Weekend Readings

1) A fascinating new paper by Alwyn Young, suggesting that Africa over the last two decades has grown at a rate about twice what GDP statistics suggest. In Africa, measures of health, consumption and well-being reveal greater rates of economic progress than GDP per capita figures. Across countries, the two sets of measures are correlated, but at specific times or in specific regions they can diverge significantly. This article illustrats the general issue that getting the numbers right is one of the biggest challenges in economics.

2) Swing states since Eisenhower. Endless fun in these times of intense political competition. Even more endless fun here. 

3) More companies allow their employees to use unlimited paid vacation time. Yes, you read that right. Is this a sign of an inexorable slide of the US economy toward the continental European model? Is it a marketing ploy aimed at giving employees the illusion of a great benefit that does not in fact cost employers much? I would bet on the latter. This scheme is likely more prevalent in high human capital industries where performance is judged by the effectiveness at delivering specified tasks, rather than by the number of hours or days of work put in (you are judged by the output, not by the input, much as in academia). Employees who shirk on performing tasks by taking vacations all the time would likely see their career cut short, unlimited paid vacations or not.

Comments

[Neel B]

Although the political landscape over the past few years has been rocky (no matter what side of the political spectrum you identify with), I'm really interested in the outcome of this election. Both candidates have moved to basically mirror each other on a number of issues, but on the economy and taxes, the candidates show some significant differences. Has there ever been a regression analysis on big elections to understand what are "significant variables" that really impact the election? In other words, with a number of issues at hand (e.g., jobs, debt, war, foreign policy, women's issues) which of all these variables would actually have a t-stat >2/<-2? It would be interesting to see what really matters and if the votes follow the significant variables or not.