understandings of wrong (murder, assault, theft and so on) but today there are thousands of federal criminal laws that bear no relation to common law or common understanding. The WSJ illustrates:

Last September (2011), retired race-car champion Bobby Unser told a congressional hearing about his 1996 misdemeanor conviction for accidentally driving a snowmobile onto protected federal land, violating the Wilderness Act, while lost in a snowstorm. Though the judge gave him only a $75 fine, the 77-year-old racing legend got a criminal record.

Mr. Unser says he was charged after he went to authorities for help finding his abandoned snowmobile. “The criminal doesn’t usually call the police for help,” he says.

Or how about this:

In 2009, Mr. Anderson loaned his son some tools to dig for arrowheads near a favorite campground of theirs. Unfortunately, they were on federal land….

There is no evidence the Andersons intended to break the law, or even knew the law existed, according to court records and interviews. But the law, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, doesn’t require criminal intent and makes it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison to attempt to take artifacts off federal land without a permit.

The Anderson’s didn’t even find any arrowheads but the attempt to find was punishable by imprisonment. Under statutes such as the Lacey Act one can even face criminal prosecution for violating the laws of another country. Ignorance of another  country’s laws is no excuse.

If someone tracked you for a year are you confident that they would find no evidence of a crime? Remember, under the common law, mens rea, criminal intent, was a standard requirement for criminal prosecution but today that is typically no longer the case especially under federal criminal law .

Faced with the evidence of an non-intentional crime, most prosecutors, of course, would use their discretion and not threaten imprisonment. Evidence and discretion, however, are precisely the point. Today, no one is innocent and thus our freedom is maintained only by the high cost of evidence and the prosecutor’s discretion.

One of the responses to the revelations about the mass spying on Americans by the NSA and other agencies is “I have nothing to hide. What me worry?” I tweeted in response “If you have nothing to hide, you live a boring life.” More fundamentally, the NSA spying machine has reduced the cost of evidence so that today our freedom–or our independence–is to a large extent at the discretion of those in control of the panopticon.

Washington’s cities, counties, ports, Indian tribes, public utility districts and school districts spent about $2.5 million lobbying state lawmakers during the regular legislative session — more than any other group.

That’s Washington state of course.  The details are here, and for the pointer I thank JS.

All the way down!

Louis points to this news article by John Harwood, “Dissent Festers in States That Obama Seems to Have Forgotten,” which has this bit:

Whites make up 90 percent of its population, which is fewer than one million people and mostly in rural areas. Its proportion of people 65 and over exceeds the national average. There was never a chance that North Dakota would give Mr. Obama its three electoral votes.

Louis writes:

The conclusion might be true, but the reasoning is bad, right? New Hampshire is 95% white, population ~1 million, largely rural, and proportion of people 65 and over exceeds national average. New Hampshire gave Mr. Obama its four electoral votes. (Same applies for Maine and Vermont.)

I agree.

Also, as a side note, I see no reason to trust Donna Brazile about any of this stuff. Just from the outside, I haven’t ever seen any evidence that she’s much of a “strategist,” even though that’s what she’s labeled as in the newspaper.

Pardon the morning Shakespeare.  But I think a small dose of Romeo and Juliet might be helpful in wading through recent commentary on the “Hastert Rule”—the expectation that House majority party leaders will use their leverage over the floor agenda to block measures opposed by a majority of the majority party.   The “rule” is in the news of course because the fate of bipartisan immigration reform rests in part on whether Speaker Boehner would be willing to allow passage of reform with Democratic votes, rolling a GOP majority.

Some thoughts on two dimensions of recent Hastert rule coverage:

First, many reporters delight in pointing out that the Hastert rule is not a formal rule, such as this morning’s tweet from Greg Sargent: “Someone needs to tell the @nytimes that there isn’t really any such thing as the ‘Hastert Rule.’”   In some ways, the distinction is politically important.  By naming the Hastert rule a “practice” (rather than a codified rule), rolling the majority party on the House floor (thereby “breaking” the rule) shouldn’t be seen as such a politically costly move for Speaker Boehner.  If the speaker is charged with protecting the interests of the chamber, then we should expect the speaker to allow a chamber—rather than a party majority—to work its will on the big issues of the day.  Reifying the practice as a rule potentially empowers opponents of  immigration reform.

That said, I’m not sure that the distinction between formal rule and informal practice or precedent matters in this context.  Even if we reach back to the early 20th century, we hear echoes of the Hastert rule in legislative parlance.  As Speaker Nicholas Longworth (R-Ohio) said back in 1925,

“I believe it to be the duty of the Speaker…standing squarely on the platform of his party, to assist in so far as he properly can the enactment of legislation in accordance with the declared principles and policies of his party and by the same token to resist the enactment of legislation in violation thereof.”

The key word here is duty.  Similarly, Cox and McCubbins’ model in Setting the Agenda assumes that majority party leaders “act according to a minimal fiduciary standard…they  do not use their official powers to push legislation that would pass on the floor against the wishes of most in their party” (p9).  Again, the concept is a norm, not a rule.  Leaders are expected to behave as such (and as fiduciaries, are trusted to do so), given the risk of losing their leadership positions if they violate the norm.  In other words, these accounts suggest that compliance with a Hastert “norm” is rational, and thus sustainable.  As Jon Bernstein put it yesterday, “That doesn’t need to be incorporated into any formal rule; it’s just how it is.”

That said, recent violations of the Hastert rule/norm haven’t led a majority of the conference to replace Boehner. (This isn’t surprising, given that sixty percent of House GOP voted at least once with Democrats on the three 113th Congress Hastert rule violations.) In short, I don’t think it matters whether we consider the Hastert practice a formal rule or behavioral norm: the Speaker will observe it to the greatest extent that he can, except when maintenance of the party’s reputation compels him (through the Rules Committee) to allow a bipartisan bill or conference report to come to the floor.  Again, in purely rational terms, a norm is likely to be sustained so long as the costs of compliance (however defined) don’t exceed the benefits.

Second, just a word about the efforts of conservatives (inside and outside of the GOP conference) to codify the Hastert rule.   Some report that the effort would codify the Hastert rule as a formal rule of the House. That’s not quite right: conservatives are seeking to codify the rule within GOP party conference rules.  Does the distinction between chamber and party rules matter?  Certainly the lower visibility of conference rules (and their lack of force on the House floor) might make it easier to violate or waive them.  (GOP conference rules allow a supermajority to waive party rules, and it’s not clear how a party rule would bind the Speaker’s compliance.)  Unfortunately, there is relatively little research on the politics of creating or maintaining party caucus or conference rules (at least outside of the 1970s House Democrats’ rules on selecting committee chairs). And the one piece I can think of this morning—a very nice Matt Green article in Legislative Studies Quarterly in 2002—suggested the limits of the Democrats’ famed experimentation with a binding caucus in the early 20th century.  (Binding caucus rules proved no match for internal party divisions on highly salient issues …)

That said, no one seems to expect the conservatives’ efforts to succeed.  And given that the Hastert rule/norm is only as strong as rank and file GOP’s trust that their leaders will observe it, it probably doesn’t matter whether the practice is codified or remains informal.   As Rep. Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) reacted to the codification campaign, “I don’t think many people are apt to sign on to something like this, and at the end of the day, you trust your leaders or you don’t.”

As some of you may know, I have long argued that humanitarian intervention is morally and legally permissible (see here).  I stand by those arguments, and that is why I firmly believe that we should not intervene in Syria. I have several reasons, but two are prominent.

1) A justified intervention must be on behalf of those who have a just cause. In Syria, the available evidence shows that neither side has a just cause. The government is your standard Middle Eastern oppressor, while the rebels are dominated by Al Qaeda and similar sinister characters.

2) It is unjust for our government to tax American citizens to try to help people who do not want to be helped and who, even after they have been helped, instead of thanking us for liberating them, they viciously turn against us for domestic political gain or some other spurious motive. Iraq and Afghanistan are cases in point. The U.S. and their allies helped them get rid of their tyrants, only to see the new governments posture about how bad Americans are. When this happens, our response should be simple and direct: we will leave you alone to lead your miserable lives. And if you dare attack us, we will kill you or bring you to justice.

This is a guest post by Benjamin Bishin, Thomas Hayes, Matthew Incantalupo, and Charles Anthony Smith.

*****

Recent speculation about the Supreme Court’s rulings on the gay rights cases Hollingsworth et al. v. Perry et al., and US v. Windsor et al., has led some to warn of backlash—whereby a favorable gay rights ruling might lead to a surge of anti-gay opinion, which would ultimately set back the march toward equality.  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal stalwart, recently countenanced these views when discussing the fight over abortion.  Our research suggests that concerns about public opinion backlash on gay marriage are unfounded.

For decades, those invoking backlash have told traditionally disadvantaged groups that they should not press their claims.  Backlash is typically described as a reaction to threats or changes to the status quo by those seeking to maintain existing power arrangements.   A variety of scholars and pundits have considered backlash in the context of policies advancing the status of Latinos, women , and African Americans among others.   Even among those interested in gay rights, claims of backlash are not unique to the question of gay marriage.

With respect to gay rights, backlash might be precipitated by the policies produced by institutions like the legislature, or the Court, or by non-policy actions such as the election of members of a traditionally marginalized group.   To date, however, empirical evidence of opinion backlash in response to court cases, is anecdotal.  This leads to the question: Does opinion backlash occur?

We investigated this question by conducting on-line survey experiments in which people were asked to react to a state Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage.  The experiment was conducted just before the Supreme Court oral arguments in the Perry and Windsor cases.  We randomly assigned people to see vignettes containing a fictitious news story about gay marriage in Oregon being legalized by the state court, a story about gay marriage being legalized by the state legislature, a story about a gay pride parade, or a story about a unrelated issue (gun control policy).  After seeing one of these stories, people were asked to rate gays and lesbians on a “feeling thermometer” where 100 indicates very warm feelings and 0 very cool feelings.  If backlash occurs, we should see that opinions of gays become less favorable for each group that read about gay marriage or gay rights, relative to the group that read about gun control policy.  Backlash might be stronger among groups that past research suggests might be more likely to experience backlash—Evangelical Christians and those dissatisfied with the country’s direction.  Here are the changes in feelings toward gays for each version of the experiment (relative to those who saw the gun control story):

We find no evidence of backlash in any of the groups that saw a story related to gay marriage or gay rights (or in all of these groups combined).  This was true among all respondents, among evangelicals, and among those dissatisfied with the direction of the country.  Why did opinions change so little?  One possibility is that a policy made in Oregon, the setting for each of our vignettes, did not provide the degree of threat to the status quo necessary to create a backlash.

To address this possibility, we interviewed a separate sample of people after oral arguments in the Perry and Windsor cases, also having them read the gun control story so that they would be comparable to the group who read this story but were interviewed before the oral arguments.  By making the expansion of gay rights salient, the Court’s hearings may have provided a more significant threat to the status quo.  We estimated backlash by comparing thermometer ratings of gays among those interviewed before and after the hearings.  Backlash would be indicated by differences in Figure 2 that are large and negative.

Once again, our results are entirely inconsistent with the predictions of backlash.  In fact, contrary to theories of backlash, the public as a whole appears to have become more favorably disposed toward gays and lesbians.

These results appear to undermine a central argument made by those who suggest that advocates of gay rights should “go slow” in pushing for gay rights and especially marriage equality.  While there may be costs associated with pushing for equal rights for gays and lesbians, such as the creation of negative precedents that may result from court rulings that go against gay rights, those costs seem unlikely to come in the form of public opinion backlash.

It is ironic that almost exactly 50 years after Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail—a response to Alabama clergy who exhorted blacks to wait for the courts to grant them civil rights—some today suggest the courts themselves should take it slow.  While it is possible that other forms of backlash may occur, our evidence suggests that opinion backlash—the primary basis for many of these claims—is not a good reason to do so.

[Editor's Note: Kevin Currie-Knight is a PhD Candidate at University of Delaware's School of Education. He specializes in the history and philosophy of education. His dissertation, From Laissez-Faire to Vouchers, is an intellectual history of (market) libertarian thought pertaining to American education.]

In my field of philosophy of education, it is difficult not to come across the ethical theory of care ethics, a position to which I’ve grown pretty sympathetic. But neither folks in education nor care ethicists are usually sympathetic to markets (at least not for things like educational services or other “basic needs”). Now, to me, some of the things markets do best – like encourage people who may not otherwise cooperate to meet each other’s needs – jibe pretty well with an ethic of care. Let me explain.

Care Ethics

For those not familiar, care ethics is a theory (or maybe a set of similar theories) arguing that the morally important feature of any act between people (or sometimes, between people and things, like the environment) is whether they create or nurture caring relationships between parties. While care ethicists differ regarding whether care is more about intent (Michael Slote), achieving a “caring” result (Daniel Engster), or some of both (Virginia Held), one thing that isn’t (very) controversial among care ethicists is that we care most directly and effectively for those who are close to us such as family and friends. The more we attempt to extend care outward to distant others, the more a stronger “caring for” becomes a weaker “caring about.” This becomes a problem when care ethicists argue that care ethics can extend from a theory about personal relations to one about social justice.

Because care is most effective the “closer to home” it is, care ethicists tend to argue for decentralized systems of governance: that local community members are in the best position to assess and respond to the needs of other community members. Sadly, this enthusiasm for decentralization does not generally extend to the idea that markets might offer care more effectively than governments. I think it should, and here’s why.

Care Ethics + Markets

First, if care ethicists generally recognize that we are partial in caring most naturally for those close to us, then markets may offer a way to get folks cooperating in a caring way toward unknown others. This is a similar position to Adam Smith’s, who  several care ethicists argue developed a sentimentalist moral position that is a forerunner to care ethics (without paying much attention to Smith’s market liberalism as an extension of his moral theory). . Smith took very seriously the idea that humans’ sympathy for others is limited the farther removed the person is from us (geographically or otherwise), and that if this is so, markets may offer a way to align our interests in a way that allows people to satisfy others’ needs without solely depending on people taking on the difficult task of extending their sympathies farther and farther outward. (This might be controversial with those care ethicists for whom the purity of caring motive matters more than producing results that meet people’s needs. But as I’ve said, care ethicists differ on whether and how much intent or result matters more.)

Second, there is reason to believe that, by inducing people to cooperate who may not otherwise, markets may well create genuinely caring relations that wouldn’t arise otherwise. There is increasing evidence that markets are actually quite good at creating and nurturing caring and empathic  relations between people, the expressed goal of many care ethicists. Also, while markets are often criticized by care ethicists and others for being impersonal, markets may be best described as impersonal when they need to be, and personal when they need to be. If consumers value the ‘personal touch’ as part of what they are buying – as they do in rewarding companies with good customer service, and will likely demand when shopping for things like education or medical care – then the most successful companies will likely be those who cater to that demand. (This point warrants more elaboration than I can give in this post; I will return to it in a future post.)

Lastly, governments are often less likely to be responsive and attentive to needs than private actors in markets. One reason I think care ethicists would do well to take markets more seriously is because, as a student of public choice economics, I am well aware of the many instances and reasons why government services often tend to serve the interests of the providers before the recipients and become more bureaucratic and inflexible over time. (In my field of Education, Myron Lieberman, E.G. West, and Arthur Seldon have provided vivid examples of this tendency and the reasons for them.) If care ethicists value attentiveness and responsiveness to needs on the part of the carer, it may not be the best idea to put care into the political realm, stripping it of price signals (to let providers know how they are doing in serving consumers) and risking the bureaucratizing of care.

Those are just a few reasons why I think that taking care ethics seriously (as a theory that has something to offer as a framework for thinking about political and social institutions) means taking markets seriously. As I see it, the big takeaway here is that markets may not only achieve a more socially just world, but engender a more caring world where people are driven to attend to others’ needs not via coercive governmental policies, but reciprocal and positive-sum  transactions that can help forge caring relations between people.

The football coaches at Army, Navy and Air Force.

Here is more (mostly on other topics), hat tip to @jtlevy.  Here are some comparable answers for state government employees.

One of the advertised advantages of legalizing prostitution is that it should reduce illegal human trafficking. The theory is that customers will favor legal over trafficked prostitutes, thus reducing demand for the latter. Yet, legalization may also raise overall demand for prostitution. This increase in the size of the market may lead to more trafficking even if  most customers prefer legal prostitutes.

Seo-Young Cho, Axel Dreher, and Eric Neumayer find in a recently published article in World Development that this latter effect dominates empirically:  countries that legalized have larger reported inflows of human trafficking than similar countries where prostitution is illegal. They also found this effect in a more detailed study of Sweden, Germany and Denmark, which changed their prostitution laws.

Eric Neumayer reflects on some of the implications and caveats of the study here, including the difficult data issues that are inherent to a study like this. It may be difficult for customers to distinguish legalized from trafficked prostitution, perhaps partially because prostitution is not always fully legalized. There may also be benefits of legalization for working conditions. Yet, the point that legalizing prostitution can make consumption more desirable (or acceptable) to a broader audience (and lead to negative consequences) strikes me as both plausible and important. Perhaps there is something to be said for the Swedish policy, which makes it illegal to buy sexual services but not to sell them. As Eric Neumayer points out:

The number of human trafficking victims in 2004 in Denmark, where it is decriminalised, was more than four times that of Sweden, where it is illegal, although the population size of Sweden is about 40 per cent larger.

You will find it here, recently recorded.  Hat tip goes to Daniel Klein.

This is our second post from the Bridging the Gap Project about its International Summer Policy Institute (IPSI)—at which Henry and I spoke today about scholars-as-bloggers.  The first post is here.  This post is by Brent Durbin.

*****

A core part of the IPSI curriculum is strategic communication. It concerns an important question: what are the components of an outreach strategy for scholars who want to influence policy (especially U.S. foreign policy)? We tackle that question in part via specific suggestions and insights from editors at leading policy journals, op-ed pages, and blogs.

As academics, we are not usually trained – or even encouraged – to seek an audience for our research beyond the world of peer review. This leaves us ill-equipped for the policy world, a competitive place in which scholars enjoy few advantages. Lobbyists and bureaucrats understand politics better than we do; journalists write better; think tanks have better access. The only unique resource we have as scholars is our expertise. To bring our ideas and findings into the policy arena, we must adopt a style of engagement that enable us to compete effectively with these other groups for the attention of decision-makers.

While there isn’t space for every nuance covered in the workshop, here is a basic two-step summary of how to get your work in front of policymakers.

Step 1: Develop an outreach strategy. This sounds simple, and in some ways it is. But it’s not something scholars do naturally, because for most of us it’s not linked to professional incentives. To start, consider a discrete part of your research – something that you feel might have something to say to policymakers. Not all political science research has clear relevance for current affairs, but most does if you can find the right frame. Now consider the types of outreach that appeal to you and have the greatest chance of influencing the policy space you care about. These generally fall into three categories:

• Writing for policy journals, magazines, op-ed pages, and blogs;


• Briefing policymakers, staffers, think tanks, and journalists;


• Media Outreach to TV, radio, print, and online news sources.

Of course, you may not know the best way to reach your target audience. When in doubt, pursue as many approaches as you can. Remember that policymakers have very little time, so often the shortest output (op-eds, blogs) can often have the biggest impact.

Step 2: Execute the strategy. This is the hard part, and for most scholars the most mysterious. How do you place an op-ed? Whom do you brief? How do you get quoted in a news piece? Your most important resource here is the public relations or media office at your college or university. These people get paid to know how, where, and when to get your research into the world. Most professors ignore them, and they’ll be happy to hear from you. They may not know all of the details of the people or outlets you want to target, but they’ll help you get the information you need.

Since our sessions today focused mostly on writing, here are some additional tips culled from our meetings with editors from Foreign Policy, The Washington Quarterly, The Washington Post, and elsewhere:

• Have a sense of what format works best for what you want to say. In all cases, your piece should be timely and concisely written, and should add something new to the debate. Look for hooks, whether anniversaries, crises, meetings, or other events that need some context and explanation. Just don’t stop with context and explanation – you’ll need an argument too (that’s the policy impact part). And look to cover upcoming events, not those that just happened. Editors are much more interested in scene-setters than post-mortems.


• Policy journals look for 3500-5000 words, and usually have a 3-6 month delay before publication. So be timely but not reactive, and think more about strategic debates that will be around for a while. Op-eds and other short opinion pieces (usually 700-1000 words) should be much more current and should have a clear news hook. Sometimes, this means sitting on an idea – or even a full, pre-written piece – and waiting until the right moment to freshen it up and send it out.


• Like academic journals, most policy and news outlets publish clear guidelines for submissions. Follow them. You don’t need to be famous to get published in the Post or Foreign Policy (sure, it doesn’t hurt); if your timing and writing are good, and you follow the submission rules, your piece will get a fair hearing.


• Always include a short pitch along with your article, usually in the body of the email. This should include your argument, why it’s timely, and why you’re the right person to write it – all in three or four sentences.

These are just a few of the lessons covered by our panelists today. The big takeaway is simply to be strategic about your outreach. Just as you try to maximize the payoff for your academic work – say, by spinning off articles from a book – there are many venues to target when trying to impact policy. The more you pursue, the bigger chance you’ll have of influencing how people in Washington and elsewhere think about your issue.

When an athlete chooses to transfer, three sets of rules can be involved: those of the NCAA.; those of the conference in which the university competes; and those that accompany the national letter of intent, a contract that athletes sign while still in high school to announce their intention to attend a university.

“It’s entirely slanted to the coach’s side,” said Don Jackson, a lawyer who runs the Sports Group in Montgomery, Ala., and who has represented dozens of athletes attempting to transfer to a university of their choice. “Once the student-athlete signs that national letter of intent, it’s essentially a contract of adhesion. They have limited rights.”

Universities have long sought to block student-athletes from transferring to a rival program. Alabama’s football team, for example, would not be expected to let a star player go to Auburn. But the impulse to limit the student-athlete’s options has been heightened to the point that coaches are now blacklisting dozens of universities.

From the NYT, here is more, none of it pretty, but of course lower-tier universities will claim they are making big investments in improving the quality of diamonds in the rough.  The funny thing is — if I may sound Caplanian for a moment — no one at these schools seems to demand similar restrictions on transfers of the students.

Research Articles
Ramiro Berardo,
The Journal of Politics,FirstView Article(s),

Abstract

…Google Glass + NSA PRISM essentially amounts to a vision in which a foreign country is suddenly going to be flooded with American spy cameras. It seems easy to imagine any number of foreign governments having a problem with that idea. More broadly, Google is already facing a variety of anti-trust issues in Europe where basic economic nationalism is mixing with competition policy concerns. Basically various European mapping and comparison and shopping firms don’t want to be crushed by Google, and European officials are naturally sympathetic to the idea of not letting local firms be crushed by California-based ones. Legitimate concern that US tech companies are essentially a giant periscope for American intelligence agencies seem like they’d be a very powerful new weapon in the hands of European companies that want to persuade EU authorities to shackle American firms. Imagine if it had come out in the 1980s that Japanese intelligence agencies were tracking the location of ever Toyota and Honda vehicle, and then the big response from the Japanese government was to reassure people that Japanese citizens weren’t being spied upon this way. There would have been—legitimately—massive political pressure to get Japanese cars out of foreign markets.

The intelligence community obviously views America’s dominance in the high-tech sector as a strategic asset that should be exploited in its own quest for universal knowledge. But American dominance in the high-tech sector is first and foremost a source of national economic advantage, one that could be undone by excessive security involvement.

That is from Matt Yglesias.