Author: Jeremy Horpedahl

Should Andrew Yang Wait to Concede?

Jeremy HorpedahlLeave a comment

Yesterday New York City held their mayoral primary elections. This was an exciting event for election system nerds (political scientists and public choice economists) because NYC is now using a form of ranked choice voting to determine the winner.

While this is not the first place in the US to use RCV (Maine, Alaska, and a handful of cities use it), it is still notable for a few reasons. First, this is America’s largest city. Second, there are a lot of viable candidates, which makes RCV especially interesting and useful.

Specifically, NYC is using a form of voting called instant runoff. There are currently 13 candidates, and voters indicate their top 5 in order. If no one has a majority (>50%) of the votes, then the rankings entered by voters come into play. And indeed that is what happened yesterday.

On the first round, only counting first place votes, Andrew Yang came in 4th with just under 12% of the votes. So last night he conceded.

But should Yang have conceded? Maybe not! Let’s explore how instant runoff works.

Continue reading →

Temporary Income Shocks

Jeremy Horpedahl1 Comment

As a graduate student in 2005, I took macroeconomics from Tyler Cowen. It was a fascinating class, covering not just the sweep of business cycle theories, but also just a good dose of “here is what it means to be an economist.” It was the first class in sequence, and for many incoming PhD students with no economics background (yes, this happens a lot!) it was the first economics class they took.

In that class we read a number of papers by Richard Thaler from his Anomalies series in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. We also read The Winner’s Curse in Bryan Caplan’s micro II course at GMU, the book that collected a lot of those JEP papers (for anyone that thinks the GMU PhD program is just straight Chicago school mixed with libertarianism, think again!).

One of the Thaler papers that always stuck with me was his criticism of the life-cycle theory of savings. That paper opens with a story of Thaler winning $300 in a football betting pool. Thaler, of course, used that income shock to splurge on some temporary indulgence, such as a bottle of champagne or a nice dinner. But a strictly rational agent should just use that extra income to increase their annual lifetime income by an even amount, such as about $20. That’s what the famous life-cycle hypothesis says, which is part of what Modigliani won the Econ Nobel for developing. That was in 1985. The joke is that just 5 years later, Thaler (and presumably other economists) were not personally behaving the way that economic theory says that people behave. (The meta-joke is that Thaler later wins the Econ Nobel too.)

This past week, that theory came full circle for me when Tyler Cowen awarded me an Emergent Ventures prize. It really did come as a shock, both in a real sense and an income sense. I was not expecting this prize in any way, but I am very honored and humbled to receive it. (Side note: this very blog that you are reading also received an EV grant, separate from my personal grant. Hooray for us!). The award was largely for my work on social media and this blog trying to convey good information and data during the pandemic, and to fight bad information.

The question that has been gnawing at me since receiving the award is: what should I do with it? It’s a nice problem to have. I am not complaining in any way. But it’s an especially fascinating question for an economist to think about, and to reconsider how we model human behavior.

The award also intersects with my blog post from last week on “what is income?“. The IRS most definitely considers an award like this to be “income,” and not just any income: it is self-employed income, since it doesn’t come from my employer. If I take it as a cash award, the tax bite will be quite large. However, I could also use the award for some academic purpose: purchasing equipment or software; attending a conference (perhaps one that my University would not normally pay for); or running a small workshop or conference (possibly, in the theme of the award, on how to communicate good information effectively on social media?). In those cases, I might legally avoid some taxes.

I don’t yet know what I want to do with the award. But it’s a really interesting intellectual, professional, and personal challenge to think about. Again, nice problem to have. But thank you again to Tyler, Mercatus, and Emergent Ventures for the honor. And thank you to all my readers out there for making the intellectual journey with me over the past year and a half!

What Is Income?

Jeremy HorpedahlLeave a comment

The United States, like nearly all countries, has an income tax. What is an income tax? It’s a tax on income. What is income? That’s actually a very hard question.

The question comes up in a recent report by ProPublica on the taxes that very wealthy Americans pay (I’m not going to link to it, because the data was likely illegally obtained, and almost certainly immorally obtained, but you can easily find it). What’s really interesting is that never define income, but they do have an implicit definition which includes changes in net wealth. More on this later, but it does raise an important question under an income tax: what exactly should count as income?

For most wage and salary workers, income is fairly straightforward. It’s the compensation that your employer pays you in exchange for your labor services. Easy enough. There are some wrinkles. For example, most non-cash compensation is not considering income for tax purposes. And even some cash compensation, such as contributions to retirement plans, are not considered income. Still, pretty straightforward.

But what if you own a business? It gets a little more complicated. We could define your income as all of the money you receive when you sell goods and services to your customers. But that has a few problems. Let’s say you run a restaurant. You sell burgers for $5. Should you pay income tax on every $5 burger you sell? Keep in mind that you probably had $4.50 in expenses to sell that burger. You bought the beef, buns, and condiments. You paid your workers. You paid to “keep the lights on” (that’s how small business owners refer to utilities and other overheard). So our income tax system will only tax you on the $0.50 difference, which we usually call profit (in some years, of course, businesses have costs that exceed their sales revenue, in which case they owe no income tax).

Now for the really hard question: what if most of your income is derived from assets that you own? That’s where things get even more complicated, and both legal and philosophical questions come up.

Continue reading →

Publications as Positional Goods, and the Division of Labor in Academia

Jeremy HorpedahlLeave a comment

My co-blogger Mike Makowsky has a thoughtful post this week about the academic publishing process. I wanted to offer a slightly different perspective on the same topic. But my perspective comes from someone who is not at a research university, and someone who has recently survived the tenure process.

A little background for those not completely familiar with the academic world: schools are usually considered either teaching or research schools. At first this seems confusing: both Clemson (where Makowksy is) and the University of Central Arkansas (where I am) require that faculty engage in both research and teaching. The difference is subtle, but the big hint is that Clemson is considered an “R1” school (the highest research designation) and has a PhD program with many graduate students. At a school like Clemson, research is valued more than teaching. At UCA, teaching is valued more than research. (Much more could be said about the differences, perhaps in a future post.)

We both engage in both teaching and research (as well as service!), but the emphasis is different. For me at UCA, the expectations of which journals I will publish in and how frequently I will publish are lower than at a school like Clemson. At Clemson, some of your publications should be in the Top 5 (or at least Top 10) journals from time-to-time. At UCA, if you published in one of the top journals, the assumption would be that you are probably leaving soon to go to an R1 school

I’m glad both types of schools exist, and my point here is not to disparage either type of school. But the difference is important for thinking about the academic publishing process.

For someone at an R1 school, publications in top journals are positional goods. Makowsky doesn’t say this exactly, but that’s my takeaway from his post. There are only so many spots available in these journals, and they have value because there is only a fixed number available. And since there has been, over the years, a lot more economists doing a lot more research not all of the great papers will end up being published in one of the top journals.

Upshot: there are a lot of great papers being published in Top 50 or even Top 100 journals! Let me pick on myself. As I said, I recently successfully survived the tenure process. My publication record was good enough. You can inspect my publications over at Google Scholar. I’m proud of these publications. I think some of them are really great. But I’m fairly confident that I would never earn tenure at Clemson with these publications. Instead, you need a publication record like Makowsky.

What’s interesting here is that Mike and I occasionally publish in some of the same journals. Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy jump out to me. These are, in my view, very fine journals. Lots of interesting research is published in these journals. I’m especially proud of this paper in Public Choice. But if someone published only in these two journals and journals like them, they wouldn’t get tenure at an R1 university.

So what do we do with this information?

Continue reading →

Laboratories of Democracy in Pandemic

Jeremy HorpedahlLeave a comment
A bumper sticker for nerds.
Scott Cunningham’s bumper sticker

You’ve probably heard the phrase that US states are often “laboratories of democracy.” The phrase comes from a Supreme Court case. It’s well known enough that it has a short Wikipedia page. The basic idea is simple: states can try out different policies. If it works, other states can copy it. If it doesn’t work, it only hurts that state.

The 2020-21 pandemic has provided a number of possibilities for the “states as laboratories” concept. Here’s three big ones I can think of (please add more in the comments!):

  1. Do states that impose stricter pandemic policies (“lockdowns”) have better or worse outcomes? This could be about health, the economy, both, or some other outcome.
  2. Do states that end unemployment benefits sooner have quicker labor market recoveries? Or are these not the main drag on the labor market?
  3. Do states that offer incentives for vaccination have higher vaccination rates? And what sort of incentives work best?

These are all good questions, but let me throw some cold water on this whole concept: we might not be able to learn anything from these “experiments”! The primary reason: the treatments aren’t randomly assigned. States choose to implement them.

Let’s think through the potential problems with each of these three areas:

Continue reading →

Flying the Friendly Skies (Today and in the Past)

Jeremy Horpedahl1 Comment

It’s almost summer. About half the US population has at least one dose of a COVID vaccine. For many Americans that haven’t had their employment impacted by the pandemic, their bank accounts are flush with cash and they are ready to do one thing with that cash: travel. See family and friends. See something other than the inside of your own home.

And for many Americans traveling this summer, they will fly. The airlines, no doubt, will appreciate your business. At this time last year, the world had so radically shifted that Zoom’s market cap was bigger than the 7 largest airlines in the world. In May 2020, air passenger traffic in the US was less than 10% of traffic in 2019. Today, we’ve recovered a lot, but we are still only back to about two-thirds of normal levels. And since airplanes are just a marginal cost with wings, flying all their planes at close to full capacity is crucial for airlines to return to profitability. They really need you to fly the friendly skies this summer.

One of the reasons that so many Americans are able to fly in today is because flying is, compared to historical prices, very cheap.

How cheap is flying to today compared to the past? Let’s look at some historical price data for flights.

Continue reading →

Let’s Talk About Inflation

Jeremy HorpedahlLeave a comment

You’ve probably seen the headlines. Corn prices are double what they were a year ago. Lumber prices are triple. You can find all kinds of other scary examples. Is runaway inflation just around the corner? Is it already here?

And yet, measures of prices that consumers pay are much more stable. The most widely tracked measure, the CPI-U, is up 4.2% over the past year. That’s through April — and keep in mind that it’s starting from a low base since March-May 2020 saw falling prices). The Personal Consumption Expenditures index, often preferred by economists, is up just 2.3% (though that’s only through March).

So what gives? Do these consumer measures understate inflation in some way? Or is the increase in commodity prices telling us that consumer prices will increase soon?

Let’s take that second question first. Do higher commodity prices necessarily lead to higher consumer prices? The answer is a clear no. First, we can see that in the data. The producer price index for all commodities (such as corn and lumber) is up 12% over the year (through March, with April data coming out tomorrow). That’s a big increase. But as the chart below suggests, that probably will not lead to 12% increases in consumer prices. It probably won’t even lead to a 5% increase in consumer prices.

Notice two things about this chart. First, commodity prices (the red line) are much more volatile than consumer prices, both on the upside and downside. Second, there really isn’t much of a lag, if any. The direction of change is similar in both indexes, almost to the month. When producer commodity prices go up, consumer prices also go up, that very same month, but not by the same amount. So all of that 12% increase in producer prices is probably already reflected in consumer prices.

Why might this be? Simple supply and demand analysis (hello Econ 101 critics!) can tell us why.

Continue reading →

The Pappy Pricing Puzzle

Jeremy Horpedahl2 Comments

If you drink bourbon whiskey (or even if you don’t) you’ve probably heard of Pappy Van Winkle. Bourbon has experienced something of a revival in the past two decades, after being in decline for much of the 20th century. As part of this revival, some bourbons have become very highly sought after by the nouveau bourbon enthusiasts. And the various offerings of Pappy Van Winkle are arguably the most highly sought after. Finding Pappy is almost impossible these days, though this was also true a decade ago so it’s not really a “new” phenomena.

So here’s the “puzzle” for economists: why aren’t Pappy and other rare whiskies sold at market prices? No one in the “legal” market seems willing to do so. I put “legal” in quotation marks because there is a robust secondary market for these bottles, and the legal status of these sales is entirely unclear to me as an economist (alcohol markets are, to say the least, highly regulated).

In these secondary markets, it is not unusual for a 20-year bottle of Pappy Van Winkle to sell for $2,000. The “manufacturer’s suggested retail price” is $199.99. But you will never find this bottle on the shelf for that price. The bottles are held by retailers, either to sell to friends, auction off for charity, or conduct a lottery for the right to purchase the bottle at well below market prices.

So why doesn’t the distillery raise the MSRP? Clearly, they do this from time to time. Ten years ago, if you were lucky enough to find this bottle it was around $100 (I was lucky enough, on occasion). Clearly, they recognize that prices can increase. And that’s not just “keeping up with inflation”: $100 in 2011 is about $120 in current dollars. By 2016, they had raised the MSRP to $169.99. But why doesn’t the distillery raise the price more, perhaps all the way up to the market clearing price? By doing so, they would, perhaps, be able to ramp up production so that in 2041 there might be a lot more Pappy on the shelf. At the very least, they could dramatically increase their profit.

Receipt for 1 bottle of 20-year Pappy and 2 bottles of 12-year Van Winkle “Special Reserve” from 2011.

Also, why don’t retailers just put bottles on the shelf at $2,000? Stores occasionally do this, but mostly because they are fed up with all of the customers calling about rare bottles. Sometimes they will price it even higher than secondary markets. But usually, they allocate the bottles by something other than the price mechanism. Why? Businesses don’t usually leave dollar bills, especially $1,000 dollar bills, on the table.

Continue reading →

Are Poor Americans Really as Rich as Average Canadians?

Jeremy Horpedahl3 Comments

Have you seen this chart? I certainly have. It floats around on social media a lot. The chart seems to indicate that poor Americans are better off than the average person in most other rich countries. Roughly equal to Canada and France, and better off than Denmark or New Zealand.

When I’ve asked for sources in the past, people usually aren’t sure. They remember downloading it from somewhere, but they can’t recall where.

But I think I found the source: it’s this article from JustFacts. After seeing how they calculated it, I’m skeptical that it provides a good comparison of poor Americans to other countries.

Here’s what the chart does. For most countries, it uses a World Bank measure of consumption per capita. They then convert that to US dollars using PPP adjustments. For the poor in the US, they use a consumption estimate for the bottom 20% of households (Table 6), and then divide by the average number of people per household. For the poor in the US, the average consumption for 2010 was an amazing $57,049, more than double the poverty line! That’s about $21,000 per poor person.

How is this possible?

Continue reading →

Old Lives Matter

Jeremy Horpedahl3 Comments

Bryan Caplan has kindly responded to my latest blog post, which was in turn a response to his blog post on the relative value of human lives by age. Caplan has always been kind in his responses, even when responding to pesky graduate students — kind in both his approach and the time he dedicates to responding thoughtfully. So I appreciate his taking the time to respond to me, and I will offer a few more thoughts on the matter.

To briefly summarize: Caplan believes that young lives (10 year olds) are worth 100-1,000 as much as old lives (80 year olds). I contend that they are closer to roughly equally valued. My disagreement with Caplan can be broken down into two categories:

  • A. Caplan’s three reasons why young lives are worth more (a lot more!) than old lives. I didn’t respond to that directly, but I will do so here. I think Caplan is narrowing the goalposts.
  • B. A disagreement over the shape of the VSL curve over the lifetime, specifically whether an inverted-U-shaped curve makes sense. I’ll say more about this too, but Caplan doesn’t just have a beef with me, but with almost everyone in the VSL literature!

Let’s start with Caplan’s three reasons, which he calls “iron-clad”: young people have more years to live, those years are generally healthier, and young people will be missed more when they are gone. The first in undeniably true on average, the second is probably true almost all the time, and I’m not sure on the third, but I’m willing to admit it’s not a slam dunk either way.

So how can I disagree? These are only three things. There are many other considerations, and we can imagine other reasons that old lives are valued as much or more than younger lives! I’ll call mine 4-6 to go with Caplan’s 1-3:

  1. Old age spending is the largest component of public budgets in developed countries (and this is unlikely mostly due to rent seeking or the self interest of younger generations).
  2. The elderly possess wisdom which is highly valuable and that the young benefit from.
  3. The last years of your life are, on average, worth a lot more — you are usually very wealthy, have no employment obligations, you have grandchildren you love (without the responsibilities of parenting), and are (until the very end) generally healthy too.

Taken as a whole, I think these three reasons present a strong counterargument to Caplan’s three reasons. And I think we could certainly come up with more! My point being that Caplan has picked three areas where clearly young lives have the advantage, but ignored all the good reasons why old lives are more valuable. These is what I mean by we shouldn’t rely on our intuitions. Neither of our lists are exhaustive, but let me elaborate on a few of these.

Continue reading →