Culture Affects our Beliefs about Firearms, But Data are Also Important

Dan Kahan and Donald Braman’s provocative analysis contends that because people’s beliefs about firearms are primarily formed by cultural values, empirical data are unlikely to have much effect on the gun debate. Their proposed solution to this quandary is that scholars who want to help resolve the gun controversy should identify precisely the cultural visions that generate this dispute and formulate appropriate strategies for enabling those visions to be reconciled in law. In response to Kahan and Braman’s challenge to empirical research, I argue that while culture influences beliefs, it is but one of several such factors. Alongside culture (and presumably other factors as well), empirical evidence has a powerful influence on beliefs about gun control. In the first Part of this Commentary I discuss how cultural beliefs can significantly affect individuals’ beliefs about firearms and discuss strategies for helping people overcome their cultural biases to more honestly evaluate empirical evidence. The second Part provides examples of how data have played an important role in affecting individuals’ beliefs about firearms. I conclude by urging renewed attention to empirical research to inform the gun control debate.

How Do Labor Markets Affect Crime? New Evidence on an Old Puzzle

For nearly 50 years academics have been studying how labor markets affect crime. The initial interesting and important theoretical and empirical work generated substantial interest in studying crime among economists, in particular, and scholars in the social sciences more broadly. This literature, which is decades old and contains hundreds of papers, is characterized by an intriguing puzzle – the large gap between the theory and empirical work. While the hypothesis that growing labor markets reduce crime seems obvious and is widely accepted by many policy makers and academics, empirical results fail to show consistent evidence in support of this theory. The primary contribution of this chapter is to document how recent research – primarily since the late 1990s – makes substantial progress in resolving this disconnect between the theory and empirics. To accomplish this goal, I discuss a few very important empirical problems that until the last 10 years have not been systematically addressed. The central conclusion of this chapter is that recent research that addresses these important questions consistently provides evidence to buttress the contention that labor market opportunities have important effects on crime, especially property crime.wages, unemployment, labor markets, crime

Report of the Georgia Governor’s Wokers’ Compensation Review Commission

The Commission appointed by Governor Barnes consists of fourteen members, three ex officio members, and seven advisory members. This group includes academics, members of the legislature, claimants attorneys, defense attorneys, representatives from the insurance industry, organized labor, the textile industry, and government agencies. It was charged by the Governor to review and evaluate Georgia’s laws and procedures affecting workers’ compensation. The Commission’s primary goal was to prepare an accurate description of the current workers’ compensation system in Georgia. More specifically, this Report provides detailed information regarding the number of claims, benefits paid to employees, employer costs, and insurance profitability. It also compares workers’ compensation costs and benefits in Georgia with those in other states, particularly our Southeastern neighbors. Our purpose is to determine whether workers’ compensation costs place Georgia employers at a competitive disadvantage in regional and national markets. In preparing this Report, the Commission relied on the most recent available reports and data collected by organizations such as the National Academy of Social Insurance, the National Council on Compensation Insurance, the Workers Compensation Research Institute, the United States Department of Labor, and the Georgia State Board of Workers’ Compensation.Workers' Compemsation, wages, unemployment, disability, indemnity

Business Profitability and Social Profitability: Evaluating Industries with Externalities, The Case Casinos.

Casino gambling is a social issue, because in addition to the direct benefits to those who own and use casinos, positive and negative externalities are reaped and borne by those who do not gamble. To correctly assess the total economic impact of casinos, one must distinguish between business profitability and social profitability. This paper provides the most comprehensive framework for addressing the theoretical cost–benefit issues of casinos by grounding cost–benefit analysis on household utility. It also discusses the current state of knowledge about the estimates of both the positive and negative externalities generated by casinos. Lastly, it corrects many prevalent errors in the debate over the economics of casino gambling.casino, crime, gambling, social costs, externality

The Enrollment Effects of Merit-Based Financial Aid: Evidence from Georgia's HOPE Scholarship

This paper examines the effects of Georgia's merit-based HOPE Scholarship on college enrollment. Introduced in 1993, the HOPE Scholarship covers tuition, fees, and book expenses for students attending Georgia public colleges, and provides a subsidy of comparable value to students attending in-state private colleges, without any income restrictions. Treating HOPE as a natural experiment, we contrast college enrollment in Georgia with those in the other member states of the Southern Regional Educational Board using IPEDS data for the period 1988-97. We estimate that the HOPE increased total freshmen enrollment by 5.9 percent, with the gains concentrated in 4-year schools. For freshmen recently graduated from high school attending 4-year colleges, two-thirds of the program effect is explained by a decrease in students leaving the state. Both white and black enrollments increased because of HOPE, with the state's historically-black institutions playing an important role. Finally, the total HOPE-induced enrollment increase represents only 15 percent freshmen scholarship recipients.Higher Education, Enrollment, HOPE, Merit-based Aid

Non-cognitive Skills and the Gender Disparities in Test Scores and Teacher Assessments: Evidence from Primary School

We extend the analysis of early-emerging gender differences in academic achievement to include both (objective) test scores and (subjective) teacher assessments. Using data from the 1998-99 ECLS-K cohort, we show that the grades awarded by teachers are not aligned with test scores, with the disparities in grading exceeding those in testing outcomes and uniformly favoring girls, and that the misalignment of grades and test scores can be linked to gender differences in non-cognitive development. Girls in every racial category outperform boys on reading tests and the differences are statistically significant in every case except for black fifth-graders. Boys score at least as well on math and science tests as girls, with the strongest evidence of a gender gap appearing among whites. However, boys in all racial categories across all subject areas are not represented in grade distributions where their test scores would predict. Even those boys who perform equally as well as girls on reading, math and science tests are nevertheless graded less favorably by their teachers, but this less favorable treatment essentially vanishes when non-cognitive skills are taken into account. White boys who perform on par with white girls on these subject-area tests and exhibit the same non-cognitive skill level are graded similarly. For some specifications there is evidence of a grade "bonus" for white boys with test scores and behavior like their girl counterparts. While the evidence is a little weaker for blacks and Hispanics, the message is essentially the same.gender differences, test scores, grades, educational attainment

Punitive Damages and the Processing of Tort Claims

Punitive damages are one of the most controversial aspects of tort litigation and have been the subject of various theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies. One criticism of punitive damages refers to the effect that they have on civil litigation processes. In particular, Polinsky (1997) argues that the uncertainty and unpredictability that punitive damage claims inject into a case may increase both the rate and amount of settlements, thus implying that punitive damages carry systemic consequences for the general processing of tort claims. This paper represents the first, empirical examination of this implication. With one of the largest and most comprehensive data sets of tort litigation (over 25,000 cases filed from 1994 through 1997 in several counties in Georgia), we examine the effect of the decision to seek punitive damages on several major decision points in the tort litigation process in a series of logit regression models. With extensive control variables for type of case, the presence or absence of caps on damages, and other potentially important variables, we find that seeking punitive damages has no statistically significant effect on most phases of the tort litigation process.Torts, Litigation, Punitive Damages, Settlement Rates