Category: Economics

Sweden’s Restraint in Mandating Covid Lockdowns Resulted in Much Lower Excess Mortality Than the U.S. Suffered

(p. A17) The best measure of health performance during the pandemic is all-cause excess mortality, which captures the overall number of deaths relative to the expected level, encompassing Covid and lockdown-related deaths. On this measure Sweden—which kept most schools open and avoided strict lockdown orders—outperformed nearly every country in the world.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the U.S. “would have had 1.60 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of Sweden, 1.07 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of Finland, and 0.91 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of France.” In America, states that imposed prolonged lockdowns had no better health outcomes when measured by all-cause excess mortality than those that stayed open. While no quantifiable relationship between lockdown severity and a reduction in Covid health harms has been found, states with severe lockdowns suffered significantly worse economic outcomes.

. . .

The economic costs of lockdowns were also staggering. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as many as 49 million Americans were out of work in May 2020. This shock had health consequences. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that the lockdown unemployment shock is projected to result in 840,000 to 1.22 million excess deaths over the next 15 to 20 years, disproportionately killing women and minorities.

For the full commentary see:

Scott W. Atlas and Steve H. Hanke. “Covid Lessons Learned, Four Years Later.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, March 19, 2024): A17.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 18, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

The “recent study” mentioned above is:

Ioannidis, John P. A., Francesco Zonta, and Michael Levitt. “Variability in Excess Deaths across Countries with Different Vulnerability During 2020–2023.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, no. 49 (Dec. 5, 2023): e2309557120.

The published version of the National Bureau of Economic Research study mentioned above is:

Bianchi, Francesco, Giada Bianchi, and Dongho Song. “The Long-Term Impact of the Covid-19 Unemployment Shock on Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates.” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 146 (Jan. 2023): 104581.

Ending the “License Raj” in India Allowed Economic Growth and the Creation of Earned Entrepreneurial Wealth

(p. A8) The younger son of Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, is set to wed his fiancée in Mumbai on Friday, the finale of a monthslong extravaganza that signaled the arrival of the unapologetic Indian billionaire on the global stage — and introduced the world to the country’s Gilded Age.

. . .

Kavil Ramachandran, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Indian School of Business, said there were more billionaires with fatter wallets because India has sustained a high growth rate for more than two decades. That’s created a deep domestic market for goods and services, and pushed Indian companies to pursue new businesses, pairing opportunity with ambition.

“It’s a consequence of rapid growth and entrepreneurialism,” Mr. Ramachandran said.

. . .

India has come a long way from its socialist origins. Until 1990, the country operated under strict government supervision and protectionist policies. Companies could only run after procuring multiple permits and licenses from the government, leading to the name “License Raj” — a play on the term British Raj, which referred to colonial rule.

Once India opened up its economy after a series of reforms, some domestic companies embraced the logic of free markets while remaining family-run and tightly controlled, diversifying into new businesses.

. . .

Many Indians see in Mr. Ambani’s staggering rise in stature and wealth a version of the India they want: a country that doesn’t make a play for attention but demands it. Some even feel pride that his son’s wedding has attracted such global attention. To them, India’s poverty is a predictable fact, such opulence is not.

“Based on the level of the Ambanis’ wealth, the wedding is perfect,” said Mani Mohan Parmar, a 64-year-old resident from Mumbai.

“Even the common man here in India spends more than his capacity on a wedding,” Ms. Parmar said. “So it’s nothing too much if we talk about Ambani. He has so much money due to God’s grace, so why shouldn’t he spend it by his choice?”

For the full story see:

Anupreeta Das. “India’s New Gilded Age on Display at a Wedding.” The New York Times (Monday, June 15, 2024): A8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 12, 2023, and has the title “A Wedding Puts India’s Gilded Age on Lavish Display.”)

Human Ancestor 1.45-Million Years Ago Was a Victim of Cannibalism

Modern capitalism is sometimes criticized as inferior to a long-ago golden age. A past golden age is a myth. Human ancestors suffered from cannibalism and other violence.

(p. D3) In today’s scholar-eat-scholar world of paleoanthropology, claims of cannibalism are held to exacting standards of evidence. Which is why more than a few eyebrows were raised earlier this week over a study in Scientific Reports asserting that a 1.45-million-year-old fragment of shin bone — found 53 years ago in northern Kenya, and sparsely documented — was an indication that our human ancestors not only butchered their own kind, but were probably, as an accompanying news release put it, “chowing down” on them, too.

The news release described the finding as the “oldest decisive evidence” of such behavior. “The information we have tells us that hominids were likely eating other hominids at least 1.45 million years ago,” Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and first author of the paper, said in the news release.

. . .

Dr. Pobiner, an authority on cut marks, had spied the half-tibia fossil six summers ago while examining hominid bones housed in a Nairobi museum vault. She was inspecting the fossil for bite marks when she noticed 11 thin slashes, all angled in the same direction and clustered around a spot where a calf muscle would have attached to the bone — the meatiest chunk of the lower leg, Dr. Pobiner said in an interview.

She sent molds of the scars to Michael Pante, a paleoanthropologist at Colorado State University and an author on the study, who made 3-D scans and compared the shape of the incisions with a database of 898 tooth, trample and butchery marks. The analysis indicated that nine of the markings were consistent with the kind of damage made by stone tools. Dr. Pobiner said that the placement and orientation of the cuts implied that flesh had been stripped from the bone. From those observations she extrapolated her cannibalism thesis.

“From what we can tell, this hominin leg bone is being treated like other animals, which we presume are being eaten based on lots of butchery marks on them,” Dr. Pobiner said. “It makes the most sense to presume that this butchery was also done for the purpose of eating.”

. . .

. . ., clear proof of systematic cannibalism among hominids has emerged in the fossil record. The earliest confirmation was uncovered in 1994 in the Gran Dolina cave site of Spain’s Atapuerca Mountains. The remains of 11 individuals who lived some 800,000 years ago displayed distinctive signs of having been eaten, with bones displaying cuts, fractures where they had been cracked open to expose the marrow and human tooth marks.

Among our other evolutionary cousins now confirmed to have practiced cannibalism are Neanderthals, with whom humans overlapped, and mated, for thousands of years. A study published in 2016 reported that Neanderthal bones found in a cave in Goyet, Belgium, and dated to roughly 40,000 B.C. show signs of being butchered, split and used to sharpen the edges of stone tools. Patterns of bone-breakage in Homo antecessor, considered the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, suggest that cannibalism goes back a half-million years or more.

For the full story see:

Franz Lidz. “For Paleoanthropology, Cannibalism Can Be Clickbait.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 11, 2024): D3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated July 3, 2023, and has the title “Cannibalism, or ‘Clickbait’ for Paleoanthropology?”)

The study in Scientific Reports mentioned above is:

Pobiner, Briana, Michael Pante, and Trevor Keevil. “Early Pleistocene Cut Marked Hominin Fossil from Koobi Fora, Kenya.” Scientific Reports 13, no. 1 (2023): 9896.

Kahneman’s “Adversarial Collaboration” Might Bring Us More Joy and Better Science

(p. A19) Professor Kahneman, who died . . . at the age of 90, is best known for his pathbreaking explorations of human judgment and decision making and of how people deviate from perfect rationality. He should also be remembered for a living and working philosophy that has never been more relevant: his enthusiasm for collaborating with his intellectual adversaries. This enthusiasm was deeply personal. He experienced real joy working with others to discover the truth, even if he learned that he was wrong (something that often delighted him).

. . .

Professor Kahneman saw . . . “angry science,” which he described as a “nasty world of critiques, replies and rejoinders” and “as a contest, where the aim is to embarrass.” As Professor Kahneman put it, those who live in that nasty world offer “a summary caricature of the target position, refute the weakest argument in that caricature and declare the total destruction of the adversary’s position.” In his account, angry science is “a demeaning experience.”

. . .

Professor Kahneman meant both to encourage better science and to strengthen the better angels of our nature.

For the full commentary see:

Cass R. Sunstein. “The Value of Collaborating With Adversaries.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 3, 2024): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 1, 2024, and has the title “The Nobel Winner Who Liked to Collaborate With His Adversaries.”)

During Black Death Only 7 of 21 Regions of Europe Had Catastrophic Decline in Agricultural Activity

(p. D4) In the mid-1300s, a species of bacteria spread by fleas and rats swept across Asia and Europe, causing deadly cases of bubonic plague. The “Black Death” is one of the most notorious pandemics in historical memory, with many experts estimating that it killed roughly 50 million Europeans, the majority of people across the continent.

“The data is sufficiently widespread and numerous to make it likely that the Black Death swept away around 60 percent of Europe’s population,” Ole Benedictow, a Norwegian historian and one of the leading experts on the plague, wrote in 2005. When Dr. Benedictow published “The Complete History of the Black Death” in 2021, he raised that estimate to 65 percent.

But those figures, based on historical documents from the time, greatly overestimate the true toll of the plague, according to a study published on Thursday [Feb. 10, 2022]. By analyzing ancient deposits of pollen as markers of agricultural activity, researchers from Germany found that the Black Death caused a patchwork of destruction. Some regions of Europe did indeed suffer devastating losses, but other regions held stable, and some even boomed.

. . .

Losing half the population would have turned many farms fallow. Without enough herders to tend livestock, pastures would have become overgrown. Shrubs and trees would have taken over, eventually replaced by mature forests.

If the Black Death did indeed cause such a shift, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues reasoned, they should be able to see it in the species of pollen that survived from the Middle Ages. Every year, plants release vast amounts of pollen into the air, and some of it ends up on the bottom of lakes and wetlands. Buried in the mud, the grains can survive sometimes for centuries.

To see what pollen had to say about the Black Death, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues picked out 261 sites across Europe — from Ireland and Spain in the west to Greece and Lithuania in the east — that held grains preserved from around 1250 to 1450.

In some regions, such as Greece and central Italy, the pollen told a story of devastation. Pollen from crops like wheat dwindled. Dandelions and other flowers in pastureland faded. Fast-growing trees like birch appeared, followed by slow-growing ones like oaks.

But that was hardly the rule across Europe. In fact, just seven out of 21 regions the researchers studied underwent a catastrophic shift. In other places, the pollen registered little change at all.

. . .

Monica Green, an independent historian based in Phoenix, speculated that the Black Death might have been caused by two strains of the bacteria Yersinia pestis, which could have caused different levels of devastation. Yersinia DNA collected from medieval skeletons hints at this possibility, she said.

In their study, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues did not examine that possibility, but they did consider a number of other factors, including the climate and density of populations in different parts of Europe. But none accounted for the pattern they found.

“There is no simple explanation behind that, or even a combination of simple explanations,” Dr. Izdebski said.

. . .

“What we show is that there are a number of factors, and it’s not easy to predict from the beginning which factors will matter,” he said, referring to how viruses can spread. “You cannot assume one mechanism to work everywhere the same way.”

For the full essay see:

Carl Zimmer. “Questioning the Toll Of a 1300s Pandemic.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 15, 2022 [sic]): D4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the essay was updated Feb. 15, 2022 [sic], and has the title “Did the ‘Black Death’ Really Kill Half of Europe? New Research Says No.”)

The book cited above as over-estimating the death toll of the Black Death is:

Benedictow, Ole J. The Complete History of the Black Death. Martlesham, UK: Boydell Press, 2021.

The academic article co-authored by Izdebski and mentioned above is:

Izdebski, A., P. Guzowski, R. Poniat, L. Masci, J. Palli, C. Vignola, M. Bauch, C. Cocozza, R. Fernandes, F. C. Ljungqvist, T. Newfield, A. Seim, D. Abel-Schaad, F. Alba-Sánchez, L. Björkman, A. Brauer, A. Brown, S. Czerwiński, A. Ejarque, M. Fiłoc, A. Florenzano, E. D. Fredh, R. Fyfe, N. Jasiunas, P. Kołaczek, K. Kouli, R. Kozáková, M. Kupryjanowicz, P. Lagerås, M. Lamentowicz, M. Lindbladh, J. A. López-Sáez, R. Luelmo-Lautenschlaeger, K. Marcisz, F. Mazier, S. Mensing, A. M. Mercuri, K. Milecka, Y. Miras, A. M. Noryśkiewicz, E. Novenko, M. Obremska, S. Panajiotidis, M. L. Papadopoulou, A. Pędziszewska, S. Pérez-Díaz, G. Piovesan, A. Pluskowski, P. Pokorny, A. Poska, T. Reitalu, M. Rösch, L. Sadori, C. Sá Ferreira, D. Sebag, M. Słowiński, M. Stančikaitė, N. Stivrins, I. Tunno, S. Veski, A. Wacnik, and A. Masi. “Palaeoecological Data Indicates Land-Use Changes across Europe Linked to Spatial Heterogeneity in Mortality During the Black Death Pandemic.” Nature Ecology & Evolution 6, no. 3 (March 2022): 297-306.

So-Called “Progressives” Block Progress Toward School Choice

(p. A15) I was wrong to think that Democrats would support school choice to help their constituents out of poverty. Although polling consistently shows that a majority of minority parents want school choice, progressive politicians consistently oppose all such programs.

To understand why, consider who’s funding their campaigns: teachers unions. For unions, choice means competition, and urban public schools with low proficiency ratings can’t compete. Unions know the only way to keep their political power is to keep children trapped in failing schools. Give parents access to other educational options, and they’ll ditch the schools that take them for granted.

. . .

I have discussed school choice with Mr. Trump, and I’m encouraged by what he said. I’m likewise impressed by his actions to advance the cause in real time—namely, by endorsing several of the pro-school choice Republicans in Texas’s legislative primaries. If Mr. Trump uses his bully pulpit to build support for school choice across the country, as he did in Texas, I believe he’ll help improve the lives of many generations of Americans.

I’ve never given financial support to Mr. Trump’s campaign, and I don’t plan to. But on the issue I care about most deeply, the stakes are high.  . . .  . . . the choice is clear.

For the full commentary see:

Jeff Yass. “Trump Is Best for School Choice, Even if I Won’t Donate to Him.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, April 9, 2024): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 8, 2024, and has the title “Trump Is Best for School Choice, Even if I Won’t Donate to His Campaign.”)

Pious Climate “Scare Tactics” Lead to Despondency and Bad Policy

(p. A15) Whatever happened to polar bears? They used to be all climate campaigners could talk about, but now they’re essentially absent from headlines. Over the past 20 years, climate activists have elevated various stories of climate catastrophe, then quietly dropped them without apology when the opposing evidence becomes overwhelming. The only constant is the scare tactics.

. . .

After years of misrepresentation, it finally became impossible to ignore the mountain of evidence showing that the global polar-bear population has increased substantially.

. . .

For the past three years the Great Barrier Reef has had more coral cover than at any point since records began in 1986, with 2024 setting a new record.

. . .

Today, killer heat waves are the new climate horror story. In July President Biden claimed “extreme heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the United States.”

He is wrong by a factor of 25. While extreme heat kills nearly 6,000 Americans each year, cold kills 152,000, of which 12,000 die from extreme cold. Even including deaths from moderate heat, the toll comes to less than 10,000. Despite rising temperatures, age-standardized extreme-heat deaths have actually declined in the U.S. by almost 10% a decade and globally by even more, largely because the world is growing more prosperous. That allows more people to afford air-conditioners and other technology that protects them from the heat.

. . .

Scare tactics leave everyone—especially young people—distressed and despondent. Fear leads to poor policy choices that further frustrate the public. And the ever-changing narrative of disasters erodes public trust.

Telling half-truths while piously pretending to “follow the science” benefits activists with their fundraising, generates clicks for media outlets, and helps climate-concerned politicians rally their bases. But it leaves all of us poorly informed and worse off.

For the full commentary see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “Polar Bears, Dead Coral and Other Climate Fictions.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 31, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

“Heavily Subsidized Renewables” Mostly Add to Total Energy Consumed Instead of Replacing Fossil Fuels

(p. A17) Despite extravagant hype, the green-energy transition from fossil fuels isn’t happening. Achieving a meaningful shift with current policies is too costly. We need to change policy direction entirely.

. . .

Studies show that when countries add more renewable energy, it does little to replace coal, gas or oil. It simply adds to energy consumption. Recent research shows that for every six units of green energy, less than one unit displaces fossil-fuel energy. The Biden administration finds that while renewable energy sources worldwide will dramatically increase up to 2050, that won’t be enough even to begin replacing fossil fuels—oil, gas and coal will all keep increasing, too.

. . .

The current plan underpinning the green-energy transition mostly insists that pushing heavily subsidized renewables will magically make fossil fuels disappear. But such expectations are “misleading,” as a 2019 academic study concluded. During past additions of a new energy source, the researchers found, it has been “entirely unprecedented for these additions to cause a sustained decline in the use of established energy sources.”

What causes us to change our relative use of energy? One study investigated 14 shifts that happened over the past five centuries, such as when farmers went from plowing fields with animals to tractors powered by fossil fuels. Invariably, the new energy source would be better or cheaper.

. . .

The way to achieve an eventual transition is to improve green-energy alternatives. That means investing much more in research and development. Innovation is needed in wind and solar, as well as storage, nuclear energy, and other possible solutions. Bringing the costs of low-CO2₂energy sources below those of fossil fuels is the only way that green solutions can be implemented globally, and not merely by a few wealthy countries.

When politicians say the green transition is here, they are really asking voters to support throwing more good money after bad. We need to be smarter.

For the full commentary see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “The ‘Green Energy Transition’ That Wasn’t.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 25, 2024): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 24, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

The “recent research” mentioned above is:

Rather, Kashif Nesar, and Mantu Kumar Mahalik. “Investigating the Assumption of Perfect Displacement for Global Energy Transition: Panel Evidence from 73 Economies.” Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy (2023) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-023-02689-8.

The “2019 academic study” mentioned above is:

York, Richard, and Shannon Elizabeth Bell. “Energy Transitions or Additions?: Why a Transition from Fossil Fuels Requires More Than the Growth of Renewable Energy.” Energy Research & Social Science 51 (May 2019): 40-43.

The study of 14 shifts in type of energy that was mentioned above is:

Fouquet, Roger. “The Slow Search for Solutions: Lessons from Historical Energy Transitions by Sector and Service.” Energy Policy 38, no. 11 (Nov. 2010): 6586-96.

A Dollar Spent on Medicaid Yields (at Most) 40 Cents of Value to Recipients

(p. C3) A . . . National Bureau of Economic Research study estimated the value of Medicaid to its recipients at between 20¢ and 40¢ per dollar of expenditure, with the majority of the value going to health-care providers like doctors and hospitals. By comparison, the Earned Income Tax Credit—a cash transfer program designed to enhance the incomes of the working poor—delivers around 90¢ of value to its recipients per dollar of expenditure. Given that more than half of Obamacare’s reduction in the numbers of the uninsured has been from its expansion of Medicaid, this makes the law look more like welfare for the medical-industrial complex than support for the needy.

For the full commentary see:

Daniel P. Kessler. “The Health of Obamacare.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015 [sic]): C3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Dec. 11, 2015 [sic], and has the same title as the print version.)

The NBER working paper mentioned above was later published in:

Finkelstein, Amy, Nathaniel Hendren, and Erzo F. P. Luttmer. “The Value of Medicaid: Interpreting Results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment.” Journal of Political Economy 127, no. 6 (Dec. 2019): 2836-74.

(Note: my title for this blog entry continues to be supported in the 2019 published version of the earlier NBER working paper.)

“A Pattern of Stumbles Across the World of Generative A.I.”

(p. B1) Days before gadget reviewers weighed in on the Humane Ai Pin, a futuristic wearable device powered by artificial intelligence, the founders of the company gathered their employees and encouraged them to brace themselves. The reviews might be disappointing, they warned.

. . .

(p. B5) Its setbacks are part of a pattern of stumbles across the world of generative A.I., as companies release unpolished products. Over the past two years, Google has introduced and pared back A.I. search abilities that recommended people eat rocks, Microsoft has trumpeted a Bing chatbot that hallucinated and Samsung has added A.I. features to a smartphone that were called “excellent at times and baffling at others.”

For the full story see:

Tripp Mickle and Erin Griffith. “Inside the Spectacular Flop of a Bold A.I. Device.” The New York Times (Friday, June 7, 2024): B1 & B5.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 7, 2024, and has the title “‘This Is Going to Be Painful’: How a Bold A.I. Device Flopped.”)

When Hospitals Compete Less, Prices Rise More

(p. B10) If the fries at your local burger joint are soggy or if you’re suddenly charged $25 for ketchup, you’ll probably eat somewhere else next time. That’s the beauty of competition.

Healthcare doesn’t quite work that way. For starters, you don’t always get to choose your medical provider—your insurer often does by contracting with them. And even the insurer can’t easily walk away, either: Giant hospital systems are swallowing up big chunks of the country’s healthcare system through vertical and horizontal integration. That leaves fewer parties with which to negotiate.

If McDonald’s bought Burger King and then Wendy’s, you could always cook at home instead, but nearly everyone needs to go to the doctor or the hospital at some point. Patients also aren’t nearly as cost sensitive as they would be with other purchases because employers and insurers pick up much of the tab. They often don’t even know the price ahead of time.

Hospital executives argue that mergers lead to improved efficiency and better outcomes for patients. But, after years of rampant consolidation between hospitals, most regions in the U.S. are now dominated by a few large players. That has led to higher prices and no significant improvements in patient care.

Rising costs don’t just lead to alarmingly high medical bills—they also make all of us worse off by increasing premiums, the bulk of which are paid by the nation’s employers. That affects even people who rarely visit a doctor. As those premiums soar and employers look to offset the cost, they indirectly eat into people’s paychecks.

Over the past two decades, there have been more than 1,000 mergers among the country’s approximately 5,000 hospitals, according to a forthcoming paper in American Economic Review: Insights.

For the full commentary see:

David Wainer. “As Hospitals Grow, So Does Your Bill.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, June 7, 2024): B10.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 6, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

The paper in American Economic Review: Insights, mentioned above, is:

Brot-Goldberg, Zarek, Zack Cooper, Stuart Craig, and Lev Klarnet. “Is There Too Little Antitrust Enforcement in the U.S. Hospital Sector?” American Economic Review: Insights (forthcoming).