Do you work longer on rainy days?:
you're a man, you probably do. And it comes right out of your leisure time: I revisit the intertemporal labor supply framework, using exogenous variations in daily weather to see how time at work varies with rain. In my model, a rainy day is associated with a lower enjoyment of leisure, effectively increasing wages and bringing more hours at work. I test the model using data from the American Time Use Survey, supplemented with daily weather. I find that,…
1 min read
How much do people lie in online dating profiles?
pretty good amount, and it's not accidental or random: This study examines self-presentation in online dating profiles using a novel cross-validation technique for establishing accuracy. Eighty online daters rated the accuracy of their online self-presentation. Information about participants' physical attributes was then collected (height, weight, and age) and compared with their online profile, revealing that deviations tended to be ubiquitous but small in magnitude. Men lied more about their height, and women lied more about their weight, with participants…
1 min read
Are men’s brains programmed to like an hourglass figure?:
u gotta love brains. They run us, they are us and yet we're only starting to understand how they really work. So do men's brains really light up when they see a woman with all the right curves? Yes: Secondary sexual characteristics convey information about reproductive potential. In the same way that facial symmetry and masculinity, and shoulder-to-hip ratio convey information about reproductive/genetic quality in males, waist-to-hip-ratio (WHR) is a phenotypic cue to fertility, fecundity, neurodevelopmental resources in offspring, and…
2 minutes
Does racism affect teamwork in the NBA?:
pe: Using data from the National Basketball Association (NBA), we examine whether patterns of workplace cooperation occur disproportionately among workers of the same race. We find that, holding constant the composition of teammates on the floor, basketball players are no more likely to complete an assist to a player of the same race than a player of a different race. Our confidence interval allows us to reject even small amounts of same-race bias in passing patterns. Our findings suggest that…
1 min read
Are criminals ugly and fat?
ey are more likely to be ugly: Being very attractive reduces a young adult's propensity for criminal activity and being unattractive increases it. Being very attractive is also positively associated with wages and with adult vocabulary test scores, which implies that beauty may have an impact on human capital formation. The results suggest that a labor market penalty provides a direct incentive for unattractive individuals toward criminal activity. The level of beauty in high school is associated with criminal propensity…
2 minutes
India now has social networks related to caste:
agine that your Facebook network was "Brahmin": India’s centuries old caste system hasn’t gone away in the digital age. It’s moved online. Global Post reports that Indians have created thousands of groups on the social networking site Orkut related to caste. Examples include the Brahmins of India, The Great Marathas, and i love intercaste marriage. One research company estimated that some 485,000 people are members of 32 different caste-related communities. via utne.com Is the caste system still a big deal…
2 minutes
Traffic tickets: necessary evil or the state gouging you?
s, meter maids are evil and must be destroyed. Sorry, I don't mean to sound like an anti-government whacko. We've got real proof here: Municipalities have revenue motives for enforcing traffic laws in addition to public‐safety motives because many traffic offenses are punished via fines and the issuing municipality often retains the revenue. Anecdotal evidence supports this revenue motive. We empirically test the revenue motive using a panel of annual data for North Carolina counties from 1990 to 2003. We…
1 min read
Does medical treatment cause moral hazard?:
s, definite moral hazard territory. Two studies show that we will happily throw healthy behavior out the window if we think medicine has us covered: In the face of rising rates of diabetes, many states have passed laws requiring health insurance plans to cover medical treatments for the disease. Although supporters of the mandates expect them to improve the health of diabetics, the mandates have the potential to generate a moral hazard to the extent that medical treatments might displace…
2 minutes
