Does being an ex-convict make it harder for a man to find a wife?
is paper tests whether being convicted of a crime affects marriage market outcomes. While it is relatively well documented that crime hurts in terms of reduced future income, there has been little systematic analysis on the association between crime and marriage market outcomes. This paper exploits a detailed Danish register-based data set to fill this gap in the literature. The main findings are that male convicts do not face lower transition rates into partnerships as such, but they face a…
2 minutes
Does swearing make you more or less persuasive?
llow @bakadesuyo This experiment examined the effects of judicious swearing on persuasion in a pro-attitudinal speech. Participants listened to one of three versions of a speech about lowering tuition that manipulated where the word “damn” appeared (beginning, end, or nowhere). The results showed that obscenity at the beginning or end of the speech significantly increased the persuasiveness of the speech and the perceived intensity of the speaker. Obscenity had no effect on speaker credibility. Source: "Indecent influence: The positive effects…
1 min read
Do women receive lighter prison sentences than men? If so, why?
oto credit The Federal criminal sentencing guidelines struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 required that males and females who commit the same crime and have the same prior criminal record be sentenced equally. Using data obtained from the United States Sentencing Commission’s records, we examine whether there exists any gender-based bias in criminal sentencing decisions. We treat months in prison as a censored variable in order to account for the frequent outcome of no prison time. Additionally,…
3 minutes
Do hurricanes increase fertility rates?
llow @bakadesuyo For years, anecdotal evidence has suggested increased fertility rates resulting from catastrophic events in an area. In this paper, we measure this fertility effect using storm advisory data and fertility data for the Atlantic and Gulf Coast counties of the United States. We find that low-severity storm advisories are associated with a positive and significant fertility effect and that high-severity advisories have a significant negative fertility effect. As the type of advisory goes from least severe to most…
1 min read
Are women less picky than men when choosing a marriage partner?
study the steady state of an overlapping generations economy where singles search for spouses. In our model economy men and women live for many years and they differ in their fecundity, in their earnings, and in their survival probabilities. These three features are agedependent and deterministic. Singles meet at random. They propose when the expected value of their current match exceeds that of remaining single. If both partners propose, the meeting ends up in a marriage. Marriages last until…
3 minutes
Are minority police officers harsher when giving speeding tickets? Especially when giving them to minority drivers?
w enforcement officers are allowed to exercise a significant amount of street-level discretion in a variety of ways. In this paper, we focus on a particular prominent kind of discretionary behavior by traffic officers when issuing speeding tickets, speed discounting. Officers partially forgive motorists by writing a lower speed level than the speed that officers observe. Verifying the level of speed discounting by different groups of officers and motorists and ascertaining the presence of racial disparities in this lenient policing…
1 min read
Should you command or ask when you want something from the opposite sex? How about from someone who is same sex?
in 25K+ subscribers. No spam, ever. Enter your email here: On the basis of the experiments by Carli (1990) on the determinants of persuasion efficiency, we predicted that women are more effective using direct strategies in social influence to address women, and indirect strategies to address men; however, men's efficiency should not depend on strategy. Two field experiments presented in this article did not confirm these assumptions. Our data suggest that both sexes are more successful when asking their…
1 min read
What can we learn from the lives of Nobel Laureate economists?
is paper uses as source material twenty-three autobiographical essays by Nobel economists presented since 1984 at Trinity University (San Antonio, Texas) and published in Lives of the Laureates (MIT Press). A goal of the lecture series is to enhance understanding of the link between biography and the development of modern economic thought. We explore this link and identify common themes in the essays, relying heavily on the words of the laureates. Common themes include the importance of real-world events coupled…
1 min read
